A day in bed... - September 6th 2006

Pit straight at Silverstone

Well that's where I should have stayed on August 26th 2006. Hopes were high when I rolled out of bed on Saturday morning, eager to get to the circuit and get out on track, but it all went down hill from there - well down hill may be an exaggeration as I'm not sure we were rolling that fast.

I will endeavour to explain!!

I was confident and not the bag of nerves I normally was on race day, you see I had tested at the Northamptonshire circuit a couple of weeks earlier and had been pleased with my speed and handling of the track... well the National circuit is hardly rocket science, but nonetheless I had fun and the car was running well.

So we packed up the van on Friday night, loaded up the car on Saturday morning and set off for Silverstone - three miles later Dan says: "Hey Jane where's your helmet?" and we set off back home, I should have taken it as a sign...

It was drizzling when we arrived, unloaded and took up residence in one of the F1 pit garages, this is the life I thought, at least I'd start the session with a dry bum. Then scrutineering, luckily I was early in the line so when I failed because my little L.E.D.s were struggling on my rain light, I just had time to screetch to a halt outside Mike Topp's van and shout for help.

Ten minutes later a new rain light was fitted and I was back in the scutes bay picking up my pass and straight down to the assembly area, where I took up the position of last man out... there's a pattern forming here.

My second lap out on track and the car started to falter when I changed into fourth gear, I couldn't get any more than four thousand revs but had to complete three laps to qualify for the race so trundled around off line and back to the pits - unbelievably second to last on the grid. I'm guessing that the other guy pushed his car around.

Running off line in qualifying

Fortunately for many of us there was a big break between qualifying and the race and a group of friendly faces gathered around my car, poked, prodded and sighed alot, just like going to your local garage really. We tried lots of things - thanks to Maurice who loaned me a coil to try - that didn't make any difference so the old one went back on - we were even considering changing the head gasket and I began to fear the worse, until we found that two plugs had burnt out and although not perfect, we hadn't lost too much compression. Thanks to Graham and Aaron, plugs were changed, the idle opened a little, a wayward screw put back in the distributer and many prayers said, Humphrey lived again, but we wouldn't know how good the fix was until I got out on track.

With forty cars on the grid and starting 39th, I couldn't even see the lights, but got a reasonable start, passing a few cars by lap two, when an accident brought out the red flag and we were lined back up in starting order - in other words I went back to the back again.

On the restart, I again managed a couple of passes and was begining to believe in my ability to move up a little in the field, until with Dougie's nose cone lying smack bang in the middle of the track at Luffield, I went down the inside of someone and had to hold the corner tighter than I would have liked. This resulted in me getting too excited, putting down the power too early and taking a short trip across the grass. Not too much of a problem but I had to wait for the three I had already passed to go by again before I could come back onto the circuit. Soul destroying I can tell you.

Suffice to say I spent the rest of the race alone until I caught one of the guys again and passed him just before the finish line. 35th was not how I had envisaged Silverstone, but then again 33rd was probably the best I could have hoped for under the circumstances and although it doesn't sound like it, I had fun.

Being on track with 39 other drivers was amazing, the help I got between sessions and for scrutineering was second to none - so on we go to Donington, the last two races of the season and believe me I don't want it to end.