Mallory Park rounds 13/14 2012

After getting my best result of the season at Donington last time out and winning in the EKL at whilton mill I was keen to keep the run of good form going.

Qualifying

The Session in general wasn’t too bad I spent most of the time trying to get used to the track again, there wasn’t much traffic and I could put my foot down for 90% of the session, However the result from the session was my worst of the season. I was hoping to put it on or close to the front row but I actually ended up 10th and 7th on the grid. My 2 times were very consistent 56.20 and 56.21 can’t really complain about that but would have been nice to be further up the grid. On the brightside I can say that during the 2012 season I didn’t qualify outside of the top 10!!

Race 1

Starting 10th on the grid I had a lot of work to do. Having spoken to Malcolm from Driver-coaching.com about how to improve I felt confident and during the course of the race I actually dropped my PB by half a second to 55.7 still not at the top of the time sheet but I was getting there. For the actual race I got a bit of a poor start due to not really knowing it was happening, thankfully a few drivers in front had the same issue of not being able to see the boards being desplayed so it didn’t effect me too much.
As the race wore on I slowly picked off places and worked my way up to 6th place. Most of my overtakes were done down the main straight into Gerrards. I eventually finished 7th overall which was 6th in class so a fairly decent result at the end of the day.

Race 2

Inbetween both races it started to rain so we put my new tyres on to give me better grip, thankfully they gave us 2 laps to warm up so I got them scrubbed in before the start. Being 7th on the grid I was able to see the boards and knew the start was about to happen. So getting a much better start than last time out, I was straight up to 6th place past Clive Morphett and on the tail of the MK3 car of Jim Davis. Knowing that Jim was technically in a different race I wasn’t so force full with trying to get past. Eventually the track started to dry and Jim pulled away up ahead there was a battle between Matt Wallis and Ben Rowe sadly for them the battle ended with them both on the grass at turn 1 but this promoted me to 4th overall (3rd in class) equalling my highest championship result.
As the race wore on I was prodomidently on my own and as we past the normal race distance (13mins +1 lap) I was still in 4th place but Rob Wells was closing in all of the time. He eventually managed to get past me with about 3 laps togo, However I managed to put the pressure on and he made a mistake at the hairpin allowing me to slip back past. Despite him putting a lot of pressure on and Ben Rowe closing in I managed to hold onto 4th place and take the 3rd place spot in class.

Equalling my result at donington and ending what had been a fairly negative season on a high note was great! Some how despite only crossing the finishing line 6 times this year I managed to improved on my 2011 championship position and get 10th place!