The start of the season has been full of promising pace but not having the results to back up the promise shown through the weekend. After Snetterton, the car had shown really strong pace in testing and qualifying with the new engine, but with a mechanical issue preventing me from completing any of the races, we all thought if we got that fixed, the car would come to Oulton and perform really well...
Between Snetterton and Oulton Park, we conducted an evening test session at Donington to test the reliabilty and make sure we were ready to go, and the car performed well, if a little underwhelming in terms of performance, but with some set up inbalances it was easy to understand why.
Friday morning started off wet which hadn't been forecast! However, it gave me a change to bed in some brakes and scrub some tyres ready for this weekend and future weekends, but that was about as useful as the session would be, with no rain expected for the rest of the weekend, it was a pretty meaningless session. But with the track bone dry for session 2 and the rest of the day, the testing soon began.
The dry sessions however soon made it very clear that the weekend was going to be a struggle to be anywhere near the competitive end of the grid. The car just wasn't doing as I wanted, and the front of the car was not biting at all, a problem that we hadn't had since the first test session at Silverstone. Tucker and the team improved the car massively throughout the day, but still not to a position where the car felt consistent and competitive, with the thought that new tyres would improve the balance of the car with the old front tyres ruined after the previous 2 rounds.
New tyres on for qualifying following a very brief scrub in the wet on Friday morning, the aim was to simply try and stay with the quicker cars and try and vault myself up the order on a track that is very difficult to overtake on.
As soon as the session started it was very apparent that even with new tyres, the pace of the car just wasn't there. I could hang on in a tow, but not gain any ground where normally you'd expect to close with the slipstream, and the handling imbalances from the day before were still just as bad, struggling to get the car to turn through the slow speed sections and mid corner understeer killing all the exits. I managed to get a perfect tow behind 2 of the Herbert cars through the entire lap which knocked off a staggering 0.7 seconds, but ultimately left us down in 9th place for race 1, 1.1 seconds off the pole lap time and with a 2nd fastest laptime putting us 11th for race 2. The worrying part was, with the pace in the car, it would actually be a case of struggling to stay there rather than trying to fight forwards.
Normally the race is where I feel I can progress, so it was a strange feeling going into race 1 feeling like it was going to be a really tough battle. The race start was probably the best start I have ever had, but getting crowded out towards turn 1, there was simply no space to take advantage of the situation. The following sequence of corners was just about holding position and taking advantage if an oppotunity presented itself. Going down to the knickerbrook chicane that opportunity arose, with an incident infront causing the cars itself to literally part the seas (in the words of Lewis Hamilton, "Like Noah") giving me what seemed to be a lot of places, before one of the cars involved rejoined the circuit at the final part of the chicane flat out, causing me to stand the car on its anchors to avoid a crash, and subsequently killing all momentum I had up the hill and losing the places I had gained.
From there it was a race of watching the cars in front steadily edge away, whilst trying to keep James Cossins behind, which resulted in a really good and clean battle until a lock up at Shell Oils opened the door and let James through... only for the place to be given back to me once track limits penalties were applied!
After the trials of race 1, and starting in 11th for race 2, and a few more set up changes, there was half a chance of being able to improve slightly on the difficulties we had seemed to face all weekend. However it was not to be, as once again after a good start and the opening exchanges, the pure pace in the car just wasn't there. lapping slower than I had all weekend and having no race pace at all, it was a race of once again defending for the very bottom of the top 10. leading to a very unspectacular 10th place, not even being close enough to take advantage of a last lap incident with 3 cars into the final corner in front of me. An end to what was by far the most disappointing weekend I have had in the Supercup (including Brands last year)
The aftermath of Oulton has all been about trying to find answers to our struggles, which may or may not be fixed for Anglesey. But with lots planned in the next few weeks to figure out where we are losing out, sure enough we will get the answers we are looking for.
But for now its time to get prepped for a busy weekend in sunny Wales in 2 weeks time!
Jack
Comments