Swansong?

After last weekends mixed weather, Saturday morning was a pleasant surprise, being dry and crisp. The day's schedule was pretty hectic with two 30 minute practices and two 20 minute qualifying sessions. I decided to miss out test one completely as I had figured out that, with three 25 lap races on Sunday, the tyres would be doing close to 200 laps over the weekend. In all my previous visits to the Indy circuit at Brands Hatch, I've done my quickest lap early on before the tyres have been through too many heat cycles. I completed 28 laps in test 2, but was surprised to feel so fatigued after one session. Then it was into qualifying one - The session was red flagged on 2 occasions for people going off, but at the end of the session I was in 12th place, but feeling really rough. I put it down to race car fitness (or lack of) and prepared for Q2. It was a disaster, I just didn't have the strength in my shoulders to push the car hard, and I recorded my worst ever grid position of 16th. I was pretty pissed off at this point and just couldn't understand what was wrong - maybe it was time to take up bowls :-| I also had a visit from an old school friend, Anita, with her husband Ian and son Max, who is 12 and a member of the British Ski squad. He's also a major petrolhead. We sat him in the car and I thought we were never going to get him back out :-) The way qualifying had gone, I doubt anyone would have noticed. However, back at the hotel, things started to make sense as my throat started to hurt and my temperature and pulse rate went way up.

When we got to the circuit on Sunday morning there was a very light mist, but this soon turned into a heavy fog and the racing was put back by an hour. I shared a car with in the 2003 season with Bernard Thear, who now works for FPA - He managed to scrounge me some neurophen which seemed to help me feel better. Optimum IT, my sponsors, had 3 people coming along to see the days events - MD Stuart Ferguson has been to a few of my races, and is responsible for many of the great pictures on my website - If the IT business ever goes bust, he could easily make a living behind the lens. Also joining him were FD Warren Jupp and his wife Victoria. Neither of them had attended a race before so I was keen to do my best!

I was a bit worried about the day's racing for obvious and not so obvious reasons. a) I felt crap b) My sponsors were there to see it all first hand and worst of all b) They had put camera on my car for race 1 - it doesn't lie!

For some reason, this year I have made much better starts - Previously I had always tried to get 4.5k revs and then dump the clutch, which never really worked; I usually got to much wheel spin or just bogged down or even stalled! This year I've concentrated much more on the lights and just tried to feed the clutch in and feel what's going on. It worked again and I made 3 or 4 places up on the start. The first half of the race was punctuated by a couple of safety car periods, and the second half by young Tom Haines giving me a hard time. I was in 10th with a lap to go, just hanging on to the back of my old sparing partner, Rob Lofting. Three corners from the flag, we came across a back marker and Rob got slightly balked - The FPA car has 48 seconds of over boost (+50bhp) per race in six second chunks - I had 2 shots left and as soon as I hit to the apex of Graham Hill bend, I hit the button and shot past Rob and the back marker. So 9th was a good result, and I managed to do my fastest lap of the weekend (45.522).

The guys from Hay Fisher (The TV people), then told me I was keeping the camera for the rest of the day as the footage was pretty good - I was hoping that the curse of the camera car wouldn't strike :-)



Because of the fog, there wasn't much of a break before race 2, so it was onto the grid in 16th. Another good start got me up to 11th, and then we had another safety car period when John Embericos had a huge 'off' at the exit of druids - He took off 3 corners and the front and rear wings - Probably a write off, but thankfully, John was OK. As soon as we restarted I boosted past Alan Kempson out of Graham Hill and settled in front of him. I was again physically struggling to drive the car hard and was lucky to stay ahead of Alan to finish a great 8th. My lap times had dropped of by half a second, which doesn't sound like much, but when I say that from 3rd to 12th on the grid was covered by this amount, it kind of makes it clearer. By this time, Catriona and Michael, friends from London had arrived, with more drugs:-), so I had a quick lunch, with tablets and then it was race 3.

I was on grid 13 for race 3, and I had another good start, but so did nearly everybody else, so I was only up to 11th. I was going pretty well and had got up to 9th, but Mark Powell (him again!) managed to get past me when I made a mistake at Druids. We then had a safety car around Lap 12. This allowed Rob Lofting and Russell Bolesworth to close up, and when I saw I was catching the same back marker that I had taken of advantage of to get past Rob in race 1, I couldn't believe it. The same thing happened, and it was my turn to get baulked. Rob and Russell needed no second chance and both got through. So, I was now 12th with 4 laps to go, but all of my boost left :-) I got Russell on the exit of Graham Hill on lap 22 and then watched Rob dive up the inside of Mark at Paddock, only to end up in the gravel at the start of lap 23. I knew if I was going to get past, I'd have to be really committed, so I again boosted along the Cooper straight (out of Graham Hill bend) and was on his gearbox into Clearways. Along the main straight I again hit the button and managed to pull level on the inside on the approach to Paddock, exactly what Rob had done a lap earlier. However, I managed to stay on track and pulled away to take the flag in 9th. Probably my best overtaking move of the short season.

I could hardly get out of the car at the end of the race, I was so drained, but at least I managed to finish - within 10 minutes, my left rear tyre was flat as a pancake - I had picked up a slow puncture, probably taking the dirty inside line when I got Mark on lap 25.

Looking back, If I hadn't been hit by MP in race 1 at Snetterton, I could have finished 6th in the championship, but if someone had offered me 9th overall at the beginning, I'd have jumped at it.

Over the past 5 years I have ploughed an obscene amount of hard earned cash into racing - It's now time to take stock and without real sponsorship, I think it's time to call it a day. I love car racing, but I can't keep going while constantly thinking about the potential costs of getting it wrong. To compete to the best of my ability, I need to drive consistently at 99%. With the costs of an off constantly at the back of my head, I’m probably doing 96/97% at best. Don't get me wrong, I'll still be sending off sponsorship proposals to over 30 companies, but I'm now a bit more sanguine about the likely outcome. But you never know......


It's not all gloom and doom though - I'm going to keep karting, and I'm sure I'll have the odd outing in Formula Ford or something similarly cheap(ish). I'm already looking forward to next Sunday, when I'm racing in the last round of the Raceland 180 endurance.