Santander British Grand Prix

Wow, just got back from a great trip to the beach! Though, it might take a while to vacuum all the sand from the cockpit....

Bugger!!

Same here Tristan, one little lapse in concentration was fatal and it was going so well...
Great racing all round while it lasted.

Anyone who says simracing isn't a real sport is now invited to smell the armpits of my T-shirt after 51 laps in an F1-car around Silverstone. So pleased with my 6th in the end. :-)

Sunday: Just watched the replay of the broadcast. Nice job there Lynn. Great fight between Chris and Ryan in the closing laps. Grats on the win Chris.

I hear you George, I need a qualified sports masseur to deal with my back after that race!

I was pleased to scrape into the top-10 shootout and could've done more in it, but P9 was a reasonable effort.

At the start, having avoided Steve Taylor's adventures through the formation lap, I had deliberately not warmed my tyres as my front left had been overheating. Unfortunately, this meant I went straight on at turn 1. I carefully rejoined, but was feeling stoopid after understeering out of turn 5 as well. I fell behind Jose Casanovas, who had a spin two turns later. After edging back up to P7, I was about 3s behind the top 6, and that was as good as it got for a while as they had a merry time and lapped 1s quicker than me constantly. Steve Taylor crept up behind me, but as soon as I duped him into following me on to a wider line at Copse, he had a spin by trying to go a little quicker. That's how I saw it, anyway ;)

I then had a spin at the surprisingly evil kerb at Luffield and tapped my rear wing against the barrier. Thankfully I had enough momentum to get across the gravel trap, but I was down to P10. From then on, though, the only way was up as I pitted soon after and was not far off the pace of the leaders in the remaining two-thirds of the race at times.

Others had misfortune and I nearly had the chance to catch Tim Brook for P3, but by then my tyres were gone and backmarkers just provided too much of a challenge for me. I didn't want to be greedy, I'd already seen four cars crash out when they were ahead. P4 makes my best result yet in these cars.

First off, what a race! Some brilliant racing in there from lots of people after watching the broadcast. Unlucky to Tristan and Darren also.

First off I want to send a huge thanks out to Steve on his return for some great work throughout the last week in preparation for this, we spent many an hour getting the setup and strategy right for us and it certainly paid off.

Practice:
Well with Steve being out of the car for a while and it being my home race we decided to start as early as last Saturday with our preparation here and early on I was hooking it up nicely and felt more comfortable than I normally do come race day so I worked on my strategy with a lot more care this time and felt I had something competetive.

Quali:
Practice had shown me passing was going to be extremely hard here and with my strategy I knew I was going to have to really nail a lap to not start too far back. Managed to get through Q1 with no thrills and spills, did a mock Q2 run at the end and was 3 tenths faster than I'd been on the super softs which made me feel confident about the next session. Q2 I managed to hook a lap which was good enough for 5th which was about right considering most ahead of me were on softs or mediums.

Race:
I got a really good launch but unfortunately Ryan ahead of me didn't so I had to back off and lost a bit of momentum, Steve had to take some avoiding action to not hit me and then I was stuck on the outside of T1 praying as cars flew across towards me from the inside, luckily I managed to miss all that and slotted in on the leading group battle. Just let everything come to me as the strategy was always for the long game here, I was being held up in the dirty air early on behind Ryan and as I knew 2 of the guys behind me were on softer tyres I didn't put up too much of a fight when they made moves. Settled in for the start of an epic 5 car battle for 2nd which lasted until the first pitstops and then continued with me and Ryan until I managed to sneak past just before he pitted for the first time. I mistakenly then pitted on lap 22 when I was intending to go further but I knew this wasn't much of an issue as the tyres would still easily last the distance. Caught Ryan again quite quickly after the stop and then was very shocked to pass a beached Tristan! I saw Darren starting to pull away and realised I needed to get pass Ryan this stint promptly and managed to make a real nice move stick up the inside of T3. Gently gapped Ryan to a few seconds and was just starting to take some time out of Darren on his softs when Steve came on the radio telling me he'd spun! I was still very shocked as I passed him still make sandcastles on the beach and suddenly realised I wasn't in a fight for a podium anymore but a fight for a WIN, GULP.
I knew I had harder tyres than Ryan so from this point on I just settled in to a calm pace, waiting to see if he could make them last 1 stop as he was planning originally or if he needed to pit. When he pitted and came out 13 seconds behind I made a decision that I was ok if he caught me up to 1 second a lap, I'd still have plenty til the end, his first lap out he took more than this out of me so I upped my pace a tiny bit and that turned out to be the perfect margin to keep his chase manageable. Saw no point having a spin and giving up 5 seconds and then having to push really hard to keep him at bay, so just kept watching the gap and when it got to the stage he needed 2 seconds per lap I really eased it back. I knew if he got too close I could dip in to the low 32s/high 31s but thankfully I had enough in hand not to crank up the pace. It was a great effort by Ryan to put pressure on me and I was nervous about the chance of a first podium let alone a win!

