Goodwood - Race Day

Another dreadful night's sleep! 

My race is last up on Saturday, not until 1735. But the family are all here today, so it's going to be busy keeping up with the kids! Unfortunately I feel poorly, man-flu coming on! Steaming headache, but I really don't want to take anything for it, just keep drinking as much water as possible!

Eventually racetime hoves into view ... as mentioned earlier, Goodwood is like no other track meeting, and maintains some of the old traditions, in particular, despite the track being narrower than most of the tracks I normally race on, they run with a 3-2-3 grid formation, rather than the normal 2-2-2 that you'd be used to if you watch Grand Prix. They also start the races with a wave of the Union Flag, none of those new-fangled lights - but you cannot move until the flag goes down, if you move on the up-stroke that's a jumped start! 

So with the 3-2-3 grid formation I was on the outside of Row 4. With 5 secs to go the Dolphin on the outside of Row 3 has his hand up to indicate some problem that will prevent him from getting off the line, very good quick flagging from the marshals to make the whole grid aware. When the flag goes down, Crispian Besley, directly ahead of me on the outside of Row 2 doesn't get off the line either ... so with a good hook-up and smoking tyres I am faced with a slalom off the line - bit hairy, but we survive - however cars on the righthand side of the track have a clearer run to the first corner, Madgwick, so I've dropped a couple of places. Time to settle down a bit, try to improve my driving from yesterday's performance. Seem to be same pace as Andrew Hayden (Envoy) and Noel Woodford (Gemini) and we run in a trio for a short while. Crispian closes up behind me, now I know it's a battle for 'position', but he's always quicker than me, and there seems little point in delaying him, so I wave him by on the run to Fordwater, and when he takes longer to do complete the pass than I'd anticipated I lifted off slightly to make sure he'd got it done before either of us turned in. 

To be honest I'd assumed Crispian would get by the Envoy and Gemini relatively quickly, which would leave me to have another look at them, but he doesn't so we run close together as a 4 car train for a couple of laps or so, with me deliberately keeping a watching brief from the back. The track gets greasier, several slightly wild (but nothing alarming) moments by those around me, Crispian certainly explores the track limits ... dropping back behind us again at least once. I get by both the Gemini (up the inside at the corner with no name, before St Mary's) and the Envoy (on the brakes into Lavant), they both seem to have a slight horsepower advantage (those beastly Ford engines I'd wager!) but I can carry more corner speed in places. Slowly I draw away a touch but lose a small amount of time lapping back markers, allowing them to close back up again, I'm running 8th. Coming into the chicane on the penultimate lap I get a bit loose, and the resultant poor drive out allows the Gemini to use his horsepower to outdrag me to Madgwick - blast! I give chase and am back on his tail when we get to Lavant ... uh-oh, back markers ... more to the point, two back markers having their own private battle ... The Gemini gets up the inside of the pair, but that doesn't look on for me, I have to wait, go round the outside but I'm slow onto the straight ... the Envoy draws by. Double blast. Chequered flag. 10th. 

Mildly disappointing to drop two places on the last lap, but I'm delighted, never envisaged being as high as 10th in the first place, I'm second BMC-engined car! I've had a great race - I rarely get wheel-to-wheel dicing to be honest, so several overtakes - all clean and gentlemanly, is great fun. Brilliant. Thank you everyone.

Big waves to all the marshals and the crowd on the cooling down lap, and especially to all the family watching from the rails by the chicane. I pull into Parc Ferme and switch off, Iain appears, congratulates me briefly, but tells me I have some explaining to do about dropping those places at the end! Despite that I'm much happier with the way I've driven today, much smoother, lap times are no better, however that's down to track conditions being a little greasy and the fact that we've been in a battle for positions. 

Although I am the last finisher not to be lapped by the winner, the leader was still 30secs away from doing so. My average speed for the entire 12 laps is 86+mph - told you it was quick around here! The winner is Chris Drake, unsurprisingly, so at least a dark blue Elva wins. Andrew Wilkinson in the Lynx kept him honest though, and in fact led until half distance. Standing on the bottom step of the podium is John Delane - well done John. Behind him are Charles Cook and Robert Barrie.

I'm gutted to find out later that the video file is corrupted and won't play, i'd really have liked to have watched that race back!