A week after Llandow and we moved on to Curborough – not my favourite circuit by any means but usually one of the best social events of the season.  Dad had done some sneaky practice at the BMMC sprint on the Saturday but I decided to give it a miss to spare the car (and the wallet!).  The forecast was for mixed weather conditions with some fine spells but 2 significant bands of rain working their way through during the day.

Practice 1 was dry and I started off fairly steady start with a 69.29 which left me in 4th place out of 15 so it all looked promising for later on.  Little did I know at the time, but that was to be my only properly dry run of the day :(

It started to tip down as we queued up for second practice and the only good thing I can say about that is that at least I had predicted it and taken my brolly down to the start line (unlike some of my soggy classmates).

It stopped raining just before lunch and the track was just damp as class 1 lined up for the first “proper” run.  The first people through all did times around 72 or 73 seconds which indicated that the track was several seconds off being fully dry.  Then Dad went out and did a stonking 68 second run – barely any slower than his dry practice.  I was next up and asked the startline marshal what his time was (you can’t see the timing board from the line).  On hearing that it was a 68 I assumed that the track must be dry and set off on that assumption.  Unfortunately I didn’t really set off at all. My dry starting technique left me wheelspinning on the evidently still damp surface.  Drat.  Looking at the figures it turns out I’d lost well over 0.5 seconds to Dad before I even reached the 64ft line.  The rest of the track was relatively dry apart form the exit of Fradley which compromised speed down the straight.  Given the conditions my run felt ok but it was nearly 3 seconds off Dad’s!  It must have been down to the LSD he fitted over the winter……  After my run the track continued to dry out and several others beat my time leaving me in 7th with Nick Chan being the only one to better Dad’s time.  The rest of the classes all got a dry run in before we went to line up again.

/Portals/14/Blog/Files/11/65/CurboroughMay2009_thumb.jpgIt may look dry in the photo but it isn’t - honest

It looked likely to rain so I took my brolly again but I was really hoping it would hold off so I could get a proper dry time in.  Unfortunately though, the brolly got yet more action as it came a few drops at first before tipping down.  By the time I went out it was proper wet.  I was pretty fed up and as it was evident that I couldn’t beat my 1st run I decided to have some fun going sideways through the hairpins.  But I couldn’t even do that right and found myself understeering wide instead.  Note to self: must use more throttle when being silly.

We had the option of a 3rd run if we wanted it, but as it was very wet still only about half of us took the organisers up on the opportunity.  I was disappointed with my performance to that point so set myself the target of being the fastest Class 1 runner on that run.  I managed it but still left feeling very disappointed with how I (and the flippin’ weather!) had performed.

Anyway, congratulations to Nick Chan (who won and is becoming a bit of a pest!) and Dad for a fantastic damp run. 

On to MIRA next.  It is a far quicker layout than Curborough and much more to my taste.