Race Report from Donington Park
Thursday Practice
Practice on Thursday started off quite well but then the dreaded gearbox gremlin showed up again and we could not go up the gearbox. The BMW technicians along with the guys from Century worked on the issue and thought they had solved it only for it to come back in the afternoon session. The team took the decision to put a brand new gearbox in the car and change all the electrics from the steering wheel to the gearbox. This took the rest of the afternoon and all day Friday to complete.
Saturday free practice and qualifiying
Saturday Chris went out in the car to do some shake down laps and make sure everything was ok now with regards the gearbox etc and after a few laps he was back in the pits confirming all seemed good now. I went out and did some fairly good laps on 200km old tyres just to see what the car would feel like once the race tyres had gone off. We then both did a simulated qualifying run on 20km old tyres and all seemed really good ready for the qualifying session later in the afternoon.
It was my turn to do the first qualifying and I had 10 minutes in which to post my best time, my 1stfast lap put me P4 and then on my next flying lap I was up in the first two sectors and coming onto the main straight I had a massive slide costing me 6/10ths and I just managed to save it before it shot me into the pit wall, unfortunately that was my last chance of a flying lap and ended up P7. Chris then went out and done his flying laps and managed a marginally better P6. With our two times added together we qualified P8 overall in the GT4 class and P7 in class.
Sunday 3 hour Race
I was nominated to start the race and once the lights went out I managed to gain a couple of places, but then got into a battle with the No27 Toyota Supra this was the start of our undoing, I could not find away past as the 27 car was defending everywhere and when I did get alongside him out of a couple of corners he was able to drive away on the straight. I decided I was going to set him up coming out of the chicane down towards Melbourne Loop, so as we excited the chicane I went to the right forcing him to come over but then switched straight to the left unfortunately he moved straight back over under breaking which is not allowed and I caught the left rear of his car causing the rear diffuser of his car to come flying off. I ended up getting a drive through penalty for contact and he also got one for moving twice in the breaking zone. My team tried to argue that I should not get the penalty because if he had not made the second move there would have been no contact but it fell on deaf hears.
Chris then did the second stint and pushed on really well but unfortunately got a drive through penalty for exceeding track limits on 3 occasions, it was now my third stint in the car and I tried to gain some places but in my exuberance to do so also got a another drive through penalty for exceeding track limits which killed off any chance of us gaining places. Chris took over for the last stint of the day and now it was just damage limitation to finish the race and gain some points.
We ended up finishing P8 and salvaged some points, but it was not the best day we have had in the office, we will regroup look at what we could have done better and come back stronger for the next round.
Although I was not happy with my performance and know I am better than what I did, I still had a really fantastic weekend doing what I love and any weekend racing is better than not being at the race track.
We now go to Snetterton on the 25th/26th June and I for one cannot wait.
With thanks to Jakob Ebrey, Stephen Fisher and Ricky at Sprite Photography for the imagery.
