1999, Rounds 10 & 11, Snetterton

Snetterton has LONG straights, and favours the more powerful car, rather than the better handling cars. Since the Fiesta's strong point is the handling, this could make things tricky from the start. That being the case, I would need all the power I could muster, just to not do worse than usual. Doing better seemed out of the question from the start.

To get that power, I took a trip to EFI Performance centre at Stubbington, near Fareham to put the car on a rolling road for some performance tuning. To begin with it turned out I had less power than I thought, with a very 'flat' pickup. Some minor tweaks later, I had over 7% more power than when I started, which I was very happy about. Now let's go kick ass.

Saturday morning qualifying came, and I knew I was not fast enough. I knew I had not qualified as high as I would like. In fact I had qualified 26th fastest out of 56. With the bottom 32 qualifiers (including me) racing first in the B race, and then the top 8 from that race joining the others for the Championship race later in the afternoon, it meant I had a second shot at the Championship race. I just had to finish in the top 8 of the B race. On the other hand, that would not be enough, I hadn't been in the B race apart from my very first race at the aborted Silverstone meeting in the snow in March, so I had a point to prove.

I started the B race in second, got a good start, and held second for all of the first lap. Second lap I was close enough to the leader to try a move at Sears corner, but he blocked me, and we both got slowed by this enough that the third place car passed us both. I was down to third but only for a few hundred yards, I had passed the previous leader by the end of the Revett straight. Still second by the end of lap 2. Lap 3, I had a better run through Sears than the leader and got alongside up the Revett straight, and outbraked him for the lead at the Esses. From there, since I knew that race laps today count for grid positions tomorrow, I put my foot down to set a fast lap. Six laps later I had over a 5 second lead, but I had nearly thrown it all away with over-enthusiastic braking on more than one occasion, so lap 10 was slow and controlled by comparison, to take the chequered flag with ease.

On the slowing down lap I was getting applause from all the marshalls, and the people in the grandstand, and later I was getting congratulated in the paddock for the rest of the day, even by total strangers, and even into Sunday! It was all very strange, to be congratulated so much on being LOWER than I normally come. Very weird. I liked it though!

That win put me 25th on the grid for the Championship race. By contrast, I got a bad start, and lost one place through Riches, 2 more at Sears as a car passed on either side and another one along the Revett straight. Things settled from here until on lap two there was chaos at the first corner. There was dust, smoke, debris and two stranded cars on the corner (at least I think they were cars once). I managed to miss all that, staying on the tarmac as loads of people took to the grass to avoid it all, so I actually gained places without overtaking as such. Half a lap later the red flags were out, and we had to grid up again in our original places.

The second start was done under a yellow flag as one of the cars in the crash had dumped its engine oil on the track, and it was now quite slippery. I have not heard of this sort of start before, it means no overtaking will be allowed until after the second corner, but do we start fast or slow? No-one seemed to know, so the start was a bit faltered, but we got away eventually. On lap 3 I was passed at the Esses by a car that was really going fast, too fast it turned out, and I repassed him as he took to the grass on the exit. He manged to re-pass me again later though. By about lap 6, I had been looking at the back of Tony Taylor's Peugeot 205 for too long, and I wanted to be past him. I drew alongside up the start and finish straight, but had to let him take the corner as he had the inside line, but suddenly I was sideways, I had been hit on the rear wing, and pushed wide, by the time I regained control I had left the track and was on a concrete runoff area, and took a straight line back to the track, this took me over some VERY rough ground and threw me in the air dumping me hard back on the tarmac. At the next corner, the back end broke away again, and it seemed I may have some damage that was causing odd handling. The offending driver had got past, but no-one else had. I spent the next few corners trying to relearn the handling characteristics before I started to hassle him back again to give me back my place (avoiding the temptation to nudge him back). I didn't have to wait long, the guy just drove himself off the track. (He was later found to be under weight but was not penalised, and then was excluded from Sunday's race for dangerous driving) Over the next few laps, I came under threat again, but generally held ground, and took 21st place.

The reason for the odd handling appears to have been a buckled rear wheel in the impact. No body damage though!

My fastest race lap of the day had indeed been during my lead of the B race, so that put me 18th on the grid for the Championship race for Sunday, the second highest of the 30 Fiestas present. At the start there was mayhem again, I later counted on the video at least SEVEN cars leave the track at the first bend. Some had obviously been damaged, due to the 'light debris' on the corner, but I had no idea how much. I was in 12th place by the second corner, down to 15th by the Esses, and up to 14th again through Coreham curve, and that is where I stayed for the next several laps. Unfortunately, several of the cars that had left the track were championship contenders, dead fast cars, and would be back behind me eventually. It all happened on lap 5, I felt obliged to let the current championship leader through without a fight, but he was slower than I expected up the start straight, so I had to back off just a fraction to let him get through at the corner, and that loss of momentum lost me another place at Sears. With hindsight I should have let him pass round the outside rather than the inside. He would have got past whatever, but maybe I wouldn't have lost another place. My mistake, it won't happen again though. Two more got past up the Revett straight due to superior straight line speed, and then I was static again behind the same Peugeot of Tony Taylor that I had seen so much of yesterday. His race ended on the second to last corner of the last lap with some kind of engine failure, and I came home in 18th.

I was disappointed not to have finished inside the top 16 having been up there for half of the race, but if being passed didn't bother me, I shouldn't be racing. It does not detract however from the fact that I finished the day 18th overall, the second highest Fiesta (thanks largely to EFI Performance Centre I suspect) on a circuit that I always thought would suit Peugeots better anyway. What is more I had THREE races right in the thick of the action with no body damage. Not many can make that kind of claim! It was a great weekend, with some excellent racing. Probably my most enjoyable weekend yet.