With only room for 24 cars on the track, and 41 Locosts present, qualifying was split in to 2 sessions. The "A" session went out on a warm but not hot track and recorded some good times, but managed to put oil all over the track. The "B" session - myself included - had a very hot track and lots of oil to contend with. I was very pleased to only be beaten in the "B" session by Tim Gray (11) our championship leader, and I ended up 8th overall in qualifying - my best performance yet. The oil was so bad that Tim was almost 3 secs off his pace from Friday testing.

Unfortunately at this point, all went badly wrong. By the time I got back to the pits, I could no longer select any gears with the engine running. With the engine off, gear selection was OK, so the clutch was immediately suspected. After repeated adjustments of the clutch, we could either get it in to gear, but the clutch would slip, or we could get no slipping but no gears either. Day over for me. At time of publication, the fault is still not confirmed, although a rebuilt clutch pedal will help as the old one was limiting clutch cable movement to just 11mm.

Anyway, I got to watch the heat (bottom 24 qualifiers) which was entertaining, although the hairpin caused its fair share of casualties (cars not people). The final (top 15 qualifiers and top 9 finishers from the heat) was stopped twice due to accidents on the first lap. Again, no-one hurt but a few more cars off the road. Hopefully they’ll all be out again at Pembrey in July.