A week has past since the joys of Oulton Park, and with no time to recover as Donington is around the corner this weekend, I have had little time to reflect on the weekend but plenty to do to get back to the promising results of Snetterton.
The Friday test day turned out to be a nightmare day, after discovering one of the rear dampers was in a bad way after Snetterton, we had to re-set up the car for Oulton Park, which was a bigger task than had been anticipated. As you can see in the onboard video below from Fridays 1st session, the car was a bit of a handful to say the least, and didn't inspire any confidence, but with most of the issues sorted and resolved by the Tucker Motorsport team, things were still looking respectable going into the busiest day of the year on Saturday.
Saturday came around, and hoping changing back to my normal overalls would bring some of my Snetterton luck back. However, qualifying turned out to be along the same lines as Friday practice, only managing to put myself on Row 6 for Race 1 and right back in the midfield pack.
With a few more set up changes we moved the car on for Race 1, allowing me to gain 5 places and finish in 6th, but quite a long way behind the leaders as the tyres overheated massively with all the dicing and overtaking going on to get back to where I was, the 2nd half of the race was spent mainly looking in my rear view mirror as Matt Pollard and I battled for 6th.
Race 2 came around extremely quickly, and with a few more changes to help with the wayward handling in Race 1, the car started to finally handle more to my liking. Although the finishing result of 7th suggested progress hadn't been made, being able to finish less than 1 second behind 4th place and only 4 seconds off the leader showed that the overall progress in terms of lap times was massive.
For the final race of the day, things were looking more promising, knowing the pace of the car was now good enough to hang onto the front group, there was finally some confidence in the air! However, after a fairly average start, I dropped down to 8th and in a dangerous spot, and despite being able to run in the train of cars at the front of the field, I soon found myself being forced off the track in the braking zone down towards the second chicane. I dropped down to 12th. From there I had a fight to get back on the back of the lead group and then start gaining the places I had lost back, eventually finishing 8th after overtaking 2 at the final corner.
Overall the weekend wasn't my finest by a long shot, but not every weekend can go as plain sailing as Snetterton did! Fortunately while I was struggling, my team mate Joe Wiggins managed to get another 2 wins and a 3rd place, showing that the Tucker Motorsport team are well and truly on the right track!
Onto Donington Park and my home circuit, but as bizarre as it seems a brand new challenge for me, having never done the GP circuit before, Donington could prove to be another steep learning curve!
Would also like to say a massive thank you once again to Ice Driver, High Row Marketing and EPTA projects for supporting me throughout the season, as well as Tucker Motorsport for there hard work over the weekend, especially when my dummy fell out!
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