Brands - Race Two

Another bright sunny day ... Quite breezy, but has summer finally arrived??

Race 2, scheduled for 10:45 this morning, but we actually went off a bit early. Quite a stressfree morning, relatively speaking, had time to chat with a couple of mates from the insurance market who'd come down to spectate, and also to go off with Nic and the kids so that Freddie, who'll be 3 on Wednesday this week, could show me a new trick ... He has a small trike called a Scuttlebug, and when they were wandering around yesterday he found one of the grassy banks to launch himself down, quite steep it was too. He loved it, rushing down to be collected, hopefully pre-crash, by Mummy. Emily, 6, loved it too!

I made it to the assembly area in good time today, and lined up in 16th spot. To be honest, my race was a little lonely, initially I held off Serge Brison for a couple of laps, but he came by eventually and gradually pulled away. My only aim was to finish the race, a finish today would mean second overall for the weekend, and a solid points haul to add to my total. I backed off 500revs at the top, and drove well within my limits. Today's best was 0.3secs off yesterday's qualifying, but more than 2secs off last year's best - I need to look and see whether most people were slower this weekend, due to track conditions or something, or whether it was just me! Nevertheless a finish was what I wanted, and I got there ... After failures on each of the last three times i've taken this car to Brands Hatch, the Hoodoo has been shaken off! Although it was a close run thing of course...

A double win for David Methley at the front, he's very very quick .... He also seems very relaxed, rumour has it that having not done much recent car preparation it might be that when he opened the engine cover for the scrutineers they found a power extension lead that he'd been looking for!

Double win for John Delane in my class, completely untroubled by anyone in the class, but enjoying a good race with some other competitors, especially yesterday. Class A for Italian engined front engine cars was won by Daniele Salodini, Class B by Andrew Tart in the front wheel drive Bond, Class D was won by John Chisholm, racing his rear-engined Gemini this week, rather than it's front-engined older sibling which he had at Pau.

Great to see Kim Shearn get out on track, he was granted 3 'sighting' laps running with someone else's qualifying session this morning, and was then allowed to start from the back of the grid, I know that both he and the car are quite quick, but nevertheless I was a bit disappointed to see him hove into view quite so quickly, breeze past and head off into the distance! He completed the race to finish second in class, but having not run yesterday he's not eligible for an 'overall' result. He's now driving down to Monza for next weekend, then we reconvene at Dijon in 3 weeks, I can see he's going to be trouble!

So, another Trophy, and more points to add to the total; despite my expectations, and a near-game-ending issue yesterday, we move on to Round 4 with me still heading the Championship. I wonder how much longer this can last ...