A nice relaxed morning today, no bad thing as a little over-indulgence and late to bed last night had left me with a bit of a sore head - and lots of clearing up to do! David and I went for a cycle ride round the inside of the track which we never managed to do last year, lots of classic car clubs and a tented village of retail stands, a reasonable crowd and lovely warm weather.
Iain has brought 4 FJs and one Pre-61 F1 car down, so it's pretty busy in our little contingent, but unusually this morning everyone appeared to be in good order, and all of the cars seemed ready to run. John Chisholm is still a Reserve though, but at least he has another car to race.
Our race was mid-afternoon; by which time it was quite warm. The lap to the grid was quite quick, then followed by about the slowest Green Flag lap I can remember, and a shambolic start. I am quite good at scanning the grid ahead of me just before the 'off' and so I saw Caroline Abrou with her hand up, usually indicative of a driver with a car issue, but then she took it down again, so i assume that's sorted, then a yellow flag appeared momentarily over the pitwall before disappearing again ... Three, four, five red lights, then Justin Fleming alongside me decides he's waited long enough and goes anyway, the rest of us wait until the lights do actually go out! Charles Cook hasn't got away, and someone else is slow off too, all in all and with a tight bunched grid I decide to take an easy get-away, for safety sake, inevitably I lose a few places, but I don't lose any corners of the car (!) and I get two to three back before we've completed half a lap! I'm up behind Kim ... Hmm, what's going on there, I go past him. Things settle down for a couple of laps, before we have a car in the gravel at the first corner, which brings out the safety car.
So things have changed somewhat ... Before the start I'd already settled for 4th (last!) in class here, with my power deficit, and was planning to take it easy on the car, but now I'm up to second in class, but Kim is still running. These races are scored on aggregate result over two heats, he clearly has some minor issue slowing him, so it now becomes important for me to go hell for leather and get a decent Lead over him to take into race Two tomorrow. He's not far behind me in the queue behind the safety car, though, so when that clears I need to get on it again, I then have a fairly lonely race to the flag, but running some reasonably quick laps whilst trying hard to stress the car as little as possible. I finish 16th overall, 9 places up on qualifying and get my second place in class. At the end Kim's car is parked ahead of me in Parc Ferme, can only mean one thing - he'd got lapped by the leader, whereas I didn't, so by some more fluke I've put a lap on him; things are looking promising! Turns out he had a slipping clutch, his mechanic David and he have the 'box out again - 6 or 7th time in three race meetings...
Race is won by Manfredo Rossi, from 'Masterchef' John Fyda, Urs Eberhardt - Hockenheim winner - spins out of the leading group with 3 laps to go and cannot restart. Tommaso Gelmini is 3rd. My class is won by John Delane and with similar inevitability Andrew Tart wins Class B2. Daniele Salodini takes Class A and Luc Deneve Class D.
Tomorrow is going to be interesting!
We fire up the barbecue in the paddock and cook again for Iain and Mike, Kim and David, and a couple of others, beautiful evening here, very sociable paddock - after eating brother David and I take our glasses of wine and wander around some of the paddock parties, the French organiser's contingent are getting pretty lively, then we join the Aussies, then with them we wander over to join the Italians! Great atmosphere - exactly what these European meetings are all about. Tempting to drink too much wine ... But there are points up for grabs again tomorrow and our race is early in the day - must be sensible!
To cap a good day, I had a chat and a laugh with Brian Johnson ... He's loving his weekend, and wants to do more!! Good man!
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