First Race of the Season
No time for breakfast as pre-race checks needed undertaking as the qualifying session for our race The CSCC Tin Tops Series was the first session of the day at 9am. With checks complete the only worry was a very low track temperature following a cold night it was a gamble on what tyre pressures to start the session on. We knew the track would increase in temperature as the sun came out during the 30 minutes of qualifying. Decisions were made and the car went out.
Grip levels changed dramatically during the 30 minutes with some cars posting times a lot slower than normal and some a lot quicker, our car ran well and posted the 6th quickest time of the session and so were on 6th place on the grid for the 1pm race.
Car Mats UK driver Andrew Windmill reported back the car was running well and he gained a lot of knowledge from the session, so at 1pm that afternoon 45 cars took to the grid for the first Tin Tops race of the season. It is a 40 minute race with a compulsory pit stop, this means for our one driver car that at the pit stop he has to get out of the car and then back in again before starting the engine again and driving off.
After initially losing a couple of places Andrew started to claw back up the leading group of cars. We pitted early and made a good stop coming out in third place. Not long after the pit stop the first ever Code 60 at a clubman’s race meeting was declared to slow the cars down to 60 kph to allow marshals to recover a crashed car. After the this period the race restarted and Andrew battled hard retaining a mighty 3rd place for this cars first run out in the Tin Top series.
Our next race is on 22nd April at Thruxton race circuit, the car goes back to HQ for a check over and a few tweaks ready for the very fast track that Thruxton is, a firm favourite of the Touring Cars.