After a quite surprisingly good start to the year at Brands, I found myself as equal championship leader. With the new weight regulations, I arrived at Donington with more weight in the car than I’d ever carried previously. We were expecting it not to be pretty in qualifying, and with how close it is, we were targeting tenth to fifteenth place.
The soft tyre, which we have to run in one race each weekend, doesn’t seem to like the cold weather so we decided to get that out the way in race one. Being tactical, we were aiming to get a fast lap in as the race two grid positions are decided by the fastest laps in this race. The aim was to sacrifice race one but try to go for points in race two and three.
Even with the weight I managed to put in a good lap, and this secured seventh spot on the grid for race two, which was way above expectations! Once we had this we decided to have a race and try to score some points. Unfortunately the tyres then fell off a lot quicker than we anticipated in the cold morning air so I failed to gain any points after dropping out the top 15.
Race two was a pretty hard race, starting seventh I got boxed in for the first five or six laps and it just didn’t roll for me. Then the tyres got up to temperature and the gaps started opening, I managed to move my way forward and fought up to second place. I saw Turkington in his VW a couple of seconds up the road so got my head down and pinned my ears back to chase after him. I just needed another two or three of laps and I think I would have had a crack at him but regardless it was a great result to finish second and on the podium.
By virtue of finishing second, I got some more weight back on for race three and the reverse grid meant I started in sixth place. It was one of those crazy races, more of a blur, swapping positions and seeing cars flying around at all angles and coming at you from all sides! But I managed to squeeze my way through and up into first after some monumental scraps.
With a few laps to go I had Andy Jordan right on my tail, I was carrying weight and he wasn’t. I think I was lucky, on the last lap he was a little bit better through the twisty stuff but the Civic was just awesome through the fast corners. I was really trying to make some air between us when we went through the super quick Craver Curves and the Old Hairpin but it was getting a little slippery for the last couple of laps which made it pretty lairy on a few occasions down there but in the end we did it and I managed to hang on for an awesome win.
So I keep the championship lead, but on the flipside that means we go to Thruxton with 75 kilos now which is even more weight, but I’ll take that. I’m looking forward to it, the Civic’s good in the high speed stuff as I said and that’s what Thruxton’s all about. I’m going to enjoy the three weeks between now and then and I’m up for the challenge when we get there.
It’s way too early to be thinking about the championship yet, it’s still wide open and so close between all the top drivers and teams.
Matt Neal.
