I’m afraid this is going to be a rather long report as Anglesey was a double header. The International circuit layout on the Saturday and the coastal layout on the Sunday. At this stage of the season I’m lying in 3rd place and quite a few points off 1st, so needed to have a good weekend to stand any chance of winning the championship.
Well, after almost 10 hours of stop/start driving we arrived at the circuit on the Thursday night, ready for our test day on the Friday. It had been a long day of trawling through traffic, so after getting the car off the trailer and into our pit garage we put our tents up, sunk a few beers and it was off to bed.
Friday. Test Day.
Waking up at Anglesey circuit was a real joy. The weather was gorgeous, the views stunning and having a nice relaxed breakfast together with our other competitor friends made me realise how much I love everything that competing in this series brings and how lucky I am to be able to do it. Anyway, briefing out of the way and it was time to spend as much of the day as possible learning the circuit. The circuit was a real gem and much, much better than I expected, although the back straight is probably the most terrifying part of any track I ever driven. A bit like Corum at Snetterton but then flat out through the gears, very fast, constantly bending and with an uphill, blind 90 degree left turn at the end. I did a few 10 minute sessions and all was good apart from a duff gearbox temperature reading which was annoying. Out for another quick session and a few laps in I shifted into 5th. The car violently juddered and lost drive. I slowed, put the clutch in and then went back down the gears. I then accelerated through the gears again to see what would happen and the same problem occured. I pulled into the pits thinking that I’d broken my box and that my weekend was over.
We let the car cool down whilst having some lunch and then went out again to see if the same problem occured. This time the car started jerking slightly straight out of the pits and continued getting worse. All of a sudden I completely lost drive and came to a halt on the side of the track. This was not looking good and I had to get a tow back to the pits. My gut instinct told me that this time I’d had a fueling problem, although the tank gauge was reading 15 ltrs. I filled the tank up with an extra 20ltrs, turned the key and the engine fired straight away. Therefore, I headed out on track again to try and work out what was going on. Weirdly, I noticed that the fuel gauge was now reading 20ltrs and not 35ltrs as I’d expected and that my gearbox temp readings were looking more believable. The engine was now pulling fine and I also had all my gears back. Completely confused and unable to work out what was going on I gave Scuffers a call. Within a few seconds of describing the various issues he told me that I had an earthing problem. This made complete sense as there were so many different problems occuring. However, as the car was now working as it should, we were not able to do tests and isolate the fault. So we started removing cable from all the earthing points on the car, cleaning the contact patches, lubricating and re-fitting them. We checked the battery and then completely removed the Cartek electrical cut-out unit for an inspection as they are known to fail quite often. Having said that, I have never had a problem with my current unit and as it turned out, there was nothing wrong with it. Again, cleaned and lubricated it got wired and bolted back in. The test day was now over, so it would be a case of checking everything was back to normal on the morning of competiton day during the practice sessions. With our jobs finished we all went for a walk across the track to the cliffs to try and find a little beach that we had spotted on google earth. Sure enough there it was, a tiny, secluded beach which we had completely to ourselves for the evening. After enjoying a lovely refreshing swim we headed back to the pits to relax and have a nice bbq. On retreating back to our tents we realised that we had a problem. No one had enforced that the competitor only camping area had remained free from general visitors and so we were greated by rows of tents, surrounded by loud drunk youngsters blasting out music from their car sound systems.
Saturday, Anglesey International circuit.
After about 3 hours sleep we emerged from our tents feeling quite angry and making as much noise as possible in an attempt to get our own back. After getting changed into my race gear and attending the driver briefing I got back to the pits to find everyone cleaning my car. Amusingly, they had all got fed up with the state of it and couldn’t live with it any longer. Result!!! Time for warm up. By now I could navigate the track without thinking about it and started to concentrate on lines, finding grippier parts of the track and generally reducing my laptimes. I was quite happy with my progress and was really loving the circuit as it really suits the smaller, more nimble car. It’s also very hard on brakes and tyres and I could see the heavier 4wd cars struggling slightly to get into and out of all the hairpins and other tight turns efficiently. This is where I would make up my time hopefully.
The practice session then got underway and I started leaning on the car more as my confidence grew. It was in this session that I set my fastest laptime of the day, a 1.34. Although my tyres were still ok, I think they were now getting to the point where they were past their best and I sort of realised that I probably wouldn’t go any faster. I could see by the time sheets that I was fastest in class and also faster than a number of the Pro cars on slicks. Hopefully this would be fast enough to beat them in the point scoring sessions and that they weren’t just sandbagging.
