Circuit:	Silverstone, Northamptonshire
Date:	April 14th & 15th 2007
Championship:	Caterham Roadsports B Championship 2007

Caterham had taken the car back with them after the Snetterton event a couple of weeks prior and delivered it to Silverstone for me in their transporter on the Friday before racing. Unfortunately it was too late for me to book testing. So I arrived at the circuit early Saturday morning to take delivery of the car & whizz it round the paddock to make sure all was ok.

Qualifying itself went ok & I gently built up speed with the repaired engine. The session was over in no time (15 mins actually) and I found out a little while later that my time of 1.11.59 was about a second behind the pole sitter, (Gareth Thomas, car no. 77, 1.10.42). However that second or so meant 13th place on the grid for race 1!

RACE ONE

As the race got underway, I exchanged places with one or two guys and was 11th at the end of lap 5. On lap 7 I was in 10th place running at full chat up to Becketts/Maggotts, alongside Kevin Begley (car no. 6) when I suddenly lost all power. Everyone swept past me as I coasted over to the grass & up as close as possible to the wall. My first reaction was that the engine had popped again although there was no customary white smoke & no nasty metallic rattle. I found later the inertia kill switch had cut in on the straight (designed to kill power/fuel etc in the event of a roll or major shunt). The marshals were over me in a flash & it was game over for me. Not finishing Race 1. meant that I would be starting at the back of the grid for Race 2.

RACE TWO

I had been disappointed with my race performance in Race 1. the day before and although I had made up three places from my starting position when I went off, two had been gifted to me via the massive crash of Stuart Patterson (car no. 2) and Richard Edwards (car no. 48).

The weather on Sunday was stunning, more like an August bank holiday than April 15th ! Our race was not until late afternoon so I had nearly all day to prepare.

I realised I was actually looking forward to starting at the back of the grid and felt confident in making useful progress. "Just one car a lap" I kept telling myself.

I had a good getaway when the lights went off and went down the outside of Steve Mansell (car no. 5) and passed him and Shai Shammai (car no. 46) straight away. Going round the third corner onto the back straight, I had made up 4 places and was feeling ok. After the long back straight & coming into Brooklands, I entered a pack of 4 cars and seeing a gap, went straight through, braking as late as I dared. Unfortunately, cold tyres, too high an entry speed and some "over exhuberance" meant coming out of the pack sideways and headed straight for the gravel ! It felt as though I was buried up to the car's midriff.

My race was over, in less than a minute !

The Caterham was well and truly beached in the gravel & needed to be lifted out. Under marshals instructions, I ran for the safety of the marshals post in no-man's land, in the middle of the Luffield/Woodcote complex and "stood out" the rest of the race. Gareth Thomas and Chris Legge (car no. 33) traded places at the front although Gareth had the upper hand and eventually took the win, the 2nd of the weekend. Well done Gareth, a great performance. Some terrific individual races back down the grid as well.

Two DNFs for me for the weekend was not quite what I had planned. Back to the drawing board I think.

If there's one consolation to take away from the weekend (apart from of course the fact that it was a great weekend weather wise and atmosphere wise), it's the fact that despite some big crashes, no-one was hurt and my car at least went home in one piece. Unfortunately Richard E and Stuart P look as though they face some big bills from the Race 1. incident.