Oulton Park.... This was going to be our first visit to this circuit and the weather forecast was not looking good. Late on Wednesday evening me and Alan had an emergency team meeting on the phone. The topic of which was the weather forecast of heavy showers and our lack of running experience with the 888's, this coupled to the fact that we would not be in a pit garage. A historic moment for TNT Racing in as much as this was the first time that we were in complete agreement on two areas in spite of the additional and last minute costs. We would buy a set of T1R's and a gazebo.
Friday morning....The original plan for the day was to fly over to Leicester to collect some oil, additive and the new diffs, then get back and start on the car. This was now changed I would go to Leicester to collect the oil, additive and diffs whilst Alan would drive to Toyo Tires in Northants to collect the T1R's. We met back at mine at about 11.30, Alan was going to make a start on the car strengthening the undertray, changing the oil, changing the front brakes and put the battery on charge. I was going to get the new tyres fitted, get te anti-fog gel and buy a gazebo.
Saturday and a not too early start, we set of for cheshire at 06.00 both cars packed and full of fuel. On the drive up to the circuit I was going to bed the breaks in and take the shine off the new tyes. We arrived at about 07.30 to be followed in by Dunc and Phil. On the drive up there was no sign of the forecasted rain and would have to say that it felt more like a sunday than a saturday.
Shortly after pulling up in the paddock the rains came so the first job was to erect the gazebo then get the kettle on.
As we were preparing for the warm up session, raining, Alan met Duncan who had just come in, Alan asked Duncan what were the conditions like out on track to which Duncan. Simply replied 'I've just binned it'.I was absolutely gutted to hear that.
Queued up in the pit lane to be sound tested only then for the session to be stopped, red flagged. So Alan returned to the paddock. They finally reopened the track after about 10 minutes, this meant that we were only to get 3 laps in.. The report back from Al. on the T1R;s were that they felt 'bloody brilliant'. Even though he was still being causious out there
Practice Session and it was still wet so we left the T1R's on. When Al came back in he reported to me that the car wouldn't rev. past around 4700 rpm so he was having to short shift. We decided to check the plugs and re-gap them. Took the first plug out and it was a weird brown colour so I decided to ask the 'oracle of knowledge' some of you will know him by his other name Gary from APT. He took one look at the plug and said that we were using a fuel additive and that it was fine. Cheers Gary.
At the end of practice we were stone dead last and a full 3 sec. off the next competitor, not good.
Qualifying.... The plugs had been re-gapped and the weather was looking to be dry for this session. We were having a chat with Duncan and Gary who both said that we would should switch to the 888's. We went back to our gazebo and started looking at the sky. We had decided to switch to the 888's and had changed one side of the car when the heavens opened, we took shelter in the gazebo and waited fro 10mins before making a final decision. 888's it would be.
The car was going better the tyres coming up to temperature and Alan steadily getting quicker, until coming out of island bend and under acceleration there was loud bang which as Alan put it sounded like gunfire and everytime he tried to accelerate it did it again. Time to limp the car into the pits. As Alan drove past me in the pits he signalled that all was not well so I ran back to the gazebo to meet Alan and to be greeted with smoke coming out from under the bonnet. Not sure what's happened but the car drove back home with no mishaps. The more pressing point was where did we finish so we made our way over to wait for the time slips..................We weren't last and only 0.5 sec. behind the next place.
We are at the bottom of the table but competition is still fierce even down here as no-one wants to finish last. We are very happy with how the day went and achieved our current goal, which is not to finish last.
There were a lot of nice cars as ever including the new GTR and EVO X
There was even a new GTR in Alans group
I tried to get some pics of it.
1st attempt
2nd attempt
And finally a very rare shot, Alan in the sierra passing the new GTR
If you look carefully you can just about see it behind Alan. :lol: :lol:
. Then we still have to do the oil change and get the cars packed :roll: 
