Brands Hatch GP - 15th August 2015 - TTRS rounds 9 & 10

The 15th of August brought our second visit of the year to Brands Hatch, only this time we were fortunate enough to be racing on the full GP circuit as part of the Lotus festival. Timing for the event was also ideal for me as it's my local circuit so made sense to give the compact I've been building for the compact cup it's first competitive run out, in actual fact it was the first time it had ever been used on track.

On arrival there where 2 other cars in class E of the Toyo Tires Racing Saloons series. A honda Civic and ford puma, I had a feeling that the civic would be quicker than me but was unsure on how I'd get on against the Puma. Also had around 8 class F PBMW car's to compete with as their laps times looked very similar to the compacts.

Having had the front geometry set and brakes bled by Gary Feakins racing the day before I went out for qualifying with fingers and toes crossed. The car immediately felt pretty good and not too different from the PBMW other than a little looser on the back. Finished the 15 minute qualifying session in 30th position overall, 1st in class E with a best time of 1:58.208, approximately 3 seconds slower than my best time in the PBMW last year but reasonable enough for the cars first time on track.

With a couple of minor tweaks on the damper setting I headed out for race 1, Had a great battle with Mark Owen and Edwin Scott in the PBMW's, although occasionally a little too close!. As predicted the power of the Civic on Class E meant I had to settle for 2nd in class although neither the civic or the Mini Cooper S of Richard Ibrahim ever got out of sight. Ended up 22nd overall with the best lap time dropping to 1:56.936

Race 2 didn't go quite so well, a broken engine mount meant I had to take things a little easy in the second half of the race however still manage to finish 18th overall and bring the fastest lap time down by another second to 1:55.975