Race two was also quite eventful.
Due to the conditions earlier in the day during qualifying, I was starting way back in 11th overall, 6th in class for the second race and had quite a bit of traffic to make my way past before I could challenge for the class lead.
I made a really good start and straight away started to carve my way through the field, within a few laps I had caught the leading pack, having overtaken all except Mike Field, Mike Atkinson and Martin Brookes in class C but the race was red flagged due to an incident at the first corner. The race was restarted from scratch with a reduced time and we were positioned on the grid from the last complete lap so I was in 4th place in class. As we had to stop on the start finish line for the reforming and its on a hill, I had used my handbrake. How silly was that? The pads had started to break up again during the first part of the race, even though John had spent ages over lunch cleaning and sanding them down. So once I transferred more heat into them by applying the handbrake for a few minutes, they did not want to come away from the drums when I released the handle when the red lights went out. So although my reaction was really good on the restart, the car did not want to move as the handbrake pads were still engaged. Great!
I quickly held up my hand so as not to get hit from behind as I played with the hand brake and restarted the engine. Finally I got going in something like 2nd or 3rd from lap place. I had an excellent first lap, just passing at every stage of the track to come over the line for the first time in 12 place overall after passing something like 7 cars in one lap!
The passing just continued from that point onwards. Thankfully the track had not changed from earlier and I know the car was very quick already so I just maxed out each corning, sometimes running way off line throughout a complex, sometimes just backing off before a corner and having a really good run through it and passing a couple of cars straight after the exit curbing. This tactic worked brilliantly with the long straights of snetterton as I could almost guarantee a good slipstream each straight by timing the corners leading onto it and the gap to the next car (or cars!).
The progress was something like….
2nd lap, past Tim Hoverd and Richard Wise for 9th
3rd lap, past David Wale
4th lap, past Mike Field (on the inside through Corum)
5th lap, past John Cutmore
7th lap, made up another position by overtaking Martin Brookes, which meant I was just behind Mike Atkinson Paul Rogers (class B) and with the three class A leaders out in front. On the entrance to the back straight on that lap, Mike made a mistake and spun out, letting Martin and I straight through and I was leading the class C battle.
On the next lap I finished the race 8 seconds behind Paul, the finishing order being 1,2 and 3 in class A, 1st in class B and then first in class C.
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