Saturday, 29 August 2009

Forrestburn - Saturday 28 August

Just back from a day at my least favourite venue, Forrestburn for a round of the TJ Services Northern Speed Championship.

Weather started pretty miserable with heavy driving rain but it cleared up by the time practice started at 10am.

I have struggled to get a good time at Forrestburn ever since I went off on the first corner in April 2008. I know the corners reasonably well now its just that I don't have the bottle to push it hard. I've been trying since then to break my personal best of 58.64secs.

Anyway, today I was running in the TJ Services Northern Speed Championship against the MGF of Paul Rigg/Dennis Hope, the S2 Elise of Chris Harris, the Honda Civic of Steve Palmer and the MR2 of 'Diamond' Dave Exton.

Practie didn't go great with me getting a fastest run of 60.55 - well behind Paul and only just in front of Dave Exton. I knew I had to go quicker when the timed runs came.

With the changeable weather, I was surprised to see the sun come out for the first timed run and thought this might be the only dry run so I would have to go for it. I managed 58.29secs - beating my old PB and all the other championship class contenders except Chris Harris who posted 57.93secs.

I was sure that was the only dry run we were going to get as the rain came on soon after but it was only a brief shower and it soon brightened up. So the final run came along and it was dry!

I got a good start and kept the power on through more corners than I have before. I managed 57.88secs - I was well chuffed, having taken nearly a second of my previous best.

Again, it was enough to beat all the other championship contenders but Chris did 57.83secs - pipping me to the 10 points by just 5/100ths of a second. That could cost me dear at the end of the season. If only I'd kept the boot in a weeeeeee bit more..........

By my reckoning, the championship class looks like this with 2 rounds to go and dropped scores now counting:

Paul Rigg 60 Pts
Kev Hamilton 58 Pts
Chris Harris 46 Pts
Dave Exton 44 Pts
Steve Palmer 43 Pts
Dennis Hope 31 Pts
Andy Suter 13 pts
David Child 2 Pts

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