The race restarted under safety car, and the guys thought they had fixed Ryan's issue, so he came back out to give it another shakedown before the ClubEnduro race tomorrow.
The Cupra still had the measure of me, but on only the 3rd flying lap, I had diesel all over my windscreen again, just like Cadwell.
Ryan managed to get a few more laps in, also setting a decent lap time, before the same thing happened to him. What a nightmare day again. My issue was on the fuel return line again, but an AN fitting had a hairline crack than got worse until it split completely.
Keep scrolling down to find us!
The only consolation was that as I got out of the car, Michael was 1st in Class B, with the #87 235i and Ginetta breathing down his neck. Some traffic caught him out and allowed the 235i past, possibly under yellows. The Ginetta followed around the outside onto the straight.
They seemed to have more legs on the straights, making it hard to keep up, but in the twisties the Golf had the measure of them.
A few laps later, as Michael was keeping them in his sights but pushing hard, letting them battle amongst each other, the driveshaft cup decided to let go. It only needed to make another 3 laps! And the 235i had an issue so he would have been 2nd.
3 x DNFs - terrible day!

The Cupra was going to take some beating, but it would have been an easy 2-3. We had said we would be using this as testing, but it was still frustrating!

Michael's did great, and was consistent when out of the traffic, he was on for an easy P3 and possibly a P2.

It didn't take long before we were dropping down the order!

Mauger pretty much had the fastest lap throughout the race.

Michael had led Class B and held the fastest lap for quite a while, so it was looking good, until it wasn't!

Fastest Laps

Our fastest race laps are below:

Will Stacey's 2022 Lap Record a 1:12.19 was easily beat, just not by us! Michael had the pace in Quali for the Class B record, but didn't manage it during the race.

That was it for Saturday, a day to forget for us all. I was gutted for Michael, another podium taken away from him.
To put it into perspective, we'd had some friends watching. Lee could not make it as he had lost his mum, Yvonne, the night before. I guess it doesn't matter how bad you race was, there are worse things going on! We'd wanted a good result in her memory, it was not meant to be. We would do our best to make it up on Sunday.
The guys set to work ironing all the creases out, hoping for a better day.

ClubEnduro Qualifying

We learnt our lesson from yesterday's quali session and got there early to assembly and parked the car, however when it was time to move, the car wouldn't start due to a flat battery, so we ended up in the middle of the pack again!
The #4 BMW, my main rival currently in the championship did not show up, but since we were only halfway through the season, it is still anyone's championship!
The guys had made some suspension changes overnight to try and cure the understeer, and it worked, as when I found a decent bit of space, I managed a 1:12.367 which I thought was pretty good, until the guys said Henderson in the MX5 and Browes in the TCR had done 11.3s and 11.8s respectively. I needed to find at least 0.5s and I had no idea where I could find it!
I pitted to check pressures as Ryan was handing over to Dylan after pumping in a 1:12.255 then went out to find some space. This was still difficult and I could only find around 0.3s. I dodged around finding another gap and went for it, finally dipping into the 11s with a 1:11.788 which put me P2, still almost 0.5s away from the MX5!
Dylan quickly got into the groove despite no testing, and he pipped Ryan by 0.1s with a 1:12.140, which put them directly behind me on the Grid in 4th. Much better, but harder work than it should have been!

I did far too many laps than I should have to get down the that time. In contrast, the MX5 could have done 1 lap and parked it! It was great to see Luke and Paul Browes up there, after all the trouble they have been having with their TCR!

It was early on when the MX5 set the benchmark, then we all wasted fuel and tyres trying to beat it, again!

Qualifying Lap

Our fastest Quali laps are shown below:

ClubEnduro Race

The whole race was Live Streamed by the guys at AlphaLive which you can see below:

So it was an MX5, two Audi TTs and a load of Cupra TCRs surrounding us. I just hoped I would not hold Ryan up at the start. I had a 30s penalty for winning at the last round at Snetterton, way back in June! The Mauger Cupra had 10s for coming 3rd.
With this in mind, I needed to make a break for it and pull a gap on the rest of the pack. Based on Quali pace, that was going to be impossible against the MX5, and difficult against Ryan as we were pretty close.

We both got away well, but it was clear that the TTs were no match for the MX5, Compact and Cupras in a straight line. We just had to keep it clean, play the long game and see how it all panned out.
I'd dropped to 3rd behind Mauger in the Cupra, and had Jones in the Compact breathing down my neck for the first few laps, then the MX5 started to have issues on lap 12, dropping out of contention.
It was then pretty drama free until I pitted on Lap 26. I was going to go much earlier, but the safety car bunched up the pack, so I stayed out a fair bit longer until I got to traffic again. The guys did a great stop, changing the front wheels and refuelling with over 2 minutes to spare! I'd come in from P1, and came out in P27! The joys of an early stop!
Ryan came in a little later, on Lap 32, giving Dylan a very long stint to bring it to the end!

