I arrived at Donington feeling good about the car – the accident at Brands Hatch had done more damage than we at first thought and as such, we transported the car up to Ginetta to check that the chassis was OK.  With the all clear being given, the car was sent back down to East Sussex for Westbourne to prepare for the weekend.

The bodywork now looked like it was fresh off the production line with the distinctive deep blue with Orange double stripes now replacing the red bumper and plain bonnet from race 2 at Brands.  We had isolated the reason why the throttle was sticking (bent pedal box from the crash) so we were ready to start testing on Friday morning.

The juniors had a 3 hour test session which gave us drivers that didn’t know the Donington track some time to get up to speed, and it gave the guys at Westbourne some valuable set up time to see some comparisons to other teams (particularly as we are a one Ginetta team – this always has disadvantages in terms of drawing comparisons in relation to testing and set up).

Going out Friday morning, it became clear that we were off the pace (literally) the team and I were searching for set up thinking that corner speeds were letting me down – looking at the speed trap, we were nearly 5 mph down on the other cars.  The three hour session went with the team frantically looking for the pace – it wasn’t there so we ended up some 2.5 seconds off the quickest boys.

Saturday free practice came and we were still off the pace – qualifying on P11 for both races we were all scratching our heads.  We then saw that the alternator was kicking out massively above where it should and that the connectors for the ECU were bent thus making a poor connection – one issue from the accident and the other from the manufacturing process! In any event, the Ginetta boys were there to assist – we replaced the parts and felt that we were ready for the race.

A last minute set up change was then made with 5 minutes to the start of race one – it was a gamble that unfortunately didn’t pay off.  The car was drifting round the corners and then during the race (whilst sat in P9) my clutch stuck down (issues with bent pedals again) and I went off the track like a pencil into the gravel – managing to rejoin but frustratingly finishing P12.

We talked as a team about some of the lessons we had learned and decided to put the car back to where it was for the Sunday race – I was absolutely committed to scoring better points.

P11 again for the start and this time I got a good start and managed to stay out of trouble at the first corner.  The Ginetta drivers had been warned about driving standards that morning – unfortunately it didn’t seem to sink in with some drivers! There were cars spinning, going off and rejoining and pulling moves that were more akin to karting than motor racing!

I had started to enjoy the car and was going well (up to P8) when Finlay Ractliffe spun at the hairpin – 4 cars took avoiding action and 3 of us had nowhere to go apart from the barrier – Struan Moore and Jake Giddings took me with them but I managed to finally untangle the car and chase the pack – the safety car came out (there is a God after all) so I managed to catch up to the back of the train.  I could see that Ollie Chadwick was struggling after the previous days big off so decided to take him as quickly as I could after the restart – this I did and then quickly started to chase down the rest of the field – the car was relatively undamaged apart from the fact that I was struggling to turn into right handers – a symptom of the accident?

Undeterred I was passing cars on both sides and taking advantage of others spinning off on their own – by the chequered flag I had gone from the barrier and in the gravel to 7^th over the line.  A driving infringement then saw Charlie Robertson disqualified which gave me 6^th at the end – not too bad to say 4 laps earlier my car was hooked onto Jake Giddings!!

We looked at my car at the end of the race and driving within 2 tenths of my qualifying time, my OSF wheel was 40 clicks out from my NSF wheel – hence the difficulty in right handers!

They say every journey is taken step by step and I know that both myself and Westbourne took a couple of steps forward by the end of the weekend.

The next round is at Thruxton and I have not raced there before – let’s hope we can get the set up right and I can pick the track up quickly enough to be able to qualify nearer to the front of the grid!!