Riggers: too fast for photos (or not)
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to run out of fuel once may be regarded as a misfortune; to run out twice looks like carelessness.
It was therefore with a deep sinking feeling that I heard the Seven's exhaust note falter and cough even as I went over the Snetterton start line. I knew that the ignominy of being towed back to the pits that I had experienced at the Castle Combe Academy track day was, to my horror, about to be repeated.
Sure enough, the car ground to a halt on the back straight, the East Anglian Air Ambulance service was a fiver richer (thanks to my compulsory donation), and my face a bright shade of red as the marshals towed me back to the pits.
Catch it, catch it, catch it...
It was an inauspicious start to the weekend of the final sprint of the PistonHeads.com Caterham Academy (it's 'proper' races from here on in), but the rest of the test session I'd booked to get a few laps under my belt was frankly brilliant.
At least half the Academy field was there as well, and it was our first chance to really get out on track with other competitors without the strictures of track day rules. It was, of course, supposed to be a serious testing session, but I know I'm not alone in ending up treating the day as a toe in the water of wheel-to-wheel racing.
Before running out of juice...
The whole affair was good-natured - nobody wants to bend their cars before the first race of the season - but being able to pass (or be passed) at will in the glorious Norfolk sunshine was a mouthwatering foretaste of the racing to come.
There was the more pressing matter of the final sprint to be dealt with, but as the sun went down those of us who had spent the day on track went to bed fairly confident that we had Snetterton licked. A not-quite-one-lap sprint would be a doddle, surely...
...and after (helmet hiding red face)
The Friday evening confidence was shattered with a Saturday (sprint day) that dawned cold and blustery, with the threat of rain looming from the east. The downpour held off until lunchtime, allowing us to get our practice runs in on a dry track. Of course, that only served to make the going even tougher when the weather finally did break; we were going to have to face our competitive runs with virtually no wet-track experience.
Braking and turn-in points? Forget 'em. Wet lines? Nobody knew them anyway. The winner was clearly going to be the person with the biggest balls who managed to not fall off the track.
Good to get on track with other cars...
Still, we had three runs with which to set a time. We just had to use them wisely. Inevitably, the first runs were a bit of a hit and miss affair. Fortunately, nobody hit anything, but more than half the field managed to miss the track in some way, invalidating their first times.
My own trip-up came early in the run, heading into Sear, the second corner and first braking point, my chosen pedal pressure and moment for braking were both rather too ambitious. The result was locked wheels and an ungainly slither around the outside of the corner before I popped all four wheels on to the painted kerb on the outside, thus invalidating my time.
...but it's easy to get over-enthusiastic
That was almost my lot for off-road excursions (although I did manage to head off the track after the finish line on two occasions!), and I managed to post a time of 93.43secs on the second run, enough to bag fourth place in group 2, behind third-placed James Needham and the almost-inseparable Martin Pass and Tim Abbott (Tim beating Martin to the win by 0.02secs - which works out at just over 70cm over the course of a whole lap).
So not a win, but a fourth place is still pretty pleasing. Like my better half said: "It's good that you're consistent. It's just a shame you're not consistently first."
ps - A big thank you should also go to RacingPete for his thouroughly detailed multi-text message beginner's guide to a wet Snetterton. Helped to calm my nerves a lot!
 An unorthodox line |
 Queuing up in the rain on Saturday |
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