Donington Race 1 Report

Race one call to the assembly area at the bottom of the Melbourne loop, we were directed up the wrong direction and then around a 180deg turn to the chicane before the grip linup. I put a lot of effort into warming the tyres and brakes on that short run up the Melbourne loop with the thought of the first lap run into Redgate and even more importantly the fast run down the craner curves and into the old hairpin. The thought of that with cold tyres and even worse with cold brakes did not fill me with excitement! We sat on the grid for quite a while for Paul Haynes to form on the grid after he had instigated a made rush back to the STM factory to get a replacement damper for his new Phasar R1

In fact Paul was to line up just behind me and run close by for the start of the race. As the lights went out I got a good run off the line, arriving in the middle of the track right beside Tim on my right and Paul, who had made a great start, on my left. For the first lap or so the car felt really good, I was able to keep up with Paul Haynes in his twitchy but powerful R1 in front and almost hang on to Tim ahead of him whilst pull out a small gap to Mike and John behind.
The Racing was nice and close and in fact it would seem that Paul and I touched at some point on the 3rd or 4th lap when he started to experience fuel starvation problems. I did not notice it from in the car and its not obvious from the in car video either but anyway. So Paul dropped back and would later retire, leaving me clear in 2nd place.

. By mid race Tim would also retire with his exhaust fouling his rear wheel leaving me in first place but being caught by Mike and John. The last third of the race would see a really exciting battle between the three of us with lots of overtaking through out each lap. Donington is one of those circuits where defending costs lots of time and the two of the three at the front would be caught by the third as soon as defending was needed and then the process would just repeat itself.

Great racing and nice and clean. I was very conscious not getting too close to John as we had had contact back at Silverstone and his is in the hunt for the championship. Nevertheless I made an assertive overtake into Coppice on what would turn out to be the last lap and managed to get 2nd place.