There is one thing that is for certain after round 3 of the championship, Silverstone GP circuit, in both the wet and the dry, is INCREDIBLE!!!
One year on from what was my best and most successful weekend ever at Croft with the Tucker Motorsport team, this year, obviously in very different circumstances, we managed to get the best results of the season so far, but also highlighted the long path ahead we have if we are going to be able to get the car challenging at the sharp end of the grid. One thing is for sure, myself and my dad, along with Tucker Motorsport and my amazing team of sponsors, Airbourne Graphics & Signs, EPTA Projects and Melliard Motorsport are doing everything we can to make the progress we need to close the gap.
The weekend was a shorter weekend than normal for us, with us getting the Sunday off due to the C1 24hr race starting Saturday evening! However, having the weekend compressed into one day certainly made the 2 days we had far more hectic!
Friday practice started out in wet conditions, ideal for learning the fastest part of the GP circuit! However, after doing a substantial amount of drifting, and watching someone in an old Mustang do a substantial amount more drifting, the first session was over. My first experience of the car in the wet was certainly a fun one!
Unfortunately then there was an extremely long wait until the final 3 sessions of the day where they were relentless with very little time for the team to make alterations in between. Thankfully, having been with Tucker Motorsport for so long, James knows exactly how I like the car to behave and there were only fine tuning adjustments needed to get the car feeling well balanced around the entire circuit.
Qualifying came around first thing on Saturday morning, with us lined up in a good position to try and hang onto the back of some of the quicker cars. However, with the feeling within the car improving every lap, it took till lap 5 to get my best lap, and by that point the car had started to cut out intermittently, hampering the lap times on what clean laps remained, until the last lap where eventually the car cut out completely down the Wellington straight.
The result of the session meant I would be starting it what has become a very familiar 15th place for race 1, and 18th for race 2.
For the Silverstone weekend, the races were 30mins long instead of the usual 20mins which meant judging fuel loads and managing tyres would be key to having a consistent pace all the way through.
Race 1 has to have been one of the most undramatic races I have ever had in a car! After getting a decent start away from the grid, the run through Maggots and Becketts was as hectic as can be, with the pack bunching up before flying down hangar straight to Stowe and then Vale where all of the pack compresses again, but amazingly, we all got through there cleanly without and significant contact. All was going well until a fluffed gear change coming onto the Wellington straight dropped me down to 19th, leaving me with it all to do throughout the race.
Fortunately for me though, all of my hard work was done for me by my competitors, with several collisions happening in front of me and retirements due to mechanical issues, I soon found myself in 12th place, having spent most of the laps trying to chase down a pack of 3 only for them to trip over each other through Village corner. The with Bessel retiring and Knibbs seemingly limping hope with car issues, I found myself in the top 10, a result that felt miles away after our difficulties in qualifying.
Race 2 was the polar opposite of race 1, with starting slightly further down the order, and the pack in front going 5 wide into Vale, the opening lap was chaotic, but I somehow emerged unscathed having gained 5 places from 18th.
From there, I was engaged in a race long battle with Morris, Britten & Grindrod, as we consistently swapped places throughout the race, having initially worked with Morris to try and get away, unfortunately with my straight line speed issues, it was more or less impossible for him to sit behind me and push down Hangar straight as the speed difference between the 2 cars was huge.
It became very apparent as well that the only way I was able to keep up throughout the race was by getting them to battle with each other, as the cutting out issues that plagued me in qualifying returned but thankfully to a lesser extent. I would hang on to finish the race in 12th place, making it the strongest weekend of the season so far.
After the Saturday, it was time to get the car home, and my dad and I spent Sunday cleaning off some of the war wounds from the weekend (less than normal I have to say) and as he was doing his usual inspection of the car on the ramp, found that I had been lucky to finish the weekend with the engine looking in a pretty bad way.
Fortunately we have a spare engine, but it needs time to be prepped for the rest of the season as we had originally planned for it to be used as next seasons engine. Therefore, we have taken the decision to miss the next round at Brands Hatch to make sure that I can compete in the 2nd half of the season with what we hope to be a more competitive car. As for the current engine, it did what we needed it to do, it survived long enough to let me experience racing on the full Formula 1 circuit, and that is a memory that I will always be extremely thankful for.
Bucket list moment, complete.
Jack
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