CTCRC Race Day, 28th-29th March 2015

[Oxfordshire driver]

Hi All
Just want to let you know how it went at Silverstone at the weekend.
Great to be racing with Simon and Ian in their Alfasuds. Also great fun to be sharing the track with other makes/models, including Capri’s, Escorts, Firenza’s and a Rover P6!
Qualifying was disappointing (back of the grid) and I only managed to make up one place in the first race on Saturday. A positive though was that my fastest lap of the race was 4 seconds faster than my qualifying time.
Onto Sunday and rain was forecast for most of the day. Great news as the Alfasuds stood a chance to overhaul some of the more powerful rear wheel drives on the grid.
At the start I passed a BMW 320 and a Porsche 944, quite a few of us bunched together until the Fords could get the power down on the Wellington Straight. A little further on I was past the P6 on the exit from Luffield. A red Capri was next partly due to a spun cream mk1 Escort blocking his path on the exit from Maggots. My race seemed to then settle into a four car battle, me, a white/green BMW 320, a red/gold mk1 Escort and a very wide yellow Firenza!
Some laps later I found some extra grip on the outside of Luffield, I changed my exit from that corner and switched back on the inside of the Firenza, finally past him. Upto Copse and again the grip was on the outside and I drove past the red/gold Escort! Confidence quickly got the better of me as I chucked it too hard into Maggots and I lost the backend. I just managed to straighten it up and head down Wellington Straight but all my hard work was undone as the Escort and Firenza went sailing by. A couple more laps to compose myself, trying to ignore the idiot in the XJ12 (2 laps down by this point) that tried to dispatch me on the Wellington Straight and I was again chasing the Firenza and Escort. By now the Firenza had also worked out that the grip was on the outside of Luffield. So up to Copse and a backmarker (Honda CRX) helped out, with the Escort and Firenza taking their usual fairly tight line they now had a CRX blocking them from drifting wide on the exit. Best feeling of the day for me was going to the outside of Copse and driving around all three cars, only briefly though as the Escort scrambled ahead again down towards Maggots. I outbraked him into Maggots but as soon as we were onto Wellington Straight he had the power down and was past.
I was on the last lap of the race, the Escort headed into Brooklands trying to control his back-end, I went to the outside through Luffield and finally managed to exit ahead of him. The chequered flag was just around the next corner (Woodcote), the Sprint suddenly grew the widest back-end I have ever seen. Success!
If you have a spare 18 minutes then this link should take you to the on-board footage: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3y0h7qi773rqe ... 1.mp4?dl=0
Lap times and results can be found here: http://www.tsl-timing.com/file/?f=BARC/ ... 32183t.pdf

Looking forward to Castle Combe on 4th May, I hope the video will whet your appetites and more Alfa’s will come to play.
All the best,
Malcolm

[jobeed]

Looks like a great performance. Crickey it looked wet! Loved the write up and the video.

[Kegsti66]

Nice one Malcolm, good to meet you and glad you had a good time.
The sprint went really well, a great weekend. Video is great viewing.
Cheers.
Keith

[Oxfordshire driver]

Thanks Keith, great to meet up with you at Silverstone.
Still have not been able to watch the Motors tv version but my father in law has it recorded so hopefully this weekend.

[BS25]

Well done Malcolm, I followed it on Motors and enjoyed watching your progress. I did a few races with mixed marque competition in my old Sud and someone else's 33 some years ago, it was great fun! Looks like you'll all have a fun season in that series

[Veesix75]

Great video Malcolm, and well done.