In my years of racing, I’ve never raced at the Silvertone GP race track. Indeed, I’ve only ever done two track days on the GP circuit. On was in the Academy car back in 2013 and the other was my only pre-season practice in the 420R, which was cut short by my arms failing to be able to turn the wheel any more!

It was therefore the first time I have had to push on through such iconic racing corners as copse and the becketts esses. Silverstone is built for one type of car – F1 cars. For a Caterham, the track is epically wide and every single corner is devastatingly fast and committed.

The SCUK 420R car with its slick tyres is about the only Caterham than gets close to being fast enough to make sense of the track. It’s still long blasts down straights followed by ultra committed corners. Keeping the car balanced on the edge of grip whilst in the upper speed ranges we get on any other track is quite an experience.

However, as the lap is so long, any loss of speed is penalised heavily. It’s therefore really tricky to extract a full lap time and as our two days testing was in full mixed grid format with Academy and all other classes out on track, trying the thread a lap was almost impossible.

I came into the weekend pretty hyped and fairly confident after Knockhill. Even though the results weren’t everything you could wish for, I’d made a step forward and I wanted desperately to solidify this. However, that just lead to me over driving and getting stressed when things didn’t initially show the kind of speed I’d hoped for.

Qualification

After 2 days of dry testing, the weather threw a spanner in the works once more, with heavy rain in the morning of our qualification. I started the session really well, and was making great lap time progress. You have to push from the off so that you can learn and progress as much as possible in a short session. However, on the 3rd lap, I touched a white line coming out of Copse. The car was instantly spinning. Several rotations later I was back pointing the right way but some of the confidence was now gone.

With the track drying out and my innability to adapy quick enough, the end of the session came ever so quickly and I found myself back in 11th. Gutted.

Race 1

That left me deep in the field for race one and in a position that throughout my career I’ve not seen very often. A full pack of cars ahead. My natural tendancy towards caution and the longer race game isn’t particularly suited to starting deep in the field and a lack of ultimate pace doesn’t help.

And that showed. After dropping some places initially, as we approached Abbey, I saw an opporuntity to make up some places and placed myself on the outside of another car coming out of the fast chicane. However, I misjudged my positioning and ran out of road on the outside of the circuit. A touch paniced on grass I was initially worried that the car wouldn’t stop and I would meet all the other cars mid track if I was spun back onto the track.

Sadly, this pannic meant I faied to see the acre or so of tarmac on my right side that I could have happilly been using! Eventually, a small patch of gravel on the grass area spun the car and for the second time on the same day, I found myself facing the wrong way and having to restart the car.

A lonely race at the back ensued with the only consollation being that this was the first bit of good clean lapped testing I’d had all weekend.

Race 2

The rain was back. It was epically hard and getting worse as we approached our race. Having had qualification in wet conditions, at least I wasn’t going into this one completely blind. And that showed.

Although, not for the first few laps, where I made silly mistakes and got a little caught behind others having their own. I was therefore plum last at one point. Hardly an auspicious start.

In the car, it’s hard to judge just how hard the rain is, however, it was clear it was getting heavier and the lakes and streams across the track aren’t a normal navigation feature around a lap. Still, with only 10 mins of the race to go, I got through to 9th place, ultimately finishing in 10th at the flag.

Race 3

Again, a poor opening set of laps saw me losing spots at the start. However, anything is better than facing the wrong way as happened in race 1. It again took too long to get settled and dialed in – a luxury that isn’t available with the shorter races this season.

So, after 10 mins of the race had already passed I started picking my way through the field. It was a satifying feeling to finally be moving forward and whilst there is still so much to learn, the ability to put passes in, defend and then ultimately move forward to the next battle was a good tonic.

The lead pack of cars has a multi car pile up nearing the end of the race and I was in a good position to pick up the pieces. Battling Jake Swan-Dixon hard for 4th place. A battle he ultimately won as I hadn’t reaslised it was the final laps and he did me a kipper.

5th was the result and I took that gratefully. However, it was a relatively lucky result and overall I left Silverstone frustrated and down.