Donington Park Saturday 6th April

Race one

www.dwmotorsportphotography.com/

The Porsche club weren’t alone in the paddock there was a grand array of Mazda MX5’s, Citroën 2cv’s and BMW’s to name just a few but, however entertaining this made the day it did push our races rather far apart. With our first race at 12:15 we had plenty of time to get to grips with the nespresso machine and test Elaine’s delicious homemade cakes just to make sure they didn’t affect the car weights when consumed by the drivers.

We had great hopes for this first race after the fantastic qualifying times produced by all the drivers and with reports coming back from each one of them that the cars were performing much better following the adaption’s made by Hartech after the last test day at Donington.

Marcus got a good start into the race quoting “seemingly I have mastered launching the car on the new tyres, but quickly I found how much slower my car is on acceleration.” But once the race was on and the cars were speeding down the straight he soon leaped up a place putting him right behind Tom. Marcus managed to close in on Tom once or twice but with both drivers reputation at stake nether could afford to drop back or leave room.

Marcus lost pace on lap 11 with a “tank-slapper” at the chicane exit so had to fight back. He saw the Old Hairpin (his favourite overtaking spot) as a prime place to do this, unfortunately due to pressure he overdid it....cue barrier! 

www.dwmotorsportphotography.com/

Fearing what damage this may have caused, Marcus attempted to get the marshalls’ attention to see if it was ok, getting stuck on the grass at the same time, this unfortunately wasted 20seconds or more and put an end to any chance or hope of regaining any lost places. Marcus persevered for the final stretch of the race putting down some good lap times allowing him to finish 14^th in class one.

The Hartech team had a wide spread of results with Garry finishing close to Marcus in 10^th place, Stuart finished 6^th and Tom put us on the podium finishing 2^nd after a tense battle throughout the race with both Mark Sumpter and Pete Morris.

When Marcus’ car came in the team feared for the worst for the body work and came running plasters at the ready but thankfully it turned out the barrier had been much more forgiving than presumed. The Hartech team did a great job of sorting everything out before the second race giving us plenty of time to work through a giant bag of cookies.