Qualifying. Just as I suspected, I struggled to go any faster but still did enough to take the full 50 points available. I was only half a second up on my closest rival though so knew I couldn’t relax in the final.
Final. I set an early banker lap just to make sure I’d get some points on the board and then went for it. I thought I’d done a really good lap but came in to find out I was over a second down on my previous effort. Not good!!! The competitor leading my class in his Evo was ahead. Weighing just over a tonne and packing around 750 bhp he was very fast on the straight parts where I will always struggle. So I headed back out to try and nail one good lap. My tyres were already up to temperature so I attacked the circuit as hard as I could and got back down to a 1.34 again and pitted. The Evo was still out and my pit crew told me that he was really flying around on a fast lap. This was worrying, but apparently as he came onto the pit straight he was pushing hard and had a moment, getting very out of shape and losing time. I’d pipped him by a tenth!!! I later found out that he’d unfortunately broken his gearbox and engine in the process, meaning his weekend was over. This was a real shame, as I was really loving the close competition. Anyway, with the podium presentations over it was time for another bbq and some beers to see the evening out. Yet again however, our plans to get a decent nights sleep was scuppered. The organisers had decided it would be a great idea to organise a full-on drum & bass night at the circuit with the loudest sound system you’ve ever heard. There was no way that any living creature within a 5 mile radius was getting any sleep until this was over!!!
Sunday, Anglesey Coastal circuit.
After a few hours sleep it was time to get going again and I must admit that I wasn’t feeling particularly enthusiastic. Sleep deprivation and driving around a humid race track all day do not go hand in hand. As soon as I hit the track for warm up however, all of my moodiness dissapeared. I had some fresh tyres on and was loving the different circuit layout which now included the twisty ‘corkscrew’ section but which omitted two longish straights. This layout would suit my car even more then. By the end of this session my best lap was a few seconds lower than my nearest rival and I was infact ahead of some of the Pro Class who were on slicks.
Due to a sudden downpour and the track looking quite slippery, I decided not to do the practice session as I knew there was no chance of reducing my laptime. Instead I just watched the others go round. At this point I realised that Phil Glew (former Clio Cup champion, BTTC driver and recently a Works Lotus Sport UK team Evora S driver in the Britsh GT championship) had been given the keys to one of the very powerful Pro Class Impreza’s, running slicks. This could be rather interesting I thought.
With the weather back to normal and the track dry once again, it was time for qually. As before, my tactic was to put in an early banker lap just to make sure that I would get some points and then try and improve during the rest of the session. The car ran beautifully once again and for this session put me 1st in class with a 1.12 lap and 4th overall. This left me feeling fairly confident for the final as I was about 4 seconds faster than the next person in my class.
Within no time we were all lined up again, ready to head out for the finals. The weather was still lovely and the track conditions good, however one thing that I was struggling with was the amount of tyre debris on the back straight. Back in the pits after every session I had literally been picking handfulls of melted tyre from the insides of my wheels. There was so much that within a lap I was left with the effect of my wheels being completely unbalanced and going down the fast back straight with the steering wheel behaving like a road- workers kango gun was not pleasant. Anyway, I tried to block that out and just went for it. Coming back into the pits to check pressures etc I was told that I was in 1st but that I was about a second off my previous pace and lying in 5th overall. I wasn’t happy about being slower and went straight back out for another attempt. Again, the vibrations through the steering were awful but I managed to reduce my previous best time by another 1/10th and get back into 4th overall just as it started raining. Out of interest I ended up about 8/10ths off the pace of Phil Glew in the slick shod Impreza. Presentations over and a quick shower to remove the horrible sticky champagne that I’d been covered in and it was time to drive home again.
So, a superb weekend with 2 x wins and maximum points in the bag. This now puts me in 1st place in the championship. However, with the last event of the season at Snetterton another double header, there are still plently of points up for grabs to decide the championship winner. One thing is for sure though, with Snetterton suiting the big power 4wd cars and more potential for bad weather, I will have to drive very well to stand any chance. I have got one secret weapon though. Scuffers will be driving the car on the 300 circuit and I can’t wait to see what the car is really capable of. Watch this space!!!
International Circuit video
Coastal Circuit video
