we all woke to a dry but overcast day.. the track dryers were out hoovering the moisture off the track and all looked promising… all morning to run qualifying and all afternoon to race…

off to the startline and into the staging area…..
then BANG, it hit me like a steam train… back behind the wheel, in the race suit… concentrate, listen, do all the last minute checks, then called into stage…

lining up against jimby, rollinto the waterbox, lineloc on, rev it up, spin the tyres to scrub them clean, see a satisfying plume of smoke in the rear view mirror and into stage….

yellow yellow yellow green, dump the clutch let the line loc go and give it death…

jimby get the drop on me by ten or fifteen feet and by half track the gap is the same…
into the last eighth and the bus motors on, revs rising into full power and cruise past jimby in his green oval window bug to run a low 16 second pass.

back round and do the same to a green beach buggy for a low 16.

with a bit of help and some more thinking and twiddling i roll back for another run.
conor from raceshack appears at the side window in the staging area and does the honours of walking me intio the water box and doing all those really cool looking hand signals..
i scrub the tyres, conor is nodding, all is looking good, i hold it a few seconds more just for crowd, the launch control rev limiter in the ecu making the most amazing noise (knowing that there are flames shooting out of the exhaust 🙂 ) and off the line loc still on the throittle for a nice long smoky burnout, kink it off to the left slightly, snap it back in and get ready to stage.

the bus hooks up beautifully, i ‘d upped the launch revs from 3500 to 4200 and it doesn’t bog on the line, it just picks up and hurtles down thetrack, straight as a straight thing for a 15.9 pass. that’s more like it, still a second or more off where it ought to be but getting there 🙂

—-TBC