Race Report from Snetterton

Saturday - Warm-up and Qualifying Saturday

The morning warm up session consisted of the qualification laps that I needed to do and a few laps for Moh my team mate. 

Moh took part in the qualifying session for Saturday, setting a best lap of 1:59.443 which was good enough for him to be P5 which is where he would start the sprint race.

Sprint Race Saturday

Moh started the sprint race with a slightly different setup  to what he had in qualifying and was able to make a place up to P4 on the start. A safety car period interrupted the stint but Moh managed to pass the #90 car through T1 a few corners before the SC boards came out. After the safety car, Moh was promoted to P2 after the Feathers motorsport #82 had a spin at T11. Moh managed to set the fastest lap of the race with a time of 2:00.524 which meant we would be on pole for the pit stop race and bring the car home in P2.

Pit Stop Race Saturday

I started the pit stop race from pole but lost a chunk of time and places on the opening lap due to a Lamborghini spinning right in front of me and I only just managed to avoid crashing in to him. However, I had blistering pace and the car felt really good so I pushed hard and was able to catch up to the cars ahead making several hard but fair overtakes. In the process of catching the cars ahead. I achieved a 2:00.816 which was comfortably the fastest lap of any sporting driver on track. At the time of the pit stop, I had managed to get back to P1 and pull a 9 seconds lead ahead of the Greystone #23 car which was now in P2. 

In the pit stop both mechanics and ourselves did an excellent job to adhere to the minimum time of 78 seconds. Myself and Moh spent 78.9 seconds in the pit lane which was the 3rd fastest pitstop in class and was 0.6 seconds quicker than the Greystone #23. This difference proved to be crucial as Moh put in a very good stint to bring the car home in P1 but the gap to #23 Greystone car had been eroded and at the chequered flag was down to just under 1 second.  

But we had won our first race together and our first as a new team.

Sunday - Warm-up and Qualifying 

We had problems on Saturday with a ECS fault and it turned out the battery wasn’t performing properly so having changed the battery, the car fire-up was significantly smoother. However, during the warm- up session, Moh reported that the ECS fault was back. I took over at the end of the session and all seemed normal in that the warnings on the dash had disappeared and the car felt really good. Despite this as a precautionary measure we had the McLaren engineers zero the yaw and steering angle sensors before the qualifying session. 

This delayed the start of my qualifying session but the fault did not appear for the rest of the day.. I was able to build on the cars qualifying performance from Saturday and avoiding the kerb at T1, I was able to gain 0.16 compared to Moh the previous day. I only had enough time to get in 2 flying laps and my best lap was good enough for P3 which was an improvement on Saturday’s qualifying time but I knew I still had time in me as I had made a couple of mistakes on my flying lap.

Sprint Race Sunday

I competed in the sprint race and the car felt absolutely on rails allowing me to push from the start and I had superb pace throughout. I was able to pass the 2 cars in front of me and grab the lead by the end of lap 1. Whilst lap times were somewhat inconsistent, ranging from a 2:00.016 to a 2:02.249 in the first few laps, I was quicker than those behind me and able to start to pull out a good lead.

Unfortunately, this pace meant getting held up by a Ginetta G55 in the GTA class that should have been substantially quicker than me.. I managed to pass the car a few times but it was able to re-claim the position each time on the straights, despite this, by lap 10 I had a 3 second gap to the #90 Balfe Motorsport car, then in an attempt to pass the Ginetta  at T1, I went in too hot and spun off the track, which cost me 20 seconds dropped me to P10 and I ended up finishing P9. I was absolutely gutted not only for myself but for letting the team down when really I should have held position as he wasn’t in our class but I thought the guys in my class behind would be catching me up if I tried to hold back.

In the postrace debrief,  both myself and the team should have done a better job of recognising and understanding the situation. I should not have risked an overtake and my race engineer should have been explicit in instructing me to not take any risks with the GTA car. We as a team will learn from this mistake and move on. It is a shame because both the car and myself displayed incredible pace and setting the fastest lap of the race on lap 9. This means we start P1 in the Pit Stop Race, but we carry a 20 second success penalty into the race for winning the race on Saturday.

Pit Stop Race 

Starting from pole Moh started the race and was able to pull out a good gap to the cars behind trying to claw back some of the 20 second penalty but incidents elsewhere in the field meant that the safety car was brought out on two separate occasions. One of these times was just as the GT4 pit stop window opened. We boxed under SC conditions as soon as the window opened, but the 20 second pit stop penalty that came as a result of winning the Saturday pit stop race, meant that we dropped back in the field to P10.

A race lead with a gap of 5 seconds was evaporated instantly. 

I got into the car and was able to keep a good pace, however, I was now surrounded by pro drivers who were able to consistently lap in the high 1:59’s but I managed to hold my own and make up 3 places coming across the line in P7 within the GTH class, I was really pleased with my pace against the pro drivers as I was only 2 – 3/10ths off their pace.

So looking back on the weekend as a whole it was excellent we managed 2 podiums, 2 pole positions and 2 fastest laps and we also learnt a lot as a team to take in to the next race at Oulton Park on the 3rd July.

With thanks to Jakob Ebrey for the imagery.