Another fouled up start, just as happened at Dijon. This time the Lotus 22 of Serge Brison dumped a lot of oil during the green flag lap, as he is one of the more exuberant of slaloming tyre warmers weaving back and forth across the track he managed to leave a wide snaking trail of oil, down the hill into the fastest bend of the course, and back up to the chicane! Fortunately for him it turned out to be an oil hose letting go, and not something more serious. I, and others, tried to make the officials aware that something was up, but as we lined up I wasn't sure what was happening, but the Start Delayed board came out and we switched off, whilst the marshals put down some cement dust - phew!
A few minutes later we had another go, with the race now shortened by two laps. I got a great start, by no means a common occurrence for me! Getting past Kim and Ivo Geockmann in the Jolus on the run to Turn One, this was messy just as yesterday ... I saw just ahead of me John Delane, and he wasn't pulling away, in fact I was closing on him ... But it was brief, I suspect he didn't want to take a risk and get caught in a bit of a battle with some Class E cars, so he let them go, and then followed them, slowly but surely pulling away from me. As I came round the tight Turn 2 on lap 2 I found Ivo facing the wrong way and had to take avoiding action, this putting my adversaries of yesterday, Andrew Tart and Steve Futter right on my tail ... I held them off for a short while, but ahead of Kim was all that mattered, so when they finally got to use their greater horsepower I was happy enough to le them go, but stayed on their tails.
A couple of slightly off the pace laps in the middle, and then coming up to lap the first of the back markers at the chicane brought Kim back onto my tail ... Battle was joined! We were alongside each other several times, and eventually he made it stick using his extra grunt down the start straight, but then ran hot into Turn one, allowing me to duck back under him out of turn two, two laps later exactly the same thing happened again, but this time he managed to get better drive out of Turn Two and drew back alongside into 3 ... He'd done me! I thought about a late dive up the inside at the hairpin, but I had 45 seconds in hand on aggregate, so it wasn't worth it. Chequered flag, another very enjoyable race, 3rd in Class (2nd on Aggregate), 19th overall. I was tired and hot, so was the car!
John Delane had cruised to the Class win of course, and Andrew Tart had similarly doubled up in Class B, so we are now in a 3-way tie for the Championship lead on 40 points each. Of course, they have scored theirs in 4 races each, whereas I have taken all 5 rounds to score mine, so once the discarded race is taken into account they 'll be clear leaders with me back in 3rd place overall in the Championship. Ivo recovered well to win Class D, Daniele Salodini took Class A and David Methley again took the race win from Michael Hibberd. All of which I think means that the 3 of us will have increased our points gap over 4th place and below.
Been a great weekend, I'd worried about the car being fresh out of rebuild, but it's never worked better, gave me greater confidence to push harder, which was in turn reflected in me competing with guys who are typically a little quicker than I most of the time. Very enjoyable.
The biggest issue I now had was this I had one big trophy for Saturday's 2nd place and one slightly smaller one for today's 3rd ... I have two kids who like to have my trophies, so some diplomacy may be required!
Long drive home, nice scenery, but heavy traffic around the Nurburgring (I can't believe how many people come out just to watch the action out on the Nordschliefe, the various parking areas are heaving - literally thousands of people - but there's no racing to watch, just paying punters out on their bikes or cars...). I so nearly ran the Motorhome out of fuel in Belgium, and then had to dive off into the unknown to find diesel (from a closed petrol station with an automated payment system that refused to take my first two cards, whilst the 'bus sat there with only fumes remaining - stress levels rising, but the 3rd card worked!). The traffic cleared a bit after Brussels and I floored it (relative term!) and scrambled onto my booked ferry - last on before they closed the doors! I eventually got home at 0130 this morning, fully 11 hours after leaving N'burg ... Pretty weary!
Next up Goodwood Revival
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