Arrived at the circuit mid day Thursday with the intension of servicing the car, changing the discs and pads and giving it a good check over, however the opportunity to have an hours testing came up and I couldn't resist, turned out to be a well worth while hour although a little daunting being on track with a number of the front runners for the 24 hour race, hopefully I didn't get it the way too much. It was quite comical leaving the pit lane and glancing in the rear view mirror to see the Ginetta LMP3 car coming out behind me.
Managed to get the car serviced and changed the worn out front discs and pads for some pagid discs and Mintex 1166 pads, so the car was all ready to go before qualifying on Friday morning, Qualifying went well, found plenty of space and ended up happy with qualifying 8th for race 1 and 9th for race 2 with a best time of 2:45.986, which was my fastest lap of GP circuit to date.
Started race 1 in 8th, had a reasonable start but could have been better ended up having a great race with Rob cooper and Matt Wileman throughout the 30 hour race, Rob initially got in front but after about 20 minutes was caught out by a back marker and I was able to pass and just about hold on until the end. with just a lap or 2 to go I was running in a strong 7th place when approaching the arena curves I saw contact between Matt Wileman and Alex ball leaving them both spinning in the middle of the circuit, a brief trip off of the circuit to avoid making contact and I was up to 5th place, which despite Rob Coopers best efforts I thankfully managed to hold on to until the chequered flag to achieve my best result in PBMW to date and an improved best lap of 2;44.768
Race 2 was on the Saturday morning. Unfortunately the bright sunshine had been replaced with heavy rain about an hour before we were due out, come the start time the rain had stopped but the track was still wet, starting in 9th I again got a reasonable get away but as had proved to be the case in the wet races last year did struggle slightly with judging the wet grip levels and particularly found myself not pushing as quickly as I could have done, Early on we got held up by a couple of cars in the class above who were having their own battle and also struggling for grip but once it dried out they were able to use the power advantage and pull away, ended up have a great race with Tom Ibrahim throughout the 2nd half of the race with Tom being faster through the first 1/2 of the lap and me faster through the second half, eventually just about managed to beat Tom to 10th after getting a run on him down the Wellington straight and just about holding the place through Brooklands and Luffield.
All in all a great start to the 2015 championship, really looking forward to Brands Hatch in a few weeks.
