Last Sunday saw the first round of the Ardent Pan Car Winter Series.Very good turn out for both F1s and GTs. Unfortunately the day got off to a bad start when I dismissed my alarm rather than snoozed it!! Woke up 1hour late!! Got to the track quite late which mean we had to pit along the side of the track which turned out to be great, sat and watched the racing while I was working on the car
Managed to get out for a few sighting laps just to check the car was ok and that the new bodyshell I was using didn't catch on anything. I got put in the second heat for qualifying, this meant a bit of traffic dodging but not too bad. 1st round of qualifying got under way and I got a fairly good time in but the car felt unstable and I wasn't able to get a rhythm going round the track. I did a slow 24 lap but the top guys were doing fast 25 laps. I was running magentas all round so swapped to magenta rear purple fronts for the next round. Car felt much better, quite a bit calmed but allowed me to do faster laps. Unfortunately didn't get a clean run but still managed to improve my time slightly. Top guys were hitting 26 lappers now but they were using 2s lipo 17.5t motors which has a major advantage round this track especially. 3rd Round of qualifying and I wanted to get a 25 lapper in to guarantee a spot in the A final. This run was fairly clean and I stayed out of trouble. This allowed me to get a solid 25 lapper in and left me 5th in the A final.
Finals Time!
I really need to work on my starts as I almost got mobbed on the start by the quick reactions of Vince Formosa (not bad for an old bloke!) I almost managed to gain a place but the door was rather firmly shut and I ended up last. People ahead of me had a bit of a scrappy race but managed to fight my way back for a 5th place finish.
Second final and I got a much better start, the first lap was amazing! Everyone drove a clean first race and the couldn't have been more than a couple of millimetres between the cars going round corner. A couple of time it was 3 abreast! I managed to grab third place by the end of the first lap and the car felt great. Unfortunately about 6 laps later I hit one of the yellow kirbs at speed and it left me facing the other way in 7th place. I manged to fight back to 5th and was having a fantastic battle with Mark Simpson. Managed to get past him going onto the straight. I thought I was going to have some trouble keeping him behind me until he was took out by a back marker which ended his race (shame as it was a fantastic battle). I managed to cruise round to take 4th place. This allowed me to take 4th place overall or 1st of the 1s lipo cars :)
Many thanks to John and team for a fantastic event and I can't wait for the next one.
Here are few pics from the event, thanks to Vince Formosa for the taking them. There are fair few more over on www.rccircuitcars.com so head over and have a look.
Fantastic Shell by Tony Cooke:
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