Saturday 27 September - Cadwell Park (Full Circuit)

With 32 Locosts present, and no more than 24 cars allowed on the track at any one time, qualifying was split in to 2 sessions - I was in the 2nd session.  The weather was dry and sunny, if a little cold.  Despite having worked on my brakes since the last race, for some reason my rears were still locking before my fronts - not good, especially given the twisty and narrow nature of Cadwell Park.  Qualifying seemed to go well, the full Cadwell circuit is a gem.  The addition of the "mountain" and the twisty Hall Bends makes it a really enjoyable challenge - even more so with locking rear brakes!  My worst moment was going down the steep hill from Gooseneck to the 90' left Mansfield.  My brakes locked and I spun on to the grass on the left, sliding parallel to the crash barrier before being unceremoniously dumped back on to the track - and in the process spilling vast quantities of grass and mud on to the track - sorry! (Not to mention grass and mud all over the car, in the car and all over me!)  In the end I managed to qualify 9th with a time of 1:51.77.  Tim Gray took pole (again) with 1:46.80 Over 1.2 secs quicker than his nearest rival.

At this point we decided to try and improve my front brakes, only to find that I had a cracked brake disc.  My thanks go to James Kmieciak (81) who crashed in qualifying and allowed me to use his undamaged brake disc.  A quick bleed of the front brakes, and turning the bias bar by 7 full turns hopefully cured the problems, although the fronts would inevitably snatch in one direction as one side had a new disc and the other didn't.

The heat was decided by filling the grid with the bottom 24 cars from qualifying.  As it turned out that left 8 going straight through to the final, meaning that my 9th place in qualifying put me in pole position for the heat - a first for me!  Colin Beckwith (39) was alongside with Justin Boak (46) behind.  As I led the field around to the start line I was trying not to go too fast or too slow.  I still had a long wait on the grid.  As the green lights came on, I got one of my worst starts of the season! Typical. By the 2nd corner, Colin and Justin had passed me, but I managed to get a good tow on Justin down the back straight and took him into Park where I found out just how badly my brakes were going to snatch!  This left Colin still to pass - never an easy feat - but I was sure that I was quicker around the corners and just needed to find the right one!  As it turned out, Colin got sideways going through the left/right up on to the Mountain, and we came over the brow of the hill side by side.  Presumably Colin was not expecting this as he moved across to the right side of the track where I was!  Not to be deterred, I used the grass and with greater momentum went past on the grass - apparently to huge cheers from the crowds by the café!  At some point Tom Ballentyne (68) also managed to overtake Colin and followed me some 5-6 secs behind.  We then pulled out some 20 secs on the huge battle for 3rd place which was not resolved until the last lap when Colin spun and the gaggle of 6 cars behind him went past, with Danny Cassar (24) finishing 3rd.  My first genuine heat win (Oulton was gifted to me when the leader broke down).

Winning the heat put me 9th on the grid for the final.  This time I got a good start and overtook both Kevin Lucas and Brett Townsend on the start.  However Kevin overtook me at Park on the first lap, and slowly pulled out a lead on me that was about 6 secs by the end of the race.  Brett started to catch me towards the end of the race, and on my last lap I was very cautious, making sure that I did not put a wheel wrong.  I was thus rewarded with 8th place - well deserved I felt - and with an improved fastest lap of 1:50.65!  Thanks go to my pitcrew "Magnum" for changing my brake disc so quickly and holding out the pit board so well - he redeemed himself from his earlier faux pas in scruitineering (no comment).

Next race - Sun 19 Oct at Mallory Park