In motorsport, like in other sports, you need to be ready at all times. Ready to trot out a plausible, blame-free excuse for poor performance. If your excuse can make you look good while you screw it up, so much the better. Here’s mine: I was too fast. Sadly, I wasn’t too fast on race day, but at the track day a week previously. With my 6 year old son on board (who loved it) and my wife (who loathed it) I had been quicker than Porsches and Ferraris, so I was even more than usually full of myself, and even more than usually full of it.
Qualifying on Saturday was very slippery on an ice-cold track, which slowed a lot of people down. Although I was not happy with my lap times in qualifying, my grid position was acceptable as I managed to qualify ahead of one of the guys who always finishes ahead of me. One of the things that I was unhappy with was the fact that during qualifying I got caught behind cars that I know I can beat, but was not able to get past them. What I should have done was to slow right down for half a lap to get some clear space, but it’s easier to be clever after the fact, even if I was making a very basic error at the time.
The first race started with drama in turn 1, when Godfrey Lancellas (Lola T212) decided to spin around and take a look at the guys behind him. From where I was, there was an almighty cloud of blue smoke and the sight of race cars ducking for safety. Nobody anything suffered worse than heart palpitations though, and we were racing. I say “we were racing”, although looking at my video footage, what I was doing was driving Miss Daisy. Brake points were all over the place, and so was I. Almost. The one place that I was not all over was the apex. I had a pretty dull race watching Martin Coward (Birkin S3) get smaller in front of me while Stephen David (Marcos Mantara) got smaller in my mirrors.
There was a brief moment of excitement when Steve Humble (Mallock) chucked parts of his car skyward shortly after lapping me. Evidently a clip holding some of the bodywork in place quit. Two hundred metres away I saw pieces of orange race car leaping for the heavens.
For the second heat I was determined to make amends for my lacklustre performance. In turn 2 Jean Fourie hit an oil patch and spun, and I made it past him. Johan Engelbrecht (Porsche GT3) was being cautious around the spilled oil, and I went past him too just before the kink. Just after turn 3 I went past Andre Brink (Porsche Carrera RS) who was also being cautious. I’d gained three places in as many corners, now all I had to do was run like I’d stolen something. But, with all the oil on the track, the red flags were out. The air inside my crash helmet went blue with cursing.
Wally Dolinschek later claimed that he had only lost about 500ml of oil from his car's power steering. He managed to spread that 500ml very far, thin and wide then!
On the re-start, Stephen David ignored the instruction to stay in line for the first corner and put his car between mine and the car in front of me, and there were no opportunities to make places in turn 2. I found myself behind Arno Lambert (Mercedes SLK) and Jean Fourie (CAV GT40) and the three of us had a good dice for the remainder of the race, with Jean blocking Arno and Arno blocking me. More than once I snuck past Arno, only to have him re-take the position. And more than once Arno made his car about eleventy-seven feet wide in the approach to turn 5, preventing me from getting by him there. On the last lap Jean slowed and Arno and I passed him.
The cement dust laid down to pick up the spilled oil meant that my video footage was mostly grey after a few laps, and many people were experimenting with new lines in turns 2 and 5 (where the cement dust was worst). As a result, lap times for most people were slower in the second race than they had been in the first. I was gutted to lose my excellent start, disappointed to have a poor re-start, but pleased that I had spent almost the entire race dicing with Arno. Before the next race meeting I will experiment with some small changes to my car’s setup, and some large changes to my mental approach!
Videos:
Heat 1 start:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPYdpr8Gbjk
Heat 2 start:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iui0c4Na2uQ
Heat 2 re-start:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRuXIlYfHY4
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