Here’s my first blog everyone – Racing at Spa

Hi everyone!!
This is my first one of these so forgive me for a slightly impromptu start. I’m writing this just after my return from rounds five and six of British GT at Spa. I went to Spa full of hope, coming off the back of a perfect couple of races in the F5000. Its arguably one of the best circuits in the world and this was my chance to get the no5 Ferrari back where it should be in the championship.

Practice was very difficult as our races were mixed in with the FIA GT4 cars and this made finding clear space a nightmare. I got up to speed very quickly with the circuit so we spent the sessions trying to find a setup with the new dampers. We were able to find reasonable speed from the car and I knew qualifying was not going to be an issue. But, we were struggling with tyre degradation, and the changes we were making weren’t doing what we expected.

Qualifying didn’t start ideally as we had alot of work to do between sessions so were released mid pack at the start. I was able to get my tyres up to temp quickly and found some clear-ish space for my first flying lap. This put me straight to p1 so we tried for one more lap but couldn’t find any space so parked it. We dropped behind the new McLaren by the end of the session but this made very little difference as it was an invited car and was not scoring points so this set me up perfectly for race 1.

After a good nights sleep race one kicked off early so conditions were looking good for a really quick race. I was feeling reasonably confident going into the start and as the lights went out I was level pegging with the McLaren but was sat on the outside for turn one and had to give in, to my surprise, to the Porsche of reigning champ Ashburn as he slipped by with some incredible straight line speed helped by a performance break this weekend from the officials. This was no issue however as I quickly got back past him into Les Combes the very next lap. Following this I settled in behind the McLaren conserving the tyres as I knew that was a higher priority than battling the non point scoring McLaren.

This came to end all too soon though, a few laps later exiting Stavelot 2 I picked up the exit curb as usual but the car just wouldn’t come off it. I used more lock and it was still locked to it until it speared sideways and went towards the barriers. I managed to catch it and continued slowly back to the pits which was a feat in itself as the other cars were passing me going over 100mph faster than me as I limped through Blanchimont. The Scuderia Vittoria team quickly found the problem to be a broken rear toe link but we lost time changing it so we then used the rest of the race as a test session.

Race 2 was almost over before it started for me, as although Charlie made a good start, and moved forward his pace was quite good early on, it started to drop off at the end of the stint. The team chose to pit him early and get me in the car to try and charge up the field like I did in race 2 at Oulton Park. There was a reason for his pace dropping though, the tyres had already gone away and as I got in, the car just got slower and slower.. I fought on and got the car home in the points but it was far from our greatest result. When we reached parc ferme I saw the tyres for myself and they weren’t though to canvas, no better still, they were through to the metal cords so looking back at it I was relieved just to get it home in the points.

Despite all of this there were some positives to come out of the weekend. That is, we now have testing planned at all of the remaining circuits in the championship. The dampers are going back and will be sorted so we should be able to come back fighting in the final three meetings of the year and really finish in the style we started. Winning.

These tests combined with the Historic races I’m doing mean there will be no ‘Summer Break‘ for me but I just can’t wait to do the graft and get back to where I should be. My next chance will come at the Silverstone Classic next weekend July 22nd to 24th where I will be racing the Heskith 308E against Mum and Dad in the headline F1 Races.