After the joys of Goodwood it was on to the rather less impressive surroundings of Curborough and MIRA.

Curborough day dawned dry and relatively bright but the forecast promised rain in the afternoon.  We weren’t expecting practice to be much use as chances were that the track conditions would be very different.  My practice runs went well and I finished the morning in 2nd place behind Richard Price.  I was chuffed to bits with that as I’ve never felt that I really gelled with Curborough.

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For the timed runs the weather somehow managed to stay dry so the knowledge gained from practice would be useful after all.  I managed to forget to learn anything and didn’t manage to match, never mind beat, my practice time.  As a result I dropped to 6th position but still only ended up 0.55 seconds off the winner.  So, it was a bit of a disappointment in that I didn’t get quicker as the day progressed but I am still surprised to be so close to the pace of the class leaders.  

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So onto MIRA – one of my favourite venues and somewhere that I’d always done reasonably well at in the past. Practice went quite well but I knew there was plenty more to come as, although I’d pushed quite hard on my 2nd run, I had used the wrong gear in a couple of places, hit the rev limiter in others and made a complete hash of the left hander after the control tower.

My first timed run felt really good.  I hadn’t pushed too hard and it had been a nice tidy run.  I made no real mistakes and was expecting to have knocked a big chunk of time off.  I was wrong.  I am beginning to realise that comfortable and tidy just doesn’t cut the mustard.  I was slower than my full of mistakes, but pushing quite hard, practice run.  Having learned my lesson I got all psyched up for my final run.  Before the run I adjusted my belts and seat to get as comfortable as possible and lined up.  I got a reasonable start but as soon as I took second gear there was a click-click-click-click-click as my seat shot back on its runners.  This gave me a bit of a fright, sent me kangarooing through the first corner and left me with slack seatbelts, unable to reach the pedals properly.  I cruised round cursing, packed up and went home in a bad mood. 

I finished with an appalling score, about 2 seconds off the winner.  I’m not expecting to do many rounds this year so I’ll only be able to drop 1 or 2 scores at the end of the season (only your best 7 results count towards the championship).  Hopefully MIRA will be as bad as it gets and I’ll be able to discard that score come season’s end.  Looking on the bright side, I think that I leaned a valuable lesson about how you need to drive a Class 3 car to be competitive.

Next up is Castle Combe.  I’ve never been there but it’s my sort of place – like Goodwood but with a couple of chicanes thrown in.  I don’t expect to do too well against competitors who know the circuit so I’ll be determined to just enjoy myself and make sure that I go faster in the timed runs than the practice ones for a  change.