Blyton Park Eastern – 18th May 2019
Steve: 7th in Top12 – 63.57s
Matt: 6th in Top12, 1st in Class – 61.66s
Carole: 2nd in Class – 74.91s
Zoe: 5th in Class – 78.01s (Nat B)
Steve: Steve was praying for rain because he did well last year in the rain on the Eastern Circuit, unfortunately, it stayed dry! Matt went out first, did a steady run and felt he had driven too slowly and that there was more grip than he thought. Because Matt had said there was more grip than expected, Steve went out all guns blazing to discover there wasn’t as much grip as he had imagined, so he overdrove the car, cutting a corner then spinning on the difficult right-hander (Curva Grande). Steve was then not particularly comfortable for the rest of the day and finding it difficult to settle and get any of the corners right! The first timed run, Matt got a good time in to lead the class, Steve was always a couple of seconds behind and never really getting it right for the day. On the 2nd timed run Matt consolidated his class win, with Steve finishing 2nd. In the Top 12, Matt finished 6th with a new British Sprint Championship record of 61.66s and Steve finished 7th.
Carole: Another great weekend of racing, this time at Blyton Park. It’s not one of my favourite circuits, but it definitely is challenging. I was out to beat my times from 2017 when I last raced there. It was forecast to be wet on Saturday but we only had a very light shower which caused the car to slide about and bounce on the bumps on the circuit. We decided to increase the amount of wing on the car and this made it feel more stable. It was a job to get any heat into the tyres, but on my 2nd timed run I was ‘red-flagged’ due to a car going off, so I had another run and was baulked again, so on my third attempt, now with nice hot tyres I set my fastest time of the day. I had the opportunity to take more runs after the British Sprint runoffs, so I went out for another two runs, but I wasn’t able to improve on my best run. Saturday evening we had the opportunity to walk the circuit with Alan Mugglestone to get some technical advice on the Sprint circuit for Sunday. There was a lot to take in and it was good to see how I could drive the circuit faster using the right techniques on the correct entries and exits that would carry more speed.
Zoe: First timed run ended on Bishops corner where I went in too fast, braked too late and went straight onwards rather than round it, however, managed to improve during the day and got down to a 78.01! Looking forward to tomorrow already – new track to learn though!