Since the last time I wrote in, there have been some dramatic changes. At the first race of the year I drove for Thorney Motorsport for the first three rounds at Rockingham. We had a pretty good weekend ending up with a 2nd a 1st and a 3rd which put me straight into the lead of the championship. But the team did an awful job at preparing the car, it appeared it hadn't literally been touched since the previous season. We were not at all happy and some heated discussions resulted in us leaving the team.
So for two weeks I was without a drive not sure where I was going to be next, and then we started having talks with the tin-top giants, Triple Eight Engineering ( VX Racing ) the same team that run the Vectra’s in the BTCC. I was extremely excited to see how these guys worked and to see how they adapted to their previous main competitor.
After reaching a satisfactory agreement we tested the car at Rockingham where we knew the times from the race two weeks previously. The team did a brilliant job and were so much more professional than Thorney Motorsport. We had set-up guru Steve Guglielmi in the car all morning getting the handling of the car sorted which he perfected, it was then my turn to go out and see what time I could manage. After 5 laps I had gone half a second below the lap record which I already held there, so I was obviously pretty happy.
Come race weekend it looked like we had the legs on the competition, again going half a second quicker than the rest, come qualifying the next day it was a different story, miraculously the Thorney Motorsport car which had shown zero pace in testing managed to lock in pole, a little bit strange if you ask me but there you go.
Race one, I got an awful start dropping back to fifth, making life very difficult for myself. But the Thorney pole sitting car lost it at Graham Hill Bend which allowed me to skip up to third and by then the fight was on to grab second place and bring home a second for my first race with VX Racing.
Second race was not so good, again I didn’t get the best of starts and I had slower cars in front of me that were holding me up but defending very well which only allowed me to bring home a 3rd place.
In the 3rd race we had taken a few risks on the car set up which the team and I were quite certain would work out well. We had gone with the setup that would sacrifice a small amount of pace at the start of the race but would allow me to keep the tyres in good condition for the end of the race. Fortunately it worked for the first 7 laps I was 3rd and then within two corners the other drivers were really suffering with tyre wear and I literally drove straight past them bringing home another podium and my first win the Triple Eight VX Racing squad.
So a massive thanks to the guys at Triple Eight and the guys at KW suspension for setting up a fantastic weekend of results.
See you all soon.