Solo Podium in British GT 2006 - Oulton Park

This year I'm competing in the British GT championship in the GTC class the cars entered as "Data Protection Solutions" but for round one wasn't in company colours. The GTC class is for cars running to a power to weight formula, I'm running against many Porches, Ferrari's and other GT cars.

My first British GT race weekend went very well and then Very Bad !!!

Practice and Quailing.

I had to wait on Avon for Tyres so it ment starting the 1 hour 15 Minute Practise at 9:45 instead of 9:15. Then the tyres were not very good lots of under steer (Car going Straight on at every corner) ! Long chat with Avon and they find a special pair of front tyres. Normally we run with 2 set of tyres one set from Race 1 and Qualifying 1 one and the other set for Race 2 and Qualifying 2, so we had to hope that we could do all sessions on one set of tyres. (Not looking Good).

In the first Qualifying session.

The session is only 15 minutes so it ment going out and pounding around as fast as possible to get a time, as their wouldn't be any time to pit and change the car's setup. The car, didn't have enough top speed (We needed to change the Gears in the Gearbox), and we had lots of under steer even with the new softer front tyre. Ended up 14th overall and 9th in class. Some 2.4 seconds of the pace of the leading car in the class.

In the second Qualifying Session.

We had 15 minutes between the session's so for Q2 we changes the cars suspension and the car had less under steer and felt must easier to drive. Ended up 11th Overall and 6th in Class (Good News), 1.8 Seconds of the Pace of the leading car in the class.

Race Report Race One.

For Race 1 the mechanics worked hard and we changed the gear ratio's to give the car more to speed.

Full race report at http://www.crash.net

The car ran well and 2nd in class 23 seconds behind the leader and 7th Overall carnt be bad and 0.4 of a second off the fast lap time in class !!!

Race Report Race 2.

Started on the Grid 11th new that I had to push hard to try and catching the winner of race one, on the four corner end up in the middle of a Porsche and Ferrari sandwich the Ferrari 360 of Calum Lockie hit my left rear wheel very hard picking the car up off the ground, this impact broke something in the transmission and I rolled to a holt.

Very disappointing but with the cars good form everything looks very good for round 2 at Donnington Park in May.

The Event will be on TV on channel 4 on May 5th at 7:30 Am and April 29th at 5pm on Motors TV. I'm looking for Sponsor's for the coming year !

Please pass on to anyone who's interested.

Yours truly,

Ian