19th September 2018
Having had two really successful weekends at Rockingham and Knockhill, I felt very confident coming to Silverstone, but also a little on edge, was Lady Luck going to desert me at this critical point?
We came up for a session at Izone on Wednesday evening which was useful in preparing me for the next few days, then had two days of testing on the circuit. I felt like I was ok on speed, but certainly not the quickest to be honest, and that showed in my qualifying times for which I got awarded a P4 and P5 for the two races on Saturday.
The first race was a bit of a disaster initially. Poor Adam spun in front of me and had the most awful time as other cars cannoned into him, which eventually caused the race to be stopped so they could clear the debris from the track. With the restart, I started in pole, and from there managed to maintain my position and win the race. It was a hollow victory though, I was more concerned that Adam was ok and the team would be able to fix his car in time for the second race. It was hard to smile when the cameras were on me on the podium, I was so unhappy about what had happened.
Fortunately, and with the team doing an amazing job on the car, Adam was back for the second race, which was great news. So I was starting in P5, and after a bit of shuffling around and gaining a couple of places I was still back in 5th after a couple of incidents. I waited for the race to calm down a bit then slowly picked my way through and by lap 11 I was somehow leading again! I managed to keep the others behind me for the rest of the race and bring the car home and know I had the pole position for Sunday. I felt much better after this race win and could smile like I meant it!
Sunday, and the weather still behaving for a dry race. Starting pole at Silverstone isn’t really an advantage on road tyres, and with the first corner away from you, and so as I thought, Patrick Kibble took an early lead from P2 so I stayed with him and managed to swoop up the inside of him through Brooklands for my only overtake that race. I could see in my rear view mirror that there was an almighty scrap for 2nd going on so I edged away and broke the tow and prayed they wouldn’t catch me. It was then a very lonely race for me, the most exciting bit was my brakes not working very well near the end of the race so I was glad to have pulled an almost 6 sec lead as I was going very wide into the corners! Anyway I nursed the car home for my third win of the weekend and couldn’t believe how lucky I was. I was made up that Adam came in 2nd after his incident at the start of the weekend, but gutted for Fin Green who was such a team player in that race as he spun out on the last corner. Watching the race back later, he drove a brilliant race, and didn’t deserve for that to happen.
Finally I would like to thank my mechanic James and all the team at Elite Motorsport for such a slick operation. They never fail to make sure the cars are absolutely perfect and would be worthy winners of the team championship. I just need to get my head down and focus on the last round at Brands Hatch GP and try not to let any pressure get to me.