The Rabid camp was set up with the usual suspects minus Mr Watson, whose torrid run had continued with a slipping clutch at the RR earlier that day and he had decided to hang his boots up for the weekend. But we soldiered on without him, which to start with was rather difficult as Dave usually supplies the BBQ and our new BBQ had decided to melt. Luckily Colin Spicer came to the recue with a huge drum BBQ and got Bobs birthday weekend started with a few beers and a proper welsh BBQ, i.e. pissing it down!
The morning was dry and breezy, but the sky looked rather dark, but very unRGB like it stayed dry for practice and the race! I Qualified 2nd in class for the first race and pole for the 2nd, but there was a gaggle of us all together on very very similar times. The first corner at pembrey is very slow, very tight and very narrow, with a fast run down from the start/finish straight, and usually causes plenty of incidents in the first lap, so i decided to just take it very carefully, no heroics, just stay out of trouble and try and hold my position. This all went to plan, i held my position and tucked in behind Andy to settle in. The next few laps were great fun and Paul was right behind us until i nearly lost it, having a very sideways moment allowing Paul to zoom by. the following lap Paul got past Andy at Honda and i followed by down the straight. Andy had developed a miss fire hence the rather large difference in speed down the straight. I chased Paul down for the next few laps, and after he made a couple of mistakes pulled up along side him at hatchetts, but decided not to push my luck and allowed him to take the racing line at the next corner, then at Brooklands he made another mistake and I was lining up to try and take him at Honda, but the red flags came out just before the corner as Nick Donaldson had a rather big incident with the barrier on the exit. So i finished 2nd behind Paul, with Andy 3rd. Paul also got fastest lap by 0.02 of a second. I'm really enjoying my racing with Paul and Andy this year, we are very close and we are giving each other a lot of respect and room, i think we would all rather finish the race rather than have a collision, even if it does mean finishing a position down.
Saturday night a group of us went out for Bobs birthday to a local pub, lots of beer was drank and some rather large plates of food (i think Dave would be more gutted about missing this than the racing). There then followed a rather jolly and late evening in the bus, with about 12 of us all squashed in.
Sunday started of almost dry but then got wetter, by the time we were out to race it was properly wet on track, although the rain was fairly light and there wasnt really any standing water and not too much spray. The plan again was to stay out of trouble for the first lap, which i did, but lost a place to Andy. By the time we got to the back straigght it was evident there was still a fair amount of grip and i felt confident to accelerate hard from Brooklands and into Honda, this allowed me to power past Andy. I held onto to first place for the rest of the race, but made a conscious effort to try and get the fastest lap, which i managed on the last lap, giving me the maximum 16 points.
So with the result from class R in for the weekend, it means that i am 1st, 1 point ahead of Matt Higginson in the overall championship and 1st in Class F, 14 points ahead of Paul. I need to keep getting the top 2 positions in Class F but also need to start getting those fastest laps more often to keep me in contention for the overall top spot. And looking back at the videos i need to try and concentrate on keeping the proper lines when following someone as i seem to wonder off or follow them when they make a mistake. But so far what an amazing season!!!
Photos from dan
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