As everyone did their mandatory stops, I was working my way up the order, and by Lap 43 have come across Saunders in the #34 Cupra TCR. It was taking some effort to get round, as the car was much faster in a straight line, so despite having an advantage in the corners, any gain I made was lost as soon as we got onto the straights. Eventually I went for the move down the inside of Turn 3 and thought that was it. However, as I turned into the link road onto the Hangar straight, he disappeared in my mirrors and gave me a massive smack on the rear wheel. I was spun 180 and didn't get the clutch down in time so stalled it and watched Saunders disappear down the straight. My steering wheel was at 10 o'clock and the car felt terrible. With how hard I was hit, I was convinced the whole side of the car would be stoved in.
Looking back at the footage now, whilst I didn't think he would try to go down the inside there, I should have expected it and given him a wide berth, but it is easy to say that after the fact.
Now it was salvage mode. The car was handling like a shopping trolley and was sure to destroy the tyres, especially with well over 1hr still to go. I braved it out in the high speed left turns where the rear felt completely disconnected and hoped the A052s would hold on being dragged diagonally across the track!
In the meantime Dylan was having an easy ride, sticking to a pace that was at most times the fastest on track, and navigating the traffic to try and avoid the situation I was in!
64 laps in I was now P4 and the safety car was out again. It just missed picking up Dylan. I was glad to give the tyres a rest from the constant abuse, but my reasonable margin back to 5th place was now gone. It did mean I could now see the #34 and #18 Cupras, giving me a target when the incident was cleared. They started to let a load of lapped cars round, then stopped me. I hoped they were not assuming I was the leader (since the only thing easily visible that is different on our cars are the numbers!), so frantically radio'd to the guys saying to make sure they let me round as well. Luckily they did, and I was back with a view of my rivals, and could see Dylan in the distance.
We were all pretty even at the restart, and before long we were in a big battle of TCR cars. Some of them were on the lead lap, others were not. Most were respectful, but after we had cleared the #18 so were now in the podium places, we came across the #82 TCR, which despite being a lap down, was putting up the fight of his life against the #34 of Saunders. This completely screwed up our race, and eventually as the #34 dove at Village, I was caught in a full side on impact from the #82. It was so hard I was convinced Saunders had hit him into me. On later viewing of the footage, Costa in the #82 overreacted and drove into me. Now my steering was at 1 o'clock and I could hear and feel a tyre disintegrating. There was ~10 minutes left at this point, so around 8 laps of pain.
To add insult to injury, the #444 joined the party and whilst being slightly quicker as I was now limping, was causing too much risk to my race. I just wanted to get to the end now.
As if by some miracle, the car made it to the end. We were so close to another 1-2, but after being in the warzones, I would take the bottom step of the podium, and the 10 points that came with it!

So after 2hrs of banger racing, I was just less than 22s off the lead, and 10s from Sanders. Had it been a clean race, I think me and Dylan would have been battling for the lead. The garage might have been split in two when we got back to it had that happened!

Our laps are all below. Ryan was super consistent in the early stages, especially in clean air. Dylan did exactly what he needed to do to bring it home. I was shocked to see the pace I managed to maintain despite the crabbing.

The lapchart shows the positions ebbing and flowing, I didn't lead for long, but Ryan and Dylan were pretty dominant in the second half of the race!

2 safety car periods this time, and only 8 laps. It seemed like longer in the car but was a welcome rest. The fastest lap went to the MX5, with no chance of us getting anywhere near that.
You can see that I led for 7 laps, Ryan and Dylan for 30!

Fastest Laps

Our fastest race laps are below:

The 2021 Lap Record set by Alan Henderson was broken, by Alan Henderson! I believe he had a Lotus Elise then, and now he had smashed it in his MX5. I am sure that car would have been battling us at the end if it had lasted the duration of the race.
The Class B record also fell, to the Ginetta of Matthew and Chris.

Even with the 3rd position, I remain top of the Championship standings. The great result for Ryan and Dylan has put them in 2nd position. Hopefully it stays like this for the rest of the season, in this order!
A massive thanks to the team again for this weekend. Saturday was one to forget, but they dug deep, working until midnight to get the cars in a good enough state to last the full 2hrs, even if a few Cupras tried to end our race early!

The next round is a 100 minute race at Oulton Park on Saturday the 21st September. With it being a single race weekend, we are doing some Friday testing as well!

Photos courtesy of Jonathan Elsey Motorsport Photography, Mick Walker and 750MC

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All the details and dates for future races we are entering can be found on the Darkside Motorsport Page.

19 09 2024

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