My first ever race in the rain was pretty early in the adventure. I’d done a handful of races in the dry, and they had been very frustrating. Back then, Blossom understeered as though she had a phobia of corner apexes and the Ford Kent engine that she was running was way down on power compared to the Toyota 4AGE engines that everybody else was running in their Sevens. When the Ford engine lunched itself, I bit the bullet and did an engine swap, which involved being out of action for about 6 months. My first wet race meeting was also the first race meeting with the Toyota 20 valve engine, and my first race meeting on slicks. It was also the first race meeting where I didn’t finish last. Unsurprisingly, I’ve enjoyed racing in the wet ever since.
Much as I enjoy racing in the wet, the drive to and from the circuit is much less fun in the wet. The forecast was for periods of rain interspersed with showers and the occasional downpour over the course of the day. Five minutes before I was due to leave home the first shower arrived. I arrived at the race track, reasonably dry and mostly warm, found a pit and set up camp.
With the enormous amounts of standing water, timed quali was abandoned but there was a ‘sighting session’ in its place. Without venturing from my pit, I had a rough idea of what the track would be like: wet! Craig went out in his Harper Type 5, and I relied on his reconnaissance, and kept my race kit dry. Craig’s report indicated that there were small patches of race track which could be found if you looked carefully between the rivers, meanders, oxbow lakes and other elements of high school geography.
The first heat revealed a very truncated grid, with only 16 cars starting. And with more than half of them being Porsches, it looked like a Stuttgart benefit. There are usually a fair number of Sevens in Sports and GT Cars, but on Saturday I was the only one out there. The sighting lap for the first heat also revealed that Craig had significantly over-stated the amount of race track that was discernible.
Godfrey Lancellas (Lola 212) had elected to start at the back of the grid to avoid being flattened by the Porsche blitzkrieg, Andre Brink (Porsche 993 RS) was also reluctant to take his rightful place on the grid and Craig took a while putting on his make up (or something), which meant that I started with three cars behind me. Going into turn 1 I could see nothing but the tail lights of the Porsche ahead of me, and I backed right off because if there had been an off in turn 1, the first I would have known would have been when I joined it.
After half a lap Craig dived past my starboard bow on the entrance to turn 3 and then, mixing metaphors furiously, proceeded to perform a graceful pirouette with a couple of toe loops, a half volley and a WTF as he exited into the scenery, stage left. Godfrey roared past as I slowed slightly to check that Craig didn’t come to any harm.
The track was wetter than I’ve ever seen it. Fifty metres before turn 5 there was a river running across the track. In the dry, I brake just past the 50 metre board. In the wet I was starting braking at the 150 metre board, then coming off the brakes to let the car skip and skim across the river, and back onto the brakes before the turn. The two kinks, one after turn 5 and after turn 2, are usually fairly uneventful. In the wet, they both became rather more exciting than I am used to.
Francis Carruthers evidently didn’t enjoy driving in the rain, and parked his Juno S2000 at the exit to turn 1, where he could enjoy a close up view of the rest of us threading our way between the large puddle at the corner apex and the even larger puddle at the corner exit.
Most of the rest of the race was simply a case of keeping the pointy end of the car facing forwards. Andre was reeling me in slowly, but with a lap to go he spun coming out of turn 5 and that was the end of his challenge. Craig was back on the road and managed to pass me with most of a lap to go.
For the second heat, unbelievably, there was even more water on the track, and even more falling out of the sky. I’d left my race gloves on top of Blossom’s cylinder head so they were nice and dry and toasty warm when I put them on. Long before we were on the circuit they were soaked through. I was gridded 13. I'm not superstitious, superstition is unlucky, but if you're ever at the back pits at Killarney, between pit 12 and pit 14 you will find, courtesy of me and some black insulation tape, pit 131, a reminder of a previous race meeting.
On the sighting lap I watched with a mix of disbelief and terror as the car in front of me swerved crazily from side to side, as though the driver was trying to warm the tyres. I’m pretty sceptical of this technique in the dry, but in the wet, applied with gusto, I was expecting the car to go skating off into the shrubs.
For me, the second race was largely a replay of the first. Craig went shooting off pretty smartly, giving he and I a scary moment as he chose to overtake going through the Great Lake that had formed on the kink after turn 2. And that was the last I saw of Craig. Shaun MacKay (Porsche GT3) had been gridded behind me for the start came past, but I salvaged my ego by overtaking Garth Livingstone (Porsche GT3) and pulled out a small lead over the course of the race.
Looking back, I may have been driving gentler than necessary. I didn’t feel that there was anybody ahead of me that I could catch in either heat, so I concentrated on staying on the black stuff and ahead of whoever was behind me in both heats. But, my sole aim in racing is to have fun, so I can claim “job done!”, and any race meeting that finishes with my car car-shaped is a good race meeting.
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