Qualifying
Surprisingly, it was dry and almost sunny - making for perfect racing conditions..
Annoyingly, the number of Ferrari 360s racing in our class had gone up to 6! so it was tough to get any decent qualifying result.. I ended up 9th out of 15.
Mark had an engine problem (fuel starvation) so could only manage 11th place on the grid.
Race
Beautiful sunshine - so no more excuses.. It was time to put the pedal to the metal and see what the car could do against 6 shiny 360s - total value of approx £1m!
The little green monster, in 'capable' hands of myself, had a unbelievable start and managed to overtake 4 cars in the first few seconds!
From then on, after the first few scary corners, we all settled into a rhythm.. To my big surprise though, I was able to stay with the 'fast' pack fighting hard with a Ferrari trying to overtake me. Unfortunately the green monster has a weak point at a specific part of the circuit where its necessary to slam on the brakes at over 130mph over uneven surface - this is where Ferrari's ABS, traction control and all the other computer gadgets come in very handy.
I got overtaken twice at this very spot but twice managed to reclaim the space at the next corner!
Sadly, on lap 9 I suffered a mechanical failure - broken drive shaft which forced me to retire..
However, even with the undesired retirement, we were still very pleased with the car and my driving - as this was the first race where we felt equal and competitive in company of cars costing 10 times more! (all the hard work on the car seems to have paid off!)
We have another joker up our sleeve for the next race which will hopefully eliminate our instability problems at high speed braking and hopefully earn us our first podium..