Having been unable to commit to the full series when funds were needed by the organisers in February I managed to sneak an entry into the Knockhill round of Time Attack as I saw how much fun Mike Payne was having and knowing that some people would deem a near 1000 mile round trip too much for one round a space became available courtesy of Ron Kiddell (thanks Ron :thumb:)
The last month has been hectic trying to get through the list of things to do to try and eek a little more performance out of the car and a lot more performance out of me
With a final shakedown last week at cadwell along with some expert tuition from Maxx, a few minor tweaks were needed such as bigger injectors and more boost :evil: to give me the best chance I will have of getting a less than embarassing result up there.
As always before events there is a mad rush to get things done and I feel for Mike Payne (TA) and Bladey (competing in EDC at the same event) whose cars were both finalised yesterday having had recent scares - I believe Mike's was mapped to 2 bar
in the early hours of this morning by Zak after having had to strip and subsequently rebuild a lot of the engine to find and cure a mystery noise. Up until 9pm last night Mike didnt know whether he was definitely going to make it I am so pleased that he is - it will be great to slug it out on track with him in what should be two fairly well matched cars (albeit with different driving characteristics)Well, having had a perfect night's sleep (not) in fact I havent slept that well for quite a while now worrying about the event, the car, me, the weather and anythign else that I have forgotten to do cos my mind has been pre-occupied :? (sorrry if this affected you) .... up at 6am - not cos I had to but because it was light and I couldnt get back to sleep anyway
The plan today is to make a leisurely journey up to Dunfermline where Mike and I are booked into a fine B&B for the two nights. It looked great on their website, lets hope it is as good as it seems. They have wi-fi there so will post reports from there
Tomorrow is 'the' day !!
The event starts for us with an SIDC Track Morning from 9am - 12 that both Mike and I are booked on to try and gain some experience of the track before the stopwatches come out to play. This wont give us a major advantage over anyone else in TA as most of the competitors seem to be running in it but hopefully it can stop us joining Team Gravel and help us to post some respectable times in the afternoon practice and qualifying sessions :lol:
Zak from Mocom will be coming up to assist on the day with set-up, map tweaking, general problems as well as probably stirring the friendly competition between Mike and myself :lol:
The afternoon TA Club Challenge is broken down into two groups. Both Mike and I are in the same group and will get 2 x 20 min practice sessions then a 20 minute qualifying session where it is time to stand up and be counted .... our best lap time during that period ranks us for the final later on. During the final we have 1 warm up lap, then 1 hot lap to set our best time
I hope that we give the club some good exposure ooop norf and show what the club is about :thumb:
Alyn from ASP is also heading up (I hope the tickets arrived Alyn) and I am looking forward to meeting him and also Dan @ PFC along with many other friendly faces in what is, after all, a relatively small community of track goers, modifiers, tuners and general motorsport lovers.
To say I am excited is a huge understatement.
To say I am nervous is even more so but that will go as soon as on track (i hope)
Bring it on !!!
, maybe see ya sunday!
