The new Snetterton layout
As will be usual this season, due to the number of entrants in the Swinging Sixties there were two races, Group 1 for the smaller engined vehicles (classes A to C) which Bluebell is in and Group 2 (D to G) for larger engined cars in which the red C competes. Usually we would have a report for both races but this time we can dispense with the Group 1 race quickly:
After the troubles in qualifying we weren’t certain that Bluebell was running right even though the problems had seemingly cleared up and sure enough Bluebell ground to a halt on lap 1! The problem isn’t serious, it seems to be fuel related, possibly an intermittent fault with the pump, but it ended the race.
Group 2 Race:
Mike had qualified 16th on a grid of 25 cars, which was a pretty good result considering that he was getting to grips with a new gearbox and other car upgrades, he hadn’t driven the new track layout before and there were some VERY quick cars out there.
Mike likes rolling starts but didn’t have great luck with this one, a car managed to block his line into the first corner costing him a couple of places. Despite this and the fact that he was still getting to grips with the new ‘dog’ gearbox Mike started to make up places and by the time the pitstops came round had made it back to 15th.
We had a relatively (by our standards) slow pitstop, Mick had trouble retrieving a harness strap that Mike had inadvertently trapped under him when getting back into the car and then Mike stalled pulling away and when he’d re started the motor, had to be held for a few seconds to let another car go.
The stop had dropped us to 20th but there were still some cars to pit so we expected to come out around P15-16 once the stops had all worked out. By this time Mike had clearly got used to the car and was ‘really on it’ making up places on almost every lap, with 10 minutes to go he had made his way up to P11 but was almost 20 seconds behind the Ford Falcon in 10th. To have any chance of making up another place he would need to be catching the car ahead by almost five seconds a lap. We were glued to the timing screen and watched as Mike hunted the Ford down in in the closing laps of the race until, on what would be the last lap, he had brought the gap down to just over six seconds which we thought must surely be too much to make up.
As we looked down the pitlane towards Coram curve we saw the Ford Falcon come round with the Red C only a second or so behind and closing fast. Mike braked as late as he could into Murrays and almost had the inside coming onto the start/finish straight but just couldn’t out drag the big Ford to the line finishing just 0.3 of a second behind in 11th place. An absolutley first class drive and a well deserved 4th in the toughest class of the race.
