Now that we are back from a seriously long round trip up to Driftland for Round 3 of Drift League GB, it's time for some results. Practice went well, we scrubbed through 2 sets of tyres and managed to get all setup for qualifying with fresh tyres ready on both sets of wheels. The pressure kicked in on the first qualifying run with a tiny straighten coupled with a seriously high standard of driving for the day, resulting in a zero on the first run. Second run saw us annihilate a pair of drive shafts again at the start line.
We rushed the car back the the pits and did what we could to get the driveshafts changed in the allotted time, we got very close but some tightness of the new shafts and a lack of manpower saw it take just too long - and we had to accept a zero on the second run. Luckily for us attrition and a small grid saw us offered a 26th place position for the event the next day (I would like to think it was also partly in recognition of the effort that had gone into getting to the event and nearly changing 2 drive shafts in less than 10 minutes). A night's sleep in the van and we were lining up for battles on the Sunday. Being in 26th turned out to be a bigger problem than it seemed, it saw us lining up next to Stuart Adsley in his red S15. No pressure then, only the 8th place ranked BDC driver(!) The chase run saw Ian make a small mistake on the cold tyre into the 1st clip and having to straighten to correct it; the leading run went much better and the new performance of the E30 did a lot to keep the S15 at bay. Sadly due to the mistake the decision went to Stuart and we were out in first battle.
Overall not a bad weekend, losing to such a skilled driver is easy to swallow and we know what we need to work on in order to improve in the next round. We got plenty of run time, the car performed well, and our recent gains in performance have certainly been noticed by the other drivers on the grid. The next round is Pembrey in 10 weeks time so we have a bit of a much needed summer break. As before we will take some time to drop posts with some technical analysis and driver views over the next couple of weeks; additionally we will try to do some post analysis and insights into some of the systems on the car during the break.