Feels great to get a first win outside of Touring Cars here! Hopefully I can continue with some strong results now. Also extremely pleased to finally pay back the faith Steve put in me when signing me up to the team.

Thanks for a great broadcast Lynn!

Nice win Chris!

I totally forgot about the race and never practiced until about 30-40 minutes before event so I was'nt expecting much.

I missed the top 10 not too surprising.

I made a good start was upto 6th after T1 avoiding any drama. I just tried to stay on track as I got used to car which was not very balanced A few guys caught up and got by then I had a good battle with Brian Fairly until my 1st stop.

From there I was kinda not battleing anyone for most of race and gained spots by attrition I was hoping not to get lapped and made a mistake on last lap and spun @ club and Chris lapped me. he probably would of on next lap anyway just glad he did'nt get caught out by my spin.. 5th place from starting 13 th so I'm pleased with result.

great broadcast my g/f watched it all with me afterwards. well done...!

Congratulations Chris Hack on your well executed win. It's nice to see a new name in the win column...lol. Looks like a home town reunion up there 1st through 4th. And a shout out to George Pol for a nice finish.

Thanks again Lynn for coverage of the event, you have all the coolest gizmo's and gadgets it's better then ESPN!

See you all in Germany.

Congratulations to Chris Hack on a great victory and to the podium finishers Ryan Walker and Tim Brook. Also....thank you to Lynn for the broadcast.

PRE RACE

After a three month break from racing it took me a while to get back into things. I started practising for the event and had my fist times somewhere in the 1m38xxx range. I brought this down to where I was able to run at around 1m35xxx to low 1m36xxx at the race start.

QUALI

I managed to make it into the top ten for final qualification and was not expecting too much from this session. I was 10th for allot of the session after posting two flying laps. I pitted and had time for one more timed lap which I was able to better my time and slotted in 7th on the grid.

RACE

My rustiness showed as Mark Dowling alluded to. It was like I had never been in a F1 race before. I went off track early in the warm up lap and then spun it on the hanger straight, trying to get heat into the tyres. Rookie stuff....but it was not to end there.

The lights went green and I made a good start but had to move right to avoid Chris Hack who had to lift for the car in front of him. After watching the replay, I saw that Anthony James had moved left off the start which led to some contact, although I never showed any damage. I sincerely hope that Anthony did not have any damage either.

Turn one was hectic and I was one of those who had to end up going wide through the turn, losing places in doing so. I crossed the line after lap one in 9th place and tried to settle in and find my pace.

I managed to pass some cars and closed in on Mark D but spun around the old T1 by going wide.
Brian Fairley and I had some great racing, going side by side into the corners but my race end was not too far away, as I put a wheel on the grass heading on to the hanger straight, spun and lost my front wing. I got going again but did not take the next turn slow enough as a result of not having the down force and that ended my race.

I look forward to the next event in Germany and hopefully I will have improved enough to be able to, at least, complete the event. Also congratulations to all the finishers...well done.