brands hatch

So we managed to get some video output from Brands hatch, alas not the race on the saturday when we recorded the sub 1 minute lap of the circuit, but we got most of the other time on the track, the qualifying on the saturday, the qualifying on the sunday, and the race on the sunday (after the trucks had a little play and left the surface a little slippy.

Thats it for the 2011 season, will we return in 2012, that question is at present unanswered.

We did it, after missing out last year by 10 one hundreds of a second, we managed to smash the 1 minute lap this year, with a 59.4 second lap :)

Yesterday BARC released the provisional racing dates for the 2011 season for the Kumho bmwrdc championship, the interesting points are the Castle Combe and the Donington events whilst only having one race, will be televised, and the other outstanding item is it looks like we have three races at Pembrey. The 2011 season has provisionally 19 rounds penned so compared to last year when I managed to only do 12 rounds this year could be a lot more involved.

These provisional dates are setup in the calendar but as always with provisional dates are subject to change until confirmed by BARC and the BMWRDC.

As this was the first race of 2010, and over the winter I had done a few items mainly on the suspension setup, by replacing the bushes, I thought it would be a good time to test the car, as there was a test day on the friday before the race.

I booked myself on the afternoon session (I would get 3 20-30 minute sessions on track), I got to the circuit on time, I signed on all ok, but when I removed the car it sounded louder than normal, but with a noise test first, I did not think too much about it.

The first session was good, and the car felt a lot more planted than what I remember from last year, but bad news struck when I was about to head out for the second session, the car was blowing from the exhaust middle joint, it looked like the exhaust was broke (it was a cheap ebay item), so I jacked up the car, and confirmed that my exhaust had split completely in half around the joint, I decided that it was better to try and fix the car, and loose my track time (if i took the track time I may not be able to race tomorrow)

I searched all the paddock for anybody with a welder, I found people with welders, but missing gas, welders that needed special people to operate (and they were not there), so eventually I brought 2 legend teams together and got the exhaust welded up.

I qualified in a good spot, and made up over 8 seconds compared to last year, but still was just outside of a sub minute lap of the brands circuit.

The first race I had the camera mounted on the front bumper, so you can see the whole race there, I managed to get ahead of John Brabbin and kept him behind me for over half of the race, but he eventually passed me at druids.

The second race, I was following Sean and John when John had a big moment coming down from the paddock hill bend, and I nearly got past him, but he recovered, I felt that I kept with them better than last year.