There are days when you wish you had never left your bed - I've had one of those and started on Wednesday and didn't end until the end of the race on the following Monday.
Testing was prematurely halted on the Wednesday when the rear brake lines burst and dumped brake fluid all over the rear wheels resulting in a big slide quickly followed by a dull thump as a 7-replica piled into the off-side rear quarter.
Thursday afternoon was spent fitting new brake lines while Friday, Saturday and Sunday were spent patching the car back together again. While laid up we also found that one of the pipes in the induction system had burst (or rather had a screwdriver pushed through it) and the dump valve was not operating correctly (wrong one fitted) - all of which were duly repaired or replaced.
The big problem was a massive amount of camber on the off-side rear wheel and no opportunity to correct it. The car had been set up on the Tuesday with a "fair" degree of camber but this was way off and, truth be told, I can't say if it was wrong before I tested or if it was a result of the accident. Either way the car is no very skittish and any attempts at driving quickly around Gerrards was a no-hoper.
Late on Sunday we had everything as sorted as it was going to be and I went to sleep safe in the knowledge that race day would be smooth - unfortunately (yet another one of those) the car was still at a friends house (for the repairs) and proved to be stuck on a steep gravel drive. It took nearly 3 hours to get it moving making me very late indeed. We arrived at Mallory Park just in time to watch my qualifying session from the wrong side of the track but thanks to Tony Soper and Caroll Glenn who had alerted race control to my predicament, things still went smoothly and I was granted the opportunity to complete my compulsory qualifying laps out of session.
On a more broader view of the day there has been a lot of consternation over the arrival of a couple of ex-touring cars in the series along with new drivers. While things have not always been as pleasant as some would like the old Auto-Italia series had a very good record for gentlemanly behaviour on the track and a distinct lack of overly aggresive driving - something that touring cars is not renowned for. The result of all this is that a number of people opted not to enter the first race so they could witness the new series in action and judge what to expect on track. The full grid line up for the day was just nine cars, it would have been ten but Trevor's Kappa was simply not ready in time. Six of the nine entries were in class A while classes B, C and D each had one entrant - not exactly what the organisers had in mind for the new series but it is still early days.
Fast forward to the race itself - my qualifying session was basically squeezed into the few minutes before the race start and then into the pits to join the back of the queue. Any hopes of a fast lap were wasted as there was not time to even warm the tyres up and an alarming tendency to crab around Gerrards made itself apparent.
The race start saw everyone scream away from me as I desperately tried to warm the tyres up to regain some grip. At 15 seconds off the pace I was not going to be racing anyone initially. Stephen Hollis' 205Gti was the only car I passed and that was as it headed into the pits at the end of it's first lap with smoke pouring from the exhaust. The low level of grip really made itself apparent within just 3 laps as the leaders came flying past and it wasn't until another couple of laps later that I started to find an improvement but with every single lap giving me another blue flag and a faster car to dodge it was impossible to get a fast time.
With just a few laps to go things turned nasty - not for me although it was a close thing. I had seen Roger approaching from behind in his Stratos and as a result had swung wide at the Esses to let him past, I had also glimpsed Peter Challis closing in and had planned to stay tight and out of the way on the approach to the hairpin. The next thing I saw was Roger flying off into the grass to the left heading for the armco while Peter flew past on my right. Fortunately Roger managed to avoid a collision and quickly regained the track but everyone's worst fear had come to pass. Touring car behaviour had followed the touring car entry.
I had been prepared to put this incident down to an accident but having interrogated several spectators it seems that the collision had been quite deliberate with Peter bouncing Roger on purpose - exactly the sort of thing that everyone had anticipated. What impact this will have on the series later is anyone's guess but I fear that more than a few will now be keeping their entry fees and looking elsewhere.
With all the excitement going on around I finally managed a clean hot lap just as the race finished and halved my lap time defficiency - hardly something to shout about but a huge improvement. I hadn't been pushing hard since I was guaranteed a class win and I still need a couple more signatures on my license so the rule was no heroics! It all paid off and I'm a step closer to losing the novice cross and holding a healthy 6th place overall in the championship.
Conveniently one of the side-effects of taking a class win is that a visit to the scrutineering bay/parc ferme was needed in order to weigh the car. Total weight without the driver and three quarters of a tank of fuel showed as 772kg. I had known the car was light but this is actually a very good figure, if a little close the the class minimum! It also means I now have no excuses at all for poor performance...well maybe a few...
Thanks to the X1/9 Owners Club who gave a good showing for support and managed to keep me distracted through the day and an extra special thank you to Martin Thomas of the Sporting Fiats Club who gave up his Easter weekend (and more) to get my car back on track and provide towing facilities to get there - without him there is no doubt I wouldn't have been racing at Mallory.
The next race is scheduled to be 3 May at Silverstone but this may yet be changed as we need to provide a full grid for things to go ahead and as yet there are only 3 entrants! Today's fiasco will not be helping that along.
It seems Roger wasn't the only person to suffer today - the ARP F3 series saw one person wipe out 3 others off the grid and then go on to wipe out another car after the restart. The Jaguar revival display saw one of the cars get airbourne and land at a nasty angle requiring the driver to be cut from the car! The Fiat challenge was amongst the worst though with two cars completely totalled and another in a very sorry state. No doubt the spectators loved it all but the drivers have left Mallory Park feeling very frustrated with their respective series and it seems at least one of them will be throwing in the towel.
See the results page for the current scores.