No.25's Mallory Diary - Part One

[No.25]

Here starts my diary of events for Sunday's race. It's a bit long winded but I thought it might be of interest for some. Part Two and Three of the novel will be loaded in good time....I'm hoping the anticipation will stimulate interest!!!

Following a successful day testing on Wednesday I came to the circuit with high hopes for a good performance. As ever the goal was to complete a further two races and obtain those vitally important signatures. As for performance I was hoping to be able to replicate our best performance in testing combined with consistency.

It was to be a long day with some considerable waiting just to keep the nerves on edge! After an early sign-on at 07.45hrs I was pleased to see the car fly through scrutineering yet again, thanks to the effort and attention to detail that Colin has applied through our campaign. Dave also remained a stalwart of the team providing mechanical and pit-side assistance. His ability to keep me focused on our goals seems to be developing a dual role for him as Team Psychologist!!!

As is the case with British motorsport, the weather was to feature greatly for the first couple of hours of the day. The track had been subjected to almost constant overnight rain and the early showers of the day showed no sign of relenting before qualifying at 09.30hrs. Our problem with rain is that we only have two sets of tyres, slicks and a four year old set of tyres from the original Kumho Challenge days, which some may say would be more slick! Equipment aside, I have never driven in the wet so the prospect of qualifying on slicks in the rain was not appetising, but that is exactly what we did. There were few others in a similar position and my main rival of the day Howard Bryan was sporting a very nice set of wets!!

So to qualifying, I decided not to get carried away with chasing fast times. Given our situation there was a good chance that we would start race one from the back of the grid. We thought it better to start from the back with a complete car rather than watch the race from the pit sat on a pile of pieces that used to be a Tasmin! Time was not even a consideration during the first three laps. I needed to get as much heat into the tyres as possible and try to search out the best wet line with minimal puddles and maximum grip. I started to put a little more pace in from lap five building to what would become our fastest qualifying time four laps later. At this point I started to lose sight of our goal and instead thought it would be a good idea not to start at the back of the grid. The next lap was another good one with the effort being applied to the exit speed from Shaws Hairpin to give us a good run down Kirkby Straight into Gerards, our momentum was carried well through the exit of Gerards onto Stebbe Straight, at which point I knew we were quick, braking a little later into the Lakes Essess was sure to secure a quick time, with a higher entry speed than any previous lap and a later turn in to the first apex to straighten the run on the climb to the second apex I found myself on the perfect technical line. At which point my mistake soon become painfully obvious, the technical line takes you straight from the first apex to the true apex of the second, that being well onto the kerb which I had used so often for a quick lap on test day, unfortunately my loss of focus on our goals and my ambition to prove my worth also clouded my judgement of a wet kerb which very quickly decided to punish me. The car went sideways up the hill and over the brow into the braking zone for the hairpin, by now I had faced all directions and was travelling backwards on the grass at the outside of the track waiting for physics to take effect and the car to come to a rest. Which it eventually did, after having removed the side valence and kissing the barrier with the front left of its nose. So much for planning!! The car did not stall through this and I was fortunate enough to find enough traction to get back onto the track with time enough to clear the grass and mud from the tyres and a prove my confidence with a relatively quick final lap.

With all our excitement it turned out that our qualifying session went well. Although we were to be placed behind Howard on the grid we were less than three seconds slower which was a result given the difference in tyre compounds. Our times were only one and two seconds behind the Tuscans of Richard Wright and Dean Cook respectively which proved we were right on the money.

Edited by No.25 on Tuesday 22 August 09:01