Brands Hatch, one of the top tracks in the UK was to be the opener of the season, the CSMA festival which is one of the biggest events in UK motorsport, what a great way to start.
We had raced in April at Brands in a SEMSEC race as a pre-season opener and had had problems with the rear wheels bashing into the wheelarch under heavy cornering. To fix the problems new springs were put on order and installed the week before the Brands race, however, unfortunately we had no opportunity to test the car in the slightest so Race 1 was going to be a total unknown with a car which was going to handle dramatically different, we just didn't quite know how much different!
Lining up for practice was a great sight, 25 cars on the grid being the biggest turn-out we'd ever had, this was going to be hard work trying to stay anywhere near the front of the pack. On taking the car out it became obvious we had a major understeer problem, also the wheelarch rubbing problem was still there, this meant I didn't really feel confident pushing the car in case we had a blowout and so pulled out of qualifying early. 12th place qualifying was better than I had feared, as we had a few hours before the race set to work on the car installing new bump-stops on the rear to fix the wheel rub issue and altering the suspension to try and reduce the understeer.
I got a good start off the line, taking 3 places before paddock hill bend however coming into clearways while battling with Paul Skivens, Andy Buzbys red BMW loomed large parked sideways across the track requiring some immediate avoidance from us both. Luckily I chose to go infront of Andy and just made it, unfortunately Mr Skivens had to try and get round his rear end and didn't make it crashing into Andys rear quarter and taking both cars out of the race. The carnage meant the race was stopped with a complete restart from the original grid positions which was a shame after my reasonable start.
After the restart, we had a four-way battle between Guy Lloyd, Myself, Andy Bailie, James Knight and Craig Jamieson throughtout the entire race. Andy spent about 6 laps attached to my rear bumper trying everything to get past me, as I tried everything to ensure he didn't. Unfortunately, he got me in the end as I ran slightly wide into paddock leaving him the gap to shoot up the inside into the Druids hairpin.
Nigel Innes in the touring attempting a very very late braking manouevre into paddock ending in expected gravel trap action, unfortunately, getting out of shape infront of me reduced my cornering speed as I swerved to avoid him, leaving a gap for someone else to get through (who I can't remember in the panic!)
This left me running at the back of the group of four for the last couple of laps and finally finishing in 9th.
Given the size of the field and a totally untested car setup I'd have been happy with 9th at the beginning of the weekend. There's some more work to do on the car and loads more work to do on the driver so I'm hoping for more improvements at Rockingham this weekend where we have two races. Then a weekend off, followed by Silverstone so its going to be a busy few weeks.