dbRacing - NSSCC Race Report Cadwell Park 6th July 2002

NSSCC Race Report Cadwell Park 6th July 2003

Practice

An early morning start saw us arrive at a dry Cadwell Park with a wet track due to overnight rain ! Some of the other competitors had been there the afternoon before for testing so I surprised everyone by being first into the collecting area with the aim of being first on track and sneaking an extra lap in. This was also to be the first time at Cadwell Park in the 924GT in the dry.

David Cox was next in line and on the first lap I pulled out about 50 yards on him. This was actually quite worrying as I though I had gone out too fast, and with the narrow confines of the circuit, and off would likely be severely punished. A couple of laps later my worries were over as Cox, Ferguson, Morrison and Pollock all came past me. I now had a clear track and the car seemed to be handling well on freshly rebuilt shock absorbers and the softer springs I had used so successfully last season. The problem was that the lap times were poor and just not coming down below 1m 50s. I qualified down in 12 place, 5th in class.

Race

Cadwell Park is primarily a motorbike circuit and it shows most clearly when you line up on the grid. It's a 2 x 2 grid with no offset between the rows and virtually no space within a grid row. As the lights changed I accelerated away but Paul Luti got a cracking start and Mick Starkey prevented me from moving any further forward. They got away from me a little of the first lap but I was sure that once the tyres warmed I would be able to regain the places and join battle with David Cox / John Parton. It soon became obvious that this was unlikely to happen. Not only was the car understeering but I was also losing out in straight line speed. The car had developed a slight misfire, which at times was unnoticeable and at other was quite a severe hiccup. The remainder of the race was uneventful, except that over the final few laps Geoff Morton in his Honda CRX was noticeably closing on me. For the last two laps I used my defensive driving skills to keep him behind me, aided by superior straight line speed as in the twisty bits he was gaining yards on me.

The race finished with me in 11th place overall with a lap time in the 1m50s bracket, that's almost 3 seconds a lap slower than I used to be in the 911RS. The new suspension cannot come soon enough.