What a weekend it was at Donington Park!

We didn’t have massive expectations for qualifying but one of the aims was to get in the top ten and be as close to, or ahead of the Chevrolet’s of Jason [Plato] and Alex [MacDowall]. Obviously Jason was full of weight from leading the championship and Alex was the same weight as me so we thought that we’d have a chance of being close to them.

During the free practice sessions we didn’t use the new tyres so we were a bit despondent as we thought we were going to be miles off the pace. We didn’t think there was that much time in the new tyres but around Donington Park there was and we made up quite a lot of time using the fresh tyres and managed to qualify the GoMobile.co.uk Chevrolet Cruze in 11th (1:11.540). It was OK as it was the quickest the car has ever been, faster than Jason had been last year so i was happy with that but on the dashboard it was telling me that I was 0.250s up on my time as I was coming through Coppice but as I was approaching it James Nash and Tony Hughes got together and spun right across the front of me causing me to slow down and abort the lap. That was one of the pains of the weekend but we were 11th on the grid and only a couple of tenth’s off Jason and Alex in the newer Cruze so we were pleased.

We couldn’t get the car to work across the kerbs in the high speed corners such as the Old Hairpin and Coppice corner so we struggled with that all weekend. The newer Cruze’s seem to be able to run over the kerbs much better than us with the newer dampers which was something we couldn’t deal with.

Race one went to plan up to a point. We just got on with the race and managed to get ahead of Alex [MacDowall] and a few others who had made mistakes but then we got held up by Collard. There was no point risking a move and damaging the car as I just wanted to finish in the points and progress again in the second race, much like what we did at Brands and that worked for us and make our sponsors GoMobile.co.uk and Sunshine.co.uk happy. We were able to get race one out of the way without no drama’s and was able to set a respectable lap time. The car last year set a time of 1:12 dead in the race so that’s what we were working on and we were able to set a time of 1:12.1 so we were happy with that.

Race two started exceptionally well for us we were going across the start/finish line setting times which were matching that of my qualifying times with a 1:11.6. From that moment on I thought I’ve got a good race car. We made a few changes to try and handle the kerbs a little better and we were flying behind Chilton. Chilton managed to get past Collard before I got down the inside of him. He gave me a bit of room but rather than holding it up on the apex of the corner and risk getting spun round I just kept going and drove out of the corner. He then got the overlap on me and it was down to who was the bravest down the Craner Curves. We were both side-by-side which was fantastic but we got to the Old Hairpin and Collard decided that he didn’t want me alongside him anymore and in my eyes, drove me off the circuit which put an end to our fantastic race car. We were definitely on for a 5th and maybe even a 4th with the way that we were going. That was a real shame.

The start of race three was an absolute nightmare. Someone in a BMW decided that it would be OK to go full throttle across the grass and try and overtake a few people then drove into somebody else. They were then stood there on the track and I had to go hard on the brakes as I couldn’t afford any damage on the car which allowed everyone who I passed to pass me again. I just saw various incidents after that which made me pretty sad as a touring car driver. We made up a few positions and I cam home in 8th which was great but I don’t want to pick up places as a result of people getting fired off up and over the tyre walls but you have to take what you can.

We going to Thruxton now and I’m looking for a stronger showing than we had this week. I think the Vauxhall’s and Honda’s will once again be strong but we’ve just got to race our own race and try and pick up points.

See you all at Thruxton.

Paul #29