It was a relatively early start to the day in order to get to the circuit in plenty of time. The day was beautiful, but very very hot. Luckily the racing later in the day would only be 25 minutes.
I made a vital error however, I did not bring shorts. I was very hot, particularly in my racing suit. Qualifying went well. We were consistently 1 second a lap faster than previous visits. We had a mixed grid so we were with the 70s road-sports group. I managed to place us 9th on a grid of 28! I was the second fastest touring car, but the gap between our laps was about 2 seconds. However, the HSCC decided to split the grid as this was not a championship race for touring cars. This meant I would be starting 24th, 20 seconds after the 70s road-sports grid. But no matter, I’d look to make up as many places as possible.
We settled down for a long wait, as we were one of the last races of the day. We enjoyed a great lunch set out by the Team and enjoyed some racing throughout the day.
Race time arrived. I was placed next to the pole sitter of our small grid at the rear of the field. We would wait 20 seconds after the start of the 70s road-sports, starting at the wave of the national flag. The flag dropped. It wasn’t a great start. I was defending cars behind whilst starting to pressure the Mini in front. Half way around the lap, I’d built a small gap between the cars behind and started to meet traffic from the front of the grid. It was now a game of tactics between me and the Mini, to see who could get through traffic the fastest. There was nothing I could do about his pace advantage but I stayed with him as well as I could. The race was spent either going down the inside or the long way around the outside, of the people in front. At the end of the 25 minutes and 12 laps, I was 8th, just behind the Mini.
Thanks to the HSCC for a great event. Thanks to Retro Engineering for their hard work behind the scenes improving the car.