In preparation for the race at Silverstone, I had an engine installation to do. I decided to get a spare from Andy at AB Performance to aid change over if anything else happens with engine or gearbox. As the car had not run much since then I was going to have to take it easy in the first few laps of qualifying.
The evening before the race, I headed down to the circuit and after some good socializing set about checking the ride height, fluids and pressures before the race day. As it turned out the engine position is slightly different and this causes problems with the already bad reverse mechanism support. We ended up spending quite a bit of time, what I mean is up until midnight, trying to get reverse gearbox to alight properly – very very very many thanks go out to help from Paul, Andy, Tim and Adrian for their persistence. They actually seemed to quite enjoy being under the car!
Saturday Morning
The morning started out wet and seemed to take ages for the track to dry off.
I elected to change over to my wet set of tires from the front just in case it started to rain whilst we were out. They have quite a bit more tread than the older front set I had on. In the end it was almost dry by the time we went out just, sort of a TopGear Mildly Moist type of track! I took the first few laps quite easy as the engine had only just been installed and I was trying to get used to the change in feel for the paddle shift and concentrate on heel-and-toe again.
Before going out I had the aim of getting into the mid 1.06’s. Firstly that was the fastest sort of time form last year and the figure most in practice had been striving for. A few had reporting dipping into the 1.05’s but I thought that would be unlikely in the short qualify time especially as the track had been well drenched overnight.
No real problems with track space here at Silverstone as its so wide, you can pass slower cars with ease. By lap 5 I was down into the 1:08 and the car generally felt really good. At this pace, the car was starting to slide around a bit but as I kept on pushing through the slip angles the time kept coming down. I managed a couple of laps in the 1.07 but had some other traffic near by which compromised my exits to some of the import corners. The next lap was then aborted as Gordon spun on the exit of Luffields causing waved yellow flags. Second from last lap the path was clear, with just Mike in front and I guessed he was heading for a good lap as well so I got my head down and concentrated on the lines and braking. The result of which was a 1:05.95 and then followed that up with a 1:06.27, which would also have been in the 1:06’s had it not been for traffic on one corner.
Car performed very well during the session, only item needing attention before the race was to replace a lost magnet for the DD2 which meant I did not have speed or more importantly a gear indicator in the later half of the qualify session. We had a lunch delay in knowing the results of qualifying due to some incidents needing review from the clerk of the course but I was very pleased indeed to find I had 2nd on the grid, after just 10 laps of running around the track. In fact I missed pole but just half a tenth of a second to Mike! I knew it was going to be an interesting race as I had Mike so close in time and right beside me on the grid with John Goodwin, less than half a second slower, and Mike Atkinson, just point 7 of a second slower than me, just behind on the 2nd row.
Mike FIELD - 1:05.90
Derek JONES - 1:05.95
John GOODWIN 1:06.42
Unfortunately due to a little incident following Gordon’s spin on track Paul had to start from the back of the grid but as it would turn out he had a good run through the pack and we would get to race, albeit just briefly, for once.
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