We should have been supporting several British GT weekends through 2021. However, Covid saw the foreign rounds disappear and we were left with one final partnership at Oulton Park.
It’s not a track I have loads of experience at. However, it’s a brilliant track to drive. Such a wonderful set of corners. You really go on an adventure every lap with something for everyone. Fast and committed. Tight and technical and gradient thrown in everywhere. Plently of barriers to punish you as well if you get things wrong.
Qualification
Frustration! Slick tyres on a drying track was the correct choice and I was on the correct combination. However, I was further back in the queue than I would have liked at the start of qualification and that meant I was finding it hard to get any track position and a clear lap.
It’s not often I can say that I was held up by Will Smith, but I certainly did as he was on older slicks.
After several off track escapades in what were very tricky conditions and a session only 10 minutes long, it all came down to the final lap.
It went well, although I had to navigate Tom Eden who had parked on the final apex. I was sure this had scuppered my lap, but was surprised to find myself again in Superpole.
Superpole
A steady lap. And it showed. 4th on the grid was the result after James Murphy fell foul of track limits. I felt more was possible but I failed to get back up to speed quickly enough. A familiar defect to my season.
Race 1
A good start for once. I made up a place to run initially in 3rd. This changed to 4th when James Murphy taught me a lesson on the amount of grip you can generate early on with a specacular move into the Chicane. 4th was looking good. Great actually.
I had a gap behind and was keeping up (just) with the ultra rapid Steve Nuttal, Henry Heaton and James Murphy. This was more like it! Due to the tight schedule on the GT calendar, we were only having 2 races this weekend, back to the 30 minute race format. That comes with advantages for me; less starts; less early laps; more ‘settle in’ period. However, this year it also comes with a big downside. Fitness!
13mins in and I made a mistake coming out of the second chicane. I drifted onto the grass and lost positions gathering things back up onto the track.
I then got spooked into the final corner braking zone causing Greg Monks to hit my rear. Not his fault at all. But that saw me lose more places. So disappinting from the drivers seat. Gonig from 4th and now dropping to my more familiar mid field setting.
I got stuck behind Rob Watts and Greg Monks having an epic battle. I felt I had the speed over both of them but just not the racecraft, or energy frankly, to make it stick.
That then cost me more positions with Jake Swan-Dixon coming back through. Ultimately, he made it all the way to 5th place and that would have been a position I was capable of if I was more race hardened and fitter.
Race 2
The race that never was. Well, “half wasn’t” I suppose.
Conditions once again were extremely changeable and tricky to judge. The whole field decided on slick tyres even through there was rain threatened. With the banks absolutely chock full of specators, it was going to be an absolutely epic advertisment for Caterham racing. For whatever can be said about our brand of motorsport, it leads to endlessly entertaining and epic racing.
An initial delay being released onto the track and then an even longer delay held on the grid before we got going meant that the threatened rain had a chance to arrive.
I made a reasonable start and then managed the conditions well to move forward. I’d got all the way to 5th place when Alex Jordan found the barriers and a safety car was thrown. Unfortunately, this meant that all the residual heat from the tyres was lost and the rain was getting heavier by the second.
Unfortunately, some poor communication by race control meant that instead of calling us all in to swap to wet tyres, they showed us a premature chequered flag instead.
That’s a signal there is no recovery from. The race is over and restarting it would have lead to more technical and regulatory issues that would likely have lead to the result being void.
Finishing in 5th would have been a result to take away of course, and I would have been happy to! However, half points was all that was awarded so it was added to everyone’s dropped scores list for the season.
We all went away from that weekend feeling disapointed. It’s a long way to go to only get one race and for me, 2 potentially great results went away.