Donington World Series by Renault
Test Sessions.
Wednesday was
the day for practice. With three 40 minute sessions we were sure to get some good
track time. By the end of session 1 I was P1 and only 0.03 ahead of Stefan Hodgetts
and 0.08 ahead of Martin Byford. We made some slight alterations with the car
and went out in session 2 to go top of testing times again with Stefan again under
a tenth of a second off my time. We made the decision to miss the 3rd session
so that I could turn my attention to watching my team mates from track side to
offer my advice to get them up there with me.
Saturday Qualifying.
With only 15 minutes to set the best lap of the day I was pushing from the out
lap and slowly managed to work my way up to P2 with a time of 1.46.973 which was
0.070 ahead of Byford. Nikki Lanik had pole but he had missed part of the chicane
on his best lap giving him a lap 9 tents of a second quicker than anyone else!
So that moved us up to Pole position for the Qualifying race.
Qualifying
race!
After taking pole in qualifying I started on the front row next to Martin
Byford. I got the run on Martin down into Redgate and came out in the lead until
on the exit of old hairpin when I dropped my left rear wheel on to the dirt and
lost control of the car causing me to react quickly (with tremendous car control
if I might add) to continue in the race.
I was down in 20th place by the
end of lap 1 so had it all to do in the remaining 9 laps. I managed to get up
to 11th place when the red flag came out and because the race went back a lap
I finished 13th.
Lesson learned... don't drop a wheel on the dirt when
your in the lead!!!
Main Race.
Thanks to my HUGE mistake of Saturday
I had it all to do starting from the 13th row off grid 25. With only 12 laps to
get as far up the grid as I could I knew it would be difficult.
I was driving
the car as close to the limit as I could and passing other drivers as soon as
I caught them. I was passing on average a car a lap and managed to get as far
as 9th place right on the bumper of the 7th and 8th place drivers, which happened
to be my team mates.
On my way from 25th to 9th I set the fastest lap in the
race which was over 2 tenths quicker than anyone else in the field, proving that
if I had not made that mistake on the Saturday a win was almost certain in front
of the 120,000 spectators.
Top credit to the team for another great car
and I hope to end this season with a few podiums at Thruxton in 5 weeks!
14
Sep 07
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