Mike had had a solid qualifying session which placed him 13th on the grid. The race started really well and although he lost a couple of places in the chaos that is always the first lap we weren’t concerned as Mike always settles in after a couple of laps and will start to progress through the field, picking off the cars ahead. By the time the pit window had opened he was up into the top 10, this was great news as we know that Mike is always faster in the second half of the race and so the team were confident of a top 10 finish.
He came in on lap 15, not a record breaking pitstop but not slow either meaning he hadn’t lost too many places and we expected that he should come out inside the top ten when all the cars had made their stops. In the event he was running in 8th which was really great and he looked to be getting quicker. Unfortunatly around lap 18 there were worried faces on the pit wall. Steve reported that the C was sounding ‘fluffy’ and looked to be down on power when it went past.
Sure enough Mike’s laptimes started to drop, exactly the opposite of what we were expecting and on lap 21 he bought the MG back into the pits. The iginition light was on all the time signifying a reoccurance of the charging problem but more worrying the carbs wwere leaking fuel from the trumpets indicating that the float chambers were overfilling leading to petrol ‘flooding’ the front carbs and causing the loss of power. A very disconsolate Mike decided to retire the car on the grounds that he wouldn’t be on the pace and also that the fuel leaking presented a very real safety issue due to the risk of fire. This was bitterly disapointing for us all, following the good result at Snetterton we all hoped that last years reliability problems were behind us.
Many thanks to Az Edwards of AE Photography for allowing us to use his great pictures. www.ae-photography.co.uk
