Snetterton Race 1 - Championship round Two

Friday pm
Still tail wind down the back straight meaning we will be hitting 130mph before braking for the 50mph Essess corner. Yet again I made quite a poor start, letting Mike Field, Tim Gray, John Goodwin and Chris Seaman through (check on video).
Getting past was going to be hard as Mike is good at blocking and Chris, Tim and I were all quicker than him. Close – very close racing with lots of slip streaming down the straight. In fact it was quite like the cycle racers do on the tour de france!
Managed to get past John and Chris and then follow Tim for a little while.
Into T2, Tim goes for the inside on Mike and I follow him through. Gather up a rather large slide on the exit and head for the slipstream.
At this point I should have sat behind Tim and enabled us to pull out a lead on the rest of the pack but instead I decided I was quicker than him so I pulled to the outside for a pass into the Essess. Oh dear, not a good move! Got the outside rear on some dirty part of the track and by the time I had collected up the slide, I had run out of road and spun off on the outside of the right hander. By the time I had rejoined the track, I was down in 5th and with some rather dirty tyres. The next two corners, the bomb hole and corum were lots of run due to the dirty tyres and by then Paul R had managed to catch me up. Paul just pulled past me at the end of the start/finish straight. I had held the inside line so I just dived into the corner, rather faster than normal and retook the position, only to have Pauls power advantage do exactly the same down the back straight. Paul was in front as we headed into and through the essess when we found the red flag being frantically waved and Phil Alcock’s car stranded in the middle of the bomb hole. Due to the red flag, the race was rewound back to the start of that lap, meaning I had a 5th place result.

The tail wind meant that we were hitting good top speeds and the oil temp was quite high but due to the close running we were never near the lap times from the practice session.
My mistake for the spin, otherwise I would have been in 2nd place. Never mind, something I can learn from and take with me into the second race! I really enjoyed the close racing at the top, all are excellent racers, very close and clean. Perfect!

The practicing for T1 definitely paid off for me and I was well impressed with Paul’s run from the mid pack up to the front. I think self preservation of is body work came into play when he passed me and let me back through at T1!