MP

Today (Saturday), the first round of the Formula Palmer Audi Autumn championship took place at Snetterton (just south of Norwich). My car had been fitted with new front discs and pads, so I used the practice session to bed them in and wasn't too worried by 17th quickest on a 1:09.192. Q(uallifying) 1 was interupted by a red flag and traffic was bad, but I managed my fastest ever lap round Snetterton with a 1:07.420 - My previous best was a 1:07.79 set during last year's Autumn Trophy. However, the standard of driver this year is the highest I've seen and the quickest lap was a 1:05.110!. My lap was only good enough for 13th on the grid and left me a bit puzzled. The guys who look after the engines did then make an adjustment to the turbo wastegate, as I was loosing a little bit of boost, so I hoped for better in Q2. I was able to improve to 1:07.090, but again lined up 13th. My goal, before I arrived at Snet, was to get a lap time in the 1:06's, so I went into race 1 fairly confident that this could be achieved as I had seen high 1:06's on the predictive timer on the last 4 laps of Q2. The red lights went out, and for a change, I made a good start, getting past 2 and drawing alongside a 3rd on the way into Riches bend. At this point it all went wrong as Mark Powell decided that even though I was level, on the inside, with him, he was going to make the apex of the corner. He hit me instead, knocking my car sideways at around 100mph. I rejoined way down and got past a few before getting caught up beind a 3 car scrap for 11th. On the exit of Sear corner one of them got very sideways and I took to the grass in avoidance - Once I'd recovered from my triple salko, I set about finishing the race in a lowly 16th - I did manage to do a 1:06.939 so at least there is some good news :-) I tried to speak to Mr Powell after the race, but all he could manage was, "Oh I didn't realise we had colided" - W@nker. The forecast for Sunday is wet, so let's hope I can finish a bit higher in races 2 & 3.