Colin Peach

So its Friday the day of qualiyfiing - we are a day ahead of normal becasue of the britcar 24hr race lasting from saturday till sunday, any way back on topic, i arrived at a very very wet silverstone to find that the "organisers" have let all sorts of people park there cars/caravans/trucks wherever they like and not followed the paddock plan, so my first mission was to find somewhere to setup our awning that will be our pit area for the weekend.

whilst setting everything up i get a text from the team letting me know they are just leaving!!! its 12pm already and we need to get the car scrutineered and and out for qualy before 5! Any way time ticks on still no car .. 3 oclock still no car ... 4 oclock still no car ... 4:50 the car finaly turns up at the track, in a last minute panic we take the car  - still on the trailor straight to the scrutineering bay , Rick Andy and Phil get the car of the trailor and scrutinered whilst i get my race suit on, luckaly the car passes but we have to make some adjustments for the wet but time is running out , we leave the scrutineers bay and head straight out on to the track where my heart rate drops back to a sort of normal level... for a few seconds as the cars then proceed to the track, and did i mention its raining hard, very hard, out on track i could see nothing of the car infront , just the occasional glimps of its ulta bright rain light. i can only compare it to following a big lorry down the motorway in heary rain with your wipers turned off .

Being the cars first propper outing i thought id take it extra carefull and was able to easly follow the car infront, i thought it was a good idea to follow this red car number 20 infront as he seemed to be going at a sencible pace but evevn then the standing water was horrendus , i could feel the car aquaplaning everywhere so bad that it could not even travel in a straight line, saying that i only had one real "moment" on the last corner of the last lap when the car decided it fancyed going sideways and heading straight towards a rather solid looking pit wall, i managed to catch the car and hold it in a slide and then got it pointing the rightway as i crossed the line , the car it self was wasnt great tho, we were down on power by quite a lot and the breaks were very incosistant - sometimes locking the left wheel sometime locking the right but at the end of the day it was job done - qualyfied and kept the car in one peice.

Race Day

We woke on staurday to the sun , it was a much much better day, we got to the car and made a few tweaks to help the cars handeling in the dry, other than that all we had to do  was get the slick tyres fitted on to the wheels check the oil and fuel and away we go.

So of i go to  find our tyre supplyer/fitters van only to find that he went home the night before, im not entierly sure why a comapany who is comited to selling and supporting tyres to sports2000 decided to leave half way through a race meeting but they did!

Any way that left us with a bit of a problem , luckly for us ProTyre who supply michelin tyres for another series were kind enough to fit our yokohamas for us ( thanks guys).

So the big moments here tigger 2 ( as i call it ) is set for its first race since the late 80's.

Lining up on the grid was a bit of a mixed feeling we qualyfied 22nd out of 31 cars which i was pleased with
especialy considering it was the cars 1st outing , the terencial rain, the rubish engine and the scarey breaks .. but it still seemed along way from the front where we were last season.

The red lights go out and i get a good launch of the line and make a few places,turning into the first corner there was a huge crash going on around me, i chose to take a realy wide line and drop some places to make sure the new car didnt get damaged and that was sucsessfull , continueing on it was actualy quite exciting racing mid pack , lots of overtaking was going on and i was trying my best to keep in the pack,
then after the 3rd lap my clutch stopped working , i did think about retireing the car but thought whatthe hell its my only race this year lets keeping going.

As it turned out the hewland race gear box is pretty good at going through the gears without using the clutch and i managed to even pick up a few more places before the chequred flag .

Back in the paddock we had a quick look at the car before it was packed back onto the trailor and some faily good news , the clutch wasnt working becasue of a small oil leak where a pipe wasnt tightend properly - cheep fix RESULT!

22 /31