So, on to Llandow.  I was very pleased with my Goodwood performance and was, to be honest, hoping for more of the same.

Llandow is too far for Dad to travel (about 260 miles) so I drove ASBO the 160 miles each way.  The alarm went off at 3.45am (!) and, having met up with Dave Grewcock at Tamworth services on the M42, we made our way to the circuit, arriving at about 7.45.  Having taken the windscreen off and put the perspex aeroscreen on I got scrutineered and walked the circuit.

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There had been a track day the day before and three of my five class 1 rivals had attended (the cheats!).  I, on the other hand, did about a quarter of a very wet track day there (before giving up and driving home) in 2004.  Anyway, enough of my pathetic excuses.

Practice 1 went reasonably well but I realised that, apart from knowing which way the corners went, I couldn’t remember much else from my previous visit.  Result, a 95 second run compared to the 91 second runs of the fastest runners, i.e. the aforementioned cheats ;)   That first practice run had been my first time on track in ASBO since a wheel came off following a halfshaft failure at Curborough in February, and I had an irrational fear of the same thing happening again at any point.  Fortunately, by the end of the second practice run I had got that out of my system and I knocked a couple of seconds off.

/Portals/14/Blog/Files/11/59/LlandowMay09_thumb.jpg Heading towards the bus stop

On to the timed runs.  We had a short briefing before the timed runs started and we were all told to expect 4 timed runs.  I was really pleased, as this would give me a much better chance to close up on the 3 leaders.  The first timed run went well and gave another improvement to take me into the 91 second bracket.  The leaders were now in the 89s but that didn’t seem impossible.  My next run felt much quicker but I actually only knocked 3 hundredths of a second off. 

My 3rd timed run got off to a bad start.  The start light went green far sooner than I expected and I left the line in a hurry with far too much wheelspin and my brain not quite in gear.  The first half of the lap was just plain slow.  I then made a conscious decision to brake much later for the bus stop.  Too late as it turns out.  I failed to make the turn so didn’t record a time.  One chance left and still 2 seconds to find.

As I lined up for my final run I had a couple of ideas of how to go faster but wasn’t feeling particularly confident.  Then, as I was third in the queue, somebody in another class dropped oil over most of the track.  Having sat there for about 15 minutes as the marshals tried to clean it up I realised that there was no way I was going to go quicker with the oil down so I decided not to risk damaging the car and went back to the paddock and put the windscreen on ready to go home.  So, a bit of a disappointing end to the day but I was never going take enough time off to challenge for the win.

So, congratulations to Nick Chan for a brilliant debut win and well done Ian Keen and Al Gibbins for keeping him honest.

Curborough is up next in a week’s time.  It’s not my favourite venue (mainly because I know Dad is better than me there!) but we’ll see how it goes.