By this time next weekend, all the action from the 2015 Caterham Championships will be over. There will be 4 more champions to add to the roster on top of the 2 already crowned.
One things for sure, I won’t be amongst those elite! BUT it would be nice to end the season with some Silverware and I’ll be aiming to do just that.
Oulton Park is a long way away from home for me. I’ve not raced there before this weekend and have only made the trek up once, earlier this year, to turn some testing laps. However, the track itself is worth the effort.
I think it’s largely regarded as one of the best in the UK and you can see why. It has gradient, demanding corners, it takes no prisoners but is ultimately extremely satisfying to hook together into a good lap.
Testing still wasn’t looking ideal with my lap times some way off the ultimate pace. However, a very lose rear balance on the car wasn’t helping and a setup change going into qualifying felt a lot better.
Unfortunately, an abbreviated qualifying issue due to fog only left 3 laps to put a time in, and I succeeded in not doing so! That left me in 10th for race 1. But with the feeling that more performance would be available for the race.
A reasonable start and a fair opening few corners saw me in good position. Unfortunately, I was in completely the wrong position for a spin by Max going through turn 1 on lap 2. The inevitable carnage that resulted left me further down the order as people took advantage of the situation.
Unfortunately, the rest of the race was spent trying to get the places back lost from the lap 2 incident. I never really got to use the pace I felt I had. Having said that, the battle at the end with Christian was great fun and was nice to come out on top. 6th was the result. Much better feeling than past few race meets and still a feeling of more to come.
Because of Oulton’s noise restrictions, everything happens in one frantic day’s action. That leads to inevitable brain ache as you try and process that you’ve got to do it all again a few hours after race 1 finishes and not with the normal sleep in between!
I guess things weren’t too bad though as I got one of my best starts, coming out of turn 1 in 4th place. And what was most pleasing was that for the first half of the race, it was a legitimate place and I was right with the lead pack and we were gapping the rest.
Henry and Dan didn’t work together well though and at around the half way point, they were slowing our groups progress and letting Jack Brown disappear in the lead. I could also see Christian and Max closing up behind. I took advantage of some more Dan / Henry battling to move forward and I was looking to get past Tim when a combination of waved yellows and fluid down on the track meant I overshot the second chicane.
Normally, this isn’t such an issue, however, to go off under waved yellows and subsequently past marshals pushing a car is an extremely bad thing.
These marshals put their lives at risk for us and so I was absolutely gutted to have let them down. I let it get to me and spent the rest of the race trailing Max as we caught up the lead pack – but the fight had gone. I was sure I’d be out of the results after the inevitable trip to the clerks office.
An end result of 8th BUT with so much more promise that I’ve seen for the past 6 races that I couldn’t help but be fairly hopeful for the coming races at Silverstone.
And the meeting with the clerk? Well, watching the video back, there was no stationary yellow ahead of the double waved yellows and from the first point of being able to see the flags, I took the only course of action open to me. The reason for the run on was fluid down at that corner from another incident and I went by the marshals at around 20mph. No further action taken and so a positive end to a positive weekend.
Another racing weekend coming up. This weekend, we’re at Oulton Park in Cheshire. This is a one day meet – so everything happens on Saturday 19th Sept.
The Brands weekend held so much promise, and it’s that reason that makes another poor performing weekend such a pain and disappointment.
With the new engine, I really hoped I’d cracked the power issues I’ve been seeing this year. However, that wasn’t to be. Things didn’t get off to a good start with an oil leak on Thursday evening that took all of Friday testing to get fully identified and sorted.
Come qualification, I ended up 15th. Granted, the top 16 were all covered by 0.5s. However, I could tell that the car wasn’t pulling as well as others around me and 15th is my worst qualification ever… by a long way!
Race 1 was in 30 degree heat. And, unfortunately, I had to pull out before the end due to a hot engine and a burning foot. I wasn’t enjoying the race as I was just falling backwards with a lack of power and so the pain in my right foot and left knee from the temperatures in the cockpit were enough to tip me into the pits and out of the race. Others ended the race with heat blisters and burns to their feet, which goes to show just how hot it gets in the footwell.
I therefore started race 2 from the back of the pack. I wanted to get through the pack fast to see if I could latch on to the tail of the front group but sadly, a botched start and a few delayed passes meant there was just too much of a gap by the time I got through the mid field.
I’ve only posted up the beginning part of the second race. It’s all I can bring myself to post. The only other time I haven’t posted full coverage from a weekend is Rockingham in my Academy year, where I threw away my championship chances into the turn 1 tyre wall.
I’m not quite at that low ebb at the moment, but I’m running out of places to go when searching for the missing car performance. I’m driving as hard as ever – but I just can’t keep up in a straight line.
