Pro Cup Series – Friday 10 June 2011.

The practice sessions went well and we managed to find a reasonable set up on what is a very tight and bumpy circuit layout. I have to say the organisers did their very best in designing a layout that could make the most of the area available at this location for a temporary race circuit. We had not made any changes to our gearing or final drive arrangement for this particular venue and new from the outset that we may struggle a little with gearing. As it was we only used 1^st,2^nd and 3^rd gears  around the lap but it was OK, not perfect but better than I at first imagined.

Saturday 11 June 2011.

Qualifying could have been a bit of a disaster but luckily the session was stopped when partly run due to a malfunction with the official timing set up. I had gone out at the start of the session and on the 3^rd lap managed to put the car in to the tyre wall on the outside of the tight turn 2. I had turned in as normal and had not been able to see an oil line across the track and straight away I under steered wide without being able to stop the car and made contact with the tyre wall. There had been no oil flags displayed up to that point in time, though I did notice in each subsequent lap the marshal had become aware of the situation and put out the oil flags. Too late for me but everyone was now aware of oil on the circuit.

The stoppage to this qualifying session allowed me to come in to the pit lane and have the damaged front section of the car removed and I was able to resume the session though with the front tracking out of alignment which didn’t help too much my lap times.

Despite the front end damage we managed to record 6^th fastest time and a place on the front 3 rows of the grid, something that was important for this tight and bumpy circuit for starting the race.

Race 1 -  was held on Saturday afternoon after qualifying, so a busy Saturday but relaxing Sunday for the second race. I managed to make a decent start and maintain position and chased down Jack throughout the race. I was slightly faster than Jack as he had massive over steer with his car and we enjoyed a really tight fight to the flag. I eventually finished 5^th overall, 3^rd in class with all the first top 9 finishers recording lap times within 3 tenths of a second of one another. For the first 6 finishers we basically finished nose to tail across the line. An exciting though fairly uneventful opening race.

Sunday 12 June 2011

Race 2 -  With the top finishers from race 1 all within a few tenths of a second of one another it was imperative to try and get a good start and try and again some sort of advantage in the early stages of the lap.

I didn’t make the best of starts though recovered a little and lost one place to Khun Toy around turn 1 and into turn 2. There was a bit of jostling and bumping for position on the opening laps, I was prepared to lose a place or two if it meant keeping the car in one piece but not to a point where I would be overrun by those behind. Anyway we all settled down after a few laps but unfortunately I had a broken 1^st gear in my car which meant I couldn’t exit the two tight corners as I wanted and maintain my overall starting position of 6^th place. At one point I had managed to get up to 5^th place but was stuck behind Khun Toy who had  passed me in the first two corners of the race. Around the full lap I was slightly quicker than Toy but where it counted to get a quick exit from the slower corners I didn’t have the 1^st gear that I needed that may have offered me the passing move that I needed. We had a very close and fun race together and had a good laugh and thumbs up afterwards on the slowing down lap.

The slide down the field wasn’t too dramatic though it didn’t do too much for gaining  reasonable championship points, in the end I finished 7^th overall and 5^th in class, so a lot of room for improvement when we next race at Kaeng Krachan.