Friday – Free Practice
FP1 went well, all things considered. We mainly used FP1 to acclimatise to the new car setup and the resurfacing of the track, which made more of a difference than I expected; making the car more prone to understeer. Despite this we managed to claim P20.
FP2 wasn’t as great. With my confidence high, as I had placed higher than I expected, I was hoping to be around P19, instead I was dead last, but not all was lost, as I still managed to set a new PB of 57.6 I also picked up that my engine has a slight lack of power, though not drastic, was enough to be influential. Before the start of FP3 I spent some time with Cam & Alex, looking at my data and onboards from FP1 & FP2 and, with their help and insight, we believed a 57.4 to be possible.
All in all all three sessions were good and I thoroughly enjoyed being in the car.
Saturday – Qualifying & Race 1
Qualified: 23
Lap Time: 57.408
Race 1: P22>P20
Fastest Lap: 57.308
Qualifying
Qualifying didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped. In my initial 10 minute stint I struggled and was around 7 tenths off P22. After pitting and taking a breather and focusing on polishing up clearways, I took another few tenths off my best time, bringing me into the 57.4s Qualifying ended with me in P23, but only 2 tenths off of P22 and I was into the 57.4s which I was happy about.
Race 1
Preparing for race 1: I watched my footage from Free Practice and drilled each corner into my head to try and maximise my consistency. My first EVER race start went……well, horribly which I blame completely on my lack of experience and this put me about 8 seconds behind the pack into turn 2. Soon after I found my rhythm and put in some good lap times, even managing a 57.3 and consistently hitting the 57.4s. Slowly I noticed the cars ahead were losing their gap, while Ashley Gregory (who started form the pits) was slowly catching me.
Sunday – Race 2 & Race 3
Race 2: P20>P14
Fastest Lap: 57.606
Race 3: P23>P19
Fastest Lap: 57.681
Race 2
Race 2 and the first time I found myself sitting in the car feeling nervous! Maybe because I was starting P20 and had cars behind me. Despite the nerves, once I had lined up on the grid my mind was made up, I was going to get my elbows out! Once the lights went out, I managed to get a decent start, but lost 1 position. The race had a couple of safety cars (great experience) and incidents, yet we kept it clean and battled for position, successfully completing 2 switchbacks in 1 lap to claim P16 on the final corner of the last lap. After the race I was promoted to P14 due to other drivers’ penalties and disqualification.
Race 3
I started P23 (qualifying time from Saturday) and got my best start of the weekend! Unfortunately at turn 2, what would turnout to be a faulty valve on my front left, gave the feeling of a slow puncture and made me lose time to the competition and resulted in a pit stop for a tyre change on lap 2. However, as I was in the pit lane the safety car came out for a separate incident, so I rejoined a lap down and behind the safety car, but was determined to keep racing. Not long after the red flag was shown and we all were held for a while awaiting a decision on the restart. The race was finally restarted and, with luck, put me back on the lead lap. With only a few minutes of racing left, I managed to overtake on the very last corner to reach P19.
All in all this was a great weekend and I can’t believe my first ever race weekend is behind me. So many lessons learned this weekend and I can’t wait to do it all again. As always, thank you so much to everyone at the Wera Alliance Racing Academy, your support is amazing and much appreciated. Thank you also to all the guys at Alliance Racing & NAPA Racing who helped get us on track, keep us on track and for supporting us all weekend. It means the world! Thank you to everyone who sent messages of support over the weekend too, especially to Stu Jones, it meant a lot that you were following along. A special thanks to Pete; you make us feel like anything is possible!
Thank you.
Until the next race, Murray
