The next trip on the calendar was to one of the iconic staples of UK motorsport – Donington Park.
Riding the wave of excitement off the back of Silverstone, with not much prep work to do and with perfect weather on the cards, on paper I should have been keen, hyped, amped, buzzing, (insert any other similar adjective here) for Donington Park.
Instead for reasons that I still can’t understand even now, I found myself feeling strangely apprehensive and somewhat lackluster about the upcoming weekend.
Casting my mind back to trips there, I’ve had more reliability issues at this circuit than anywhere else. On more than one occasion, Donington Park has signified the end of my season, with an engine rebuild waiting in the loom.
Perhaps that was secretly bubbling in my subconscious somewhere?
Qualifying
With that upbeat intro over, we go into the rawkus that was qualifying!
Two red flags meant that the best of us got 5 timed laps in, that includes warming everything up etc.
Those smart enough to get good laps in early had at least two decent laps counted. Everyone else had one good lap and one other laughable time.
Jack Wilkinson for instance had a pit stop used for his second time, almost 7 minutes to complete that lap!
This meant that race 1 had a fairly normal order, but race 2 was a complete mixed bag with fast people right at the back.
I qualified 16th for race 1 and 24th for race 2…lol
Race 1
So race 1 didn’t go so well for me, I got a reasonable start but only 3 laps in I hit an oil slick exiting Coppice corner.
It was like Mutley from Wacky Races pressed the oil button or something.
I ended up in the gravel and was beached….DNF.
What a beach.
Race 2
The race 1 result didn’t help with my frame of mind, what I needed was a good race to reset the natural order of things…Thankfully Donington delivered.
Hours of picking stones out of the car commenced…
Starting from the middle of the grid and at the back, I found it tricky to take advantage of the first corner reshuffling. I was in last place through Redgate as a result.
Some kind of lightbulb must have turned on in my head then as my attitude changed.
There’s no way in hell I was going to finish last!
Working my way through the order, I soon found myself stalemated by joining into an ongoing battle between Sam Engineer and Christian Goller.
Lots of yellow flags limited overtaking opportunities but nevertheless the nose to tail action was exhilarating over several laps.
Ultimately I finished just behind the other two, but it could have been anybody’s game, I finished in 12th place.
The final championship race of the season is at Oulton Park, it’s a double header and a long way to go (about 5 hours drive), but I think I’ll make the effort 🙂
See you there.