Like all of my great plans, the idea to do SLS came at the last minute and completely ill prepared. Less than a week before the event, will little seat time in the car, a broken water pipe (which runs inside the tub of the car and is a complete bitch to repair) pumped suspension and road tyres. That’s the racing driver excuses out of the way! Colin did a sterling job of getting the water pipe fixed, putting in some mega late nights as he had a stack of rally cars to get ready. Massive thanks to Colin for getting me out of a hole...for the millionth time. Race day started with a proper man trip. I loaded my race kit into the car and drove to the circuit in the car I was going to be competing in (awarding myself 100 man points on the way) I must admit that I had already prepared a plan B for getting home. Andrew who had bravely offered to look after the car had brought along his trailer. This decision was very brave as Andrew already knew the car well after doing the conversion from standard to VVC . The engine has ran faultless since it was switched, it’s just the rest of the car that is pumped. John also helped me cover up some of the worst of the ‘race patina’ with some Flat Out Images stickers
Warm up – The idea here was just to get some laps on the car and not break anything. I just got used to the car on track. There were a few lock up’s from the front brakes snatching. I figured out that it was due to a lack of brake temps in the front and they would require a bit more heat in the out laps. A bit more brake temp and jobs a good un!
Practice – The idea on this session was just to push a bit harder and get a bit more of a feel for what the car was doing as I had not had a lot of track time in this car at Knockhill. I have driven thousands of laps in my time up at Knockers though, so no excuses for not knowing what way the track goes. After a few laps I had put in a 62.1 and went into the pits for a tyre pressure and temp check. I knew where more time could be found and had a quick chat with Andrew. He said,’ do you want to go out and have more fun and possibly break the car or shall we air on the side of caution’ and for once in my life, I listened to some useful advice and parked the car up.
Qualifying – The plan for qualifying was to get a safe banker lap in early with the tyres being a bit cooler. This would give us a good baseline for the single lap in the final, then push a bit harder. The banker lap was a very comfortable 62.6 and it gave me a better idea of how much temp I could get into the tyres in 1 lap and it gave a good idea of where more time could be found. I spent a couple of laps in traffic and then massive misfire and the dash lit up like a Christmas tree and the Donkey died. Andrew diagnosed a broken alternator, so with a lack of elastic trickery, we would be up the creek. Luckily he came up with a sneaky plan. We stole a battery from one of Andrew’s mates, stuck it in the car and planned to start it at the very last minute, before I went out for the final.
Final – Despite 4 years at Uni, I was unable to count the number of cars in front of me and started the car a bit prematurely.....Probably not for the 1st time in my life
I did struggle a bit with temperature in the rear tyres which is definitely something to work on for the next round, the car also put in a couple of misfires on the lap. One of them on the start finish straight which caught me completely by surprise, I thought it was the rev limiter and then I put the car in the wrong bloody gear ( Bloody rocket!) My excuses and I’m sticking to them! The final result was 4th place and 0.9 s from the win with a 63.4. To be perfectly honest, I think I was a bit distracted by the issues with the car in the final and showed less focus than I should have. I spent too much time worrying about the issues with the car rather than getting my head in the game before the final lap. Lesson learned from that one. I’m maybe a bit rusty from not competing in over a year and maybe spending too much time sliding about scaring people. It’s not a bad result considering zero time to prepare, suspension badly in need of a refresh and we were just running on road tyres rather than semi slick. Donkey and I will hopefully make some more SLS events this year as it was a really fun, well run event. It will all depend on timings with my real job and commitments to drive the Atom for Carlimits.Well done to all the other guys and girl in the class for making it a very close, fun event.
Massive thanks to Colin for stepping in and getting the car repaired in time for the event and putting in some mega late nights and Andrew for supporting me at the event, loaning me the trailer to get home and getting the car to the stage where it’s actually safe to take out on track. Also thanks to Adam and Rory from SLS for dealing with my very late entry.
I know that coolant pipe well - we had to fix one in a car park in a spanish hotel once 
Annoyed at myself for not paying attention to it more. 
