With a car that is generally strong in a straight line I was feeling confident coming into this round. Snetterton has plenty of long straights and a giant mixture of different corners as well, which should on paper play into our car. Snetterton was also the first place I ever drove the car, on a track day which was chaos!
Coming from a solid days testing on the Friday I was happy and ready to get going. We tried running the lowest drag setting we could run, but found little time increase so ended up going back to a low/medium setting as it was a bit more comfortable. We had a slight issue with the lid coming off the water header tank in the last session but replaced the cap and got ready for Quali the next day.
Qualifying didn’t go to plan. I managed my outlaps and a single flying lap before the header tanks lid was blown off again. After a spin because of all the water suddenly on the rears I made it into the pits. Massive thanks to the team who took the rear body work off and fitted an entirely new header tank/lid and refilled the system in record time, allowing me to get back out for a final outlap to check that it had fixed the issue. Because of only managing two flying laps I would start second and fourth in the two races respectively, but with the issue fixed I was still feeling good.
Race one I got a really solid start and took the lead, followed by Danny Andrews and Richard Morris. With a lead of about 2 seconds on lap 3 it started to drizzle. It may have contributed but I was struggling to keep the pace up in the car and Danny began to reel me in. I then made a slight mistake at Coram while watching Danny and fell to second place. With the drizzle stopping and Danny in front I found the pace that I had lost and began to push him as hard as possible. Danny drove very well and after trying for several laps couldn’t get past, finishing in a close second place.
Race two and while waiting on the grid the heavens opened. Everyone on dry tyres. The start was very good for me, going from 4th to 2nd before the first corner. By the end of the first lap Danny and I already had a very large gap to third. However, while braking for the first corner I made a slight mistake while downshifting which cause me to lock both rears and spin off into the gravel, ending my race. I watched Danny cruise to a comfortable win followed by Phil Hutchins in second from the marshals post.
Once the car was back from the race it was completely full of gravel, more than any car I’ve personally seen. Mainly due to how the recovery crew scooped it out. A massive thanks to Mittell Cars and everyone who helped clean the car out afterwards in the rain as otherwise I think it would have taken about a week.
