I just realised that I haven’t updated this for some considerable time, since Curborough in May in fact.  Time for an update – a lot has happened.

I was more than a tad annoyed with my performance at Curborough, and MIRA was, I thought, little better.  MIRA is a quick track and my 1.6 Vauxhall was a good 20 bhp down on the quicker K-Series cars.  Through the speed trap I was the best part of 10mph slower than the fastest cars in the class so I knew I had a lot to make up through the corners.  It all worked pretty well and I finished 2nd out of 10, only beaten by Dad who went 6 tenths quicker than me.  At the time I was gutted as my timed runs were slower than practice and I had gone slower than 2008.  It turned out that I had remembered my 2008 time incorrectly and I had gone nearly a whole second quicker.  I had no reason to be disappointed after all.

We then went on to Shelsley Walsh.  I absolutely adore that place – the history, the atmosphere, the setting – it’s wonderful.  I also felt very privileged to have been given an entry for the second year running.  But for all that, I never feel comfortable driving the hill.  I don’t know if it’s the proximity of the hedges and earth banks but I couldn’t bring myself to properly commit.  The result was a disappointing 4th out of 5, a second off the leaders’ pace. 

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Shelsley was the first time I had done an event since getting a trailer and a new company car so even though I was frustrated with my driving on the hill I really enjoyed the drive there and back with my new “outfit”.  I was so pleased I had to take a photo.

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As you can probably tell, I was not very happy with how my season was going and I was frustrated with my car’s lack of performance when compared with the K-Series cars.  So, when a 1998 Roadsport A race car came up for sale at a decent price I snapped it up.  The car was my ideal spec: 1.6 K-Series Supersport, 6 speed, dry sump, LSD.  It was a bit tatty but nothing that a bit of TLC over the winter wouldn’t sort out and I was pretty sure I could sell my tidy live axle VX for more than I was paying for the Roadsport.  I should, at this point, thank Dad for the bridging loan to allow me to buy the new car before I had sold the old one.  It might have have been his good nature or maybe he was just keen to move me on into a different class……  So I would be moving to Class 3 but before that I had one more event to do in the VX.