Round 1 - Oulton Park Race Report - April 2023

Friday Practice

Friday free practice went really well,  we learn’t quite a lot with the new car and the set up changes we made throughout the day improved the car each time until we got to a setting that suited both myself and Kavi my teammate.

Saturday free practice and qualifiying

Saturday Kavi went out in the car for the 1st free practice and was putting in some really quick times topping the timings for the AM’s but then made a slight mistake going into the chicane and clipped a tyre bale damaging the left upright along with some front wing damage, unfortunately I was not able to get out in FP1 due to the damage. I started FP2 and the car felt good after the repairs and I was able to push and put some really good laps in before handing the car back over to Kavi to finish the session and build his confidence back up ready for qualifying

Kavi did the 1st qualifying 10minutes and was going well bringing his lap times down nicely to finish P3 in class and 10th overall which would mean we start Race 1 10th on the grid. It was now my turn to qualify and I was able to push from the out lap and the car felt awesome, I started my first flying lap and made a little mistake but still managed a respectable P4 but on my next flying lap it all came together nicely and I finished P2 in class and P3 overall meaning we would start race 2 third on the grid.

Race 1

Kavi started race 1 but due to a mix up on release time for the pit window he was released 5 seconds late and then was made to start from the pit lane. Once the race started he in settled into a rhythm and was gaining on the tail enders when the safety car was deployed which was great for us because it now bunched them all up. On the restart Kavi started to make progress through the pack and bough the car in for me to take over in P2 in class, I jumped in and was going down the pitlane when the safety car was deployed again meaning the red lights came on at the exit to the pitlane so I could not re-join the race and had to wait for them all to pass before joining the back of the pack again, once the race got going I got my head down and made some exciting but scary move in a couple of places and manged to fight my way through to get us back up the leader board bringing us home P4 in class and P7 overall.

Race 2

I was starting race 2 from P3 and with the rain coming down I was very optimistic as I love racing in the rain, the lights went green and from the first couple of corners I was really struggling with grip to get out of the corners and the traction control kept kicking in and bogging the car down, I was able to defend for a couple of laps but then the problem was getting worse and I just had no corner exit speed which enabled the guys behind to start getting past but I continued to push as hard as I could and came in in P10, whilst Kavi was getting in the car the engineers tried to find the fault and changed a couple of settings to try and rectify it for Kavi to start pushing. With the track starting to dry up a bit Kavi was able to move us up in class but not in the overall position so we finished P4 in class and P10 overall. After looking at all the data etc after the race my tyre pressures had been set too low so I couldn’t get any heat in them and this then had a chain reaction causing the traction control module to keep kicking in and bogging the car down.

Overall we got some solid points in the bag and understand the car a lot better ready for the next round. 

We now go to Silverstone on the 6th and 7th May for the Silverstone 500 a 3 hour extravaganza of no- stop action and I for one cannot wait.

With thanks to Jakob Ebrey Photography for the imagery.