Race 1 – Donington Park Circuit
Donington Park Circuit – You can’t practice for a race start or how to push hard while avoiding being hit or hitting other cars, I think it’s something that you are either comfortable with or you’re not.
A race start is a technique in itself and I did practice starts on my drive at home… which meant having to brake hard before I ran out of the drive and I must apologise to the neighbours for all the noise!
Ready for the lap formation
After being positioned by Marshals in my grid slot, off we went under a Green Flag for the Formation Lap. Weaving left and right, hard throttle, hard brake, scrubbing your tyres with understeer around corners to get as much heat into your tyres to make sure the car had maximum grip. You see all of this on TV but it’s a sight to see from the cockpit.
As I pulled into my grid position again, I had memorised a reference point on the trackside so I wouldn’t cock up my position as Marshals are not there for the second line up.
And they are off…
I couldn’t see the 5-second board (this is not good), so the first thing I saw was the red lights switch on, I wacked the revs up to 5,000 and LIGHTS OUT, I shot off like I’d stolen the car.
I went straight past 2 cars (I was not expecting that) and round the first corner, heading into the infamous Craner Curves on full throttle at 100mph with cars nose to tail and inches away from my driver’s door.
Well, it wasn’t boring, in fact, it was AMAZING, and I took to it like a duck to water.
Lap after lap I held onto the car in front while defending drivers who were trying to lunge from behind into corners. As I turned down the Craner Curves at 110mph on lap 8 I saw another novice driver spinning 360-degrees down the hill in his car, my training kicked in and I kept on my line and as predicted he span off into the grass like a ballerina on speed.
I had lost a couple of places by the time I was on the second half of the race, mainly due to the Class 1 and 2 drivers jumping into corners when they lapped me and taking my race line, focus and power away… they have 100 BHP more than me and also run on quicker slick tyres. I finally finished in 7th place and picked up good points and both the car and I were in one piece and had stayed on the track!
After the finish, while the cars were on there in lap, dozens of marshals came to trackside to clap us round the circuit and all the drivers waved back flashing their lights thanking them. One day a marshal could save your life so best to keep them on side, but this demonstrates the level of respect in motorsports.
