Portimao - Thursday

The tribulations of Wednesday were indeed sorted the following morning, my late night email to the organisers was picked up quickly and when I returned to the hotel reception they gave me my money back for the first night, and promised me that I could retain the room and didn't have to share it.

Of course the hire car hadn't miraculously improved overnight, but we can live with that.

I'd already made the decision not to test here on the Thursday, the cost of Eur499 was offputting at the end of a long season, my tyres are practically finished after just three events and I don't want to buy new ones, and the car is working! However when I arrived at the circuit and drove under the tunnel into the paddock it was immediately apparent that this is no normal track, there's a tight hairpin in front of me, then it climbs away, reappears higher up, turns right, drops down and then climbs again to anther hairpin up on the skyline to the right from where I'm looking...

I meet up with Iain and the boys, I sign on, do a few bits and pieces, and speak to a few people, they all say how hard this track is, and find it hard to believe I'm not going out on test to learn it. At the lunch break I get permission to cycle a lap on Iain's bike, from 6ft up on the mountain bike the view is a bit different from how it'll be in the car, but the lap is useful to learn which way the corners go at least. There are a number of climbs all of which will be disadvantageous to my little car, and a long straight entered by a long descending fast corner like Dijon, and there's a number of sharp slow corners, but what hits you most are the blind crests, in the car you'll come up these just looking at the sky, and reach the top to negotiate whatever corner... Challenging!

To give myself a chance I attach my brand new GoPro camera to Steve Futter's car, so that I can see the track, but before he's come in from his session John Delane appears by my car, he's done enough and he offers me the final session that he's already paid for. Cool, thanks John.

I'm out an hour later, take it a bit easy, but i love it, what a roller-coaster! Such a difficult track. But I'm having trouble, I need to change down from third to second five times a lap, and I can only get second 50% of the time, and especially not when there's any load in the chassis, ie., it works when I'm just braking in a straight line, but not otherwise. My best is a 2:20.0.

The boys set to work dismantling the gearbox but leave it in pieces and we go off for a local pizza with the crew, and Richard Smeeton and his crew. Get back to the hotel about 2230 and have cold beer sitting on the balcony overlooking the pool and beach, very pleasant.