Result: 10th overall, 2nd class D
Last race meeting of the season for the Swinging Sixties series and Mike was looking for a good result to close the season. The weather played its part in qualifying, it was pouring with rain before hand but by the time et were out it was in that dodgy no mans land between wet and dry – too wet for dry tyres and to dry for wets. We took a gamble on running the drys and although not ideal it worked as the track was drying towards the end of the 20 minutes. The changeable conditions had really mixed up the grid with some of the more powerful cars further back than usual, having been unable to put the power down on the damp track and some of the more nimble cars making more headway than usual. Mike was 14th overall. Despite the good performance in qualifying Mike felt that the brakes were binding and on inspection we discovered that the new rear shoes we’d fitted had been adjusted up too far and were binding the rear wheels, the shoes we use are specifically lined for us by a company in the States and one of their characteristics is that, when new, they swell up when they heat up for the first time so it’s always difficult to get the adjustment right.
Between qually and race time we had to decide whether to bank on the dry setup or change to the wets and back all the dampers off for a wet race. As it was raining hard for most of the intervening period we changed the tyres and dampers to suit wet conditions but with about 20 minutes to go before they called us to assembly the rain had stopped and a brisk wind was drying the circuit. We had a tough decision to make, if it didn’t rain any more their should be a dry line appearing soon and the track would certainly be dry by the start of our race but if anymore rain fell it would simply top up the standing water and we’d need to be on the wets to have any hope.
Mike made the call and we changed the car back onto the dry tyres and reset the dampers for dry running. As it turned out this was the right choice as he track was bone dry by start time.
Mike got away well at the rolling start and made up a couple of places on the first two laps. A short safety car period on laps 3,4 and 5 closed the field up again and then Mike banged in three amazingly consistent laps all within 5/100ths of a second of each other before we called him in for the mandatory pitstop as soon as the ‘pit window open’ boards were displayed. He was so engrossed in the racing that it was a further two laps before he noticed the pit board and came into the pits!
A textbook pitstop (actually the fastest of anyone in the race) followed and then Mike settled in for the remainder of the race, he’s always that little bit faster after the stop and didn’t disappoint putting in his fastest lap of the race in lap 25 and making up several more places to finish a brilliant 10th overall and 2nd in class D. A great race and a great end to the season!
Best lap: 1.32:55
