A Dark Day

The tragic death of Henry Surtees during Sunday's F2 race at Brands hatch reminds us that the sport we love, has it's risks.

I really don't know what to say.

Fomula V - Cadwell Park II

I guess that with 25% of the Formula V championship being at Cadwell, I should have expected that the results here would have had a huge impact on the championship. It feels like I'm going backwards, when in reality I know what the issue at this visit to Cadwell was.

I arrived at the circuit on Saturday morning for an unusual 20 minute un-timed practice. The car's setup had been changed to try and get the handling more to my liking, and at the 95% I ran in the practice session, it looked good with a time only a tenth slower than I had managed at May's meeting.

Then it was into qualifying where, with 32 cars on circuit, getting a clear lap was very hard. Most of the field are covered by 6 seconds, but there were four cars that were between 10 and 18 seconds off the pace, which made things difficult (oh for the 107% rule from other formula). Even so, I managed to post 10th quickest with a 1:39.42, which was a disappointing 0.5 sec quicker than I managed last meeting. I had hoped for a second plus.

Because there were so many cars, the top 5 from qualifying went straight into the final with the remainder having a heat,in which I started 5th. I had a great start and was running in 4th place, but with a car that was suffering from being a bit tail happy (oversteering), which on lap 5, resulted in a spin on the exit of Barn corner. I managed to do a 360 and rejoin only losing around 7 seconds on the lap, and finished 5th.

This put me 10th on the grid for Saturday's final. We made a change to the car to try to fix the oversteer issue, but from the very start of the race, the car was worse, and I struggled to bring it home in 12th.

We spent ages going over the car and eventually found an issue with the front suspension, in that the left hand anti roll bar adjuster would move through it's full range with just hand pressure. So we fixed that and decided to try something a bit different for Sunday's heat, where I would start 9th. I made a great start, but the race was red flagged after half a lap due to a nasty collision between Ben Anderson and Jake Olivera. We were sent back to the grid and after 15 mins or so the race was cancelled as another 3 cars had dropped out so there was no need to run the heat. Both Ben and Jake are OK.

So for the final, I lined up in 12th and made another good start, until I couldn't find second gear - I lost 6 places by the time I got going in third gear - Over the next 3 laps I managed to get past them all, despite Paul Taylor putting me on the grass halfway up the hill to Park corner. It was going well and I got up to 7th. And then I threw it away by dropping a rear wheel on the grass at Chris Curve - for the first time of the weekend, I was fully flat in through through here and I got it wrong :-( So I lost all the places I'd made up, but I managed to get some of them back over the remaining 3 laps finishing where I started in 12th - I really need to get some testing before the
race weekend. I can't see this happening this year, but there's always 2010.