Mallory RGB Race - Part1

Last weekend saw us head over to Mallory for the first race of the 2007 RGB championship.

An easy and relaxed trip out on Saturday afternoon so that we were all set for Sunday. In fact the whole weekend was nice and relaxed as our scrutineering was not until mid morning, the practice session just before lunch and then race not until after 5pm. Even the weather stayed nice, with the small exception of a cold wind but what can you expect of mid March in England!

Mallory was yet another new track for Paul and I, although we had completed a handful of laps a the Focus RS during our ARDS test but not really comparable with the RGB cars!

The track in a development of a trotting track and resembles a slightly warped oval with a strangle loop ending in a very sharp hairpin. You obvious attention is taken immediately by the fast and very long Gerrards first corner which went on for ages in our Saturday evening track walk.

Before I get into the details of the practice and race I have to mention that this is an excellent track in my opinion. I know we have seen a number of incidents here in RGB over the years and some of my fellow racers have come home with broken cars but the racing is close and it has speed, tight corners, short and long braking areas and required neatness and guts! Good combination.

So practice got underway with a slow train heading out on the first lap. I was a little way back from the front but spent the first half of the lap getting some good heat into the tires and then blasted past some of the leading pack at the hairpin and then we were off. The advantage of a short track is that you get to do quite a number of laps and therefore opportunities to try different lines and hone the braking zones / turn in points.
I love Gerrards, a turn in or around 95mph and an exit of over 110 some 200odd degrees later. In my next post I will put up some telemetry info for a couple of laps.

We had one interesting lap, coming around the hairpin with waved yellow flags to find Buzz, a new member of the RGB racing fraternity had parked his Genesis half way up the inside Armco barrier! Way to go Buzz. :)

I knew I needed to be near the 50 second lap time to be right at the front but thought that as long as I could hit the low 51’s that would be ok for the first outing. Well as the fuel came down and the confidence grew so did the traffic to pass!
My two or three fastest laps were all slightly compromised by traffic but in the end the fastest was still fast enough.

So practice left me with a lap time of 50.59 to give me pole in class and 4th overall in the race, with just 3 class A cars ahead. John Cutmore in the Westfield (now one of three westies in our race series) was only just behind but would be starting on the 3rd row of the grip, all be it on the inside.

We had quite a wait between the practice session and the race and although I should have spent that time looking at the telemetry, actually I enjoyed a nice lunch, watched some close racing and refueled the car. Did I mention it was cold?