dbRacing - NSSCC Race Report Croft 7th July 2001

NSSCC Race Report - July 7th 2001

Practice

This practice was taking place before the Classic practice, so I hoped that a good time in the NSSCC would help towards my grid place in that race. When the car was built I thought the gearbox had a LSD fitted. After the Snetterton race, I had a preventative rebuild done by Strasse, as there was some crunching of gears and I did not want to arrive at Croft with the risk of losing some gears. As part of the rebuild we noticed that the car did not have a LSD, so we very quickly sourced one from 930 motorport and it was fitted for the weekend. I struggled at the hairpin, as the car would understeer, whereas earlier in the year the turn in and acceleration out of the bend were fine. For this meeting all the classes, except E were runing together, so I expected a low grid position due to the presence of the class A1 and A2cars. Despite this I managed to qualify in the top ten, third in class. I struggled to record a good time. Each time I went past the pitboard I was sure that the time I was seeing was 2 seconds slower than I had done. I only managed to qualify 17th overall.

Race

Starting 17th on the grid and 6th in class, I knew I would have a lot of work to do if I was to score good points. On top of that I made a poor start, and entered the first corner about 20th. I soon passed the slower class B and C cars but the other class D cars were a long way down the road. As the race came to an end I was closing on Alaister Dyson in his Porsche 968, but there was insufficient time to improve on my 5th place in class. By now I was learning the hard way the importance of having a good start with the GT.