Petit Race 2010 Day One

January 16, 2010 · Posted in News, Off Road, Racing · by simon

Day 1 started at ridiculous o’clock – it began with a 5. We were at the venue just after 6am and shouty man was shouting at 6:30am, waking us all up nicely.

One round of in-heat practice was all, the first heat out at 6:45am. The track seemed fun, but hard. The corner platform onto the large tabletop was pretty immense, what you did on the way into the corner pretty much determining where you would land on the straight. And you’d be hoping to land on the straight, not in the wall, window, or on-coming track.

I broke it big style over the tabletop after a handful of laps, snapping a rear wishbone. I was not alone, many many people snapped off the table top, the most spectacular by hitting the window and shearing off the whole front end…

We were further awoken with driver’s briefing with many rules and many reasons to find yourself going home. Mainly involving smoking, drinking and fast food…

Round 1 and I was in heat 11 of 14. This was WAY too high a heat for me. And in round 1 I managed a total of 2 and half laps. Snapping it off the corner platform, breaking a shock top and a turnbuckle. Nice.

So basically I spent the whole morning wrenching on the thing. I put the 4wd together too.

Round 2 was better for me, as much as I actually carried on going around for a whole five minutes. Slightly dispiriting was the leaders had done 50% more laps than me…

Set up changes ensued, rebuilding rear shocks, change of front tyres and we’ll see how round 3 goes…

It’s 4 rounds and a final.

Oh, what are the top guys doing? It seems to be all about Elliot, Shin and Lee… I wont ask Shin for his RB5 setup, as I suspect his thumbs are a touch better than mine…

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DSC00239 (Large) Day 1 started at ridiculous o’clock – it began with a 5. We were at the venue just after 6am and the man with the voluminous voice was informing us gently of practice formalities at 6:30am, waking us all up nicely.

We were further awoken with driver’s briefing with many rules and many reasons to find yourself going home. Mainly involving smoking, drinking and fast food…

So basically I spent the whole morning wrenching on the thing. I put the 4wd together too.

Round 2 was better for me, as much as I actually carried on going around for a whole five minutes. Slightly dispiriting was the leaders had done 50% more laps than me…

Set up changes ensued, rebuilding rear shocks, change of front tyres and we’ll see how round 3 goes…

It’s 4 rounds and a final.

Oh, what are the top guys doing? It seems to be all about Elliot, Shin and Lee… I wont ask Shin for his RB5 setup, as I suspect his thumbs are a touch better than mine…

Round 3 was better, enjoying the run and then went large over the tabletop and snapped the rear wishbone, again. Checking out the quick guys it seems they don’t go large and land it on the down ramp. I’m not yet sure how one does the throttle control to do that…

Mark’s getting it done for a GQ it seems (oh no he didn’t), I’ll be more like LQ…

Round 4 was a repeat of practice: I broke a rear wishbone.

So the scores on the doors…

I was 9th in the L final. There was only 4 in the M final. How amusingly shit!

Mark was in the I final. Rob was in the J final. Gray was in the H. (We had money on Gray being in the B. How wrong we were!)

The finals happened without event, things broke, Rob came third, nothing much else happened.

Then we all got a bit tired and went back to the hotel after watching the A finals. They were jolly impressive, so quick, and so consistent. Impressive stuff. I had to think that touring cars look easy in comparison…

Oh yes, we also wrenched away on 4wds in some sort of attempt to make them work for tomorrow. Looking forward to it. I reckon the damage will be even bigger.

Maritime is just brilliant, well run, tight ship, good communication, ace food, easily the best carpet venue in the UK.

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