North Weald - 4th April 2010

Having watched through the video footage from the previous event at North Weald I left for the second event of the year. I was positive about improving on the previous efforts in round 2 which was back at North Weald and looking forward to the event which had attracted 20 competitors in my class.

However all was to go slightly wrong just a mile from the venue when I managed to hit a deer damaging the front bumper, Thankfully no other damage, or so I thought.

So the pre practise preparation involved lots of gaffer tape and bumper repairs rather than the normal thinking about the task in hand and walking the course, but as I was there I may as well carry on, all be it in a slightly worse mood than normal.

The two practise runs went to plan although when returning to the paddock after the second I noticed that the engine management light was on.

With no way of telling why the engine management light had come on and not wanting to cause any unnecessary damage I was left with a difficult decision to make as to wether to carry on with the timed runs on not.

Rightly or wrongly I though having traveled this far I'd better at least put 1 timed run in which despite having visions of exploding engines in the back of my mind was good enough for 10th out of 20 in class, and points towards the SDMC speed league, so the day wasn't a complete loss.

On arriving home and plugging the car into a diagnostics computer in became apparent that the secondary air pump which pumps warm air into air the inlet when the engine's cold had got damaged in the earlier accident, So in hindsight I could have carried on.