Qualify : Season opener at Brands Hatch April 2nd

So down to Qualifying. The weather looked menacing but stayed dry and was even a little sunny during the 15min session. I took it nice and easy for first 3 laps as I need to have 3 banker laps to get into the race. All went to plan, I followed Colin Chapman for the first couple of laps and then overtook down the main straight. All to plan that is until I ran a little wide at the exit of Paddock hill bend and found myself straddling the rumble strip on lap 2 - hmm so much for taking it easy!

So after calming myself down a little, I set about knocking in some smooth laps. Amazingly there was almost no problem with traffic, despite the small track. I had a few laps behind Doug Carter in his Pell Genesis with flames coming out the rear on overrun but overtook him into the hairpin. I then ran a little wide in the next corner and used a little more track than normal!

Quite a few cars went out either through mechanical problems or spins and the session was red flagged a few mins from the end with a car stopped out on track. So we came in and waited in the pit lane for it to be cleared

Back out with just 3 mins of the session remaining and no idea how well I had done so far. So peddle down and focus was the aim. A little jockeying around for some clear space and then on for a couple of quick laps.

Fastest lap = 3rd place

Really high into Paddock hill, slightly twitchy through corner, nice drift through 1st part of the hairpin and out to the rumble strip on exit. Shoot down to Graham Hill bend, using all the track and just touching the curb on the exit, snatching fourth and with a slight lift into the chicane. Used both curbs through the chicane and tried to be nice and smooth on turn in to Clearways. On the throttle early and held a nice slide on the exit to remove any understeer and then just watch for the shift lights for each gear change to the line. The penultimate lap ended up being my fastest at 53.41 The last lap was almost a quick but I made a slight mistake and then hesitated a little when 2 cars span off the track in front of me. Both heading in different directions, quite impressive actually and fun to watch - thanks Tim!

I actually ended up with 5 laps in the 54's and 3 in the 53's so that looked good for the race. The car felt good with out any need for setup changes and after spending some time today reviewing the video, I can see a few places to improve the times as well. That's good because we are doing another two races at Brands on June 10th :)

So the 53.41 put me in 8th place for the joint class A, B and C race and 3rd overall in class which was rather better than I was expecting. In fact a lot better than I was expecting in my first ever RGB Qualify Session.