After the awful weather at Llandow it was great to turn up to Castle Combe on a dry and mostly sunny day. I really felt that the VX would be at home here, with a pretty good power to weight ratio and handling balance, despite not having driven the circuit before, but knew that realistically I’d be held up by tyres and general lack of experience, especially given the unforgiving nature of ‘Combe and the dry weather. Added to this some entrants were from far and wide and in very serious looking cars, 18 entrants in my class in all, so anywhere in the top 10 was looking ambitious.

Timing problems on the practice run made this even worse, as I had no practice times until late on, and so had no idea how I was doing. When I later got my results I was around 83.44 seconds for my first timed run, which put me about 5^th or 6^th, it’s hard to tell for certain as some times were not recorded. After P2 I had reduced this time to 79.90secs, having had a laps experience and getting settling in a little bit, but the ABS system on the car was being a problem, particularly when the car was unbalanced going over Avon Rise and into Quarry, which is not the best place to be having braking troubles. Still, I was around 8^th place, although again I didn’t know it at the time, but the car felt good and it seemed ok to try a little harder, particularly braking into the chicanes and into quarry.

T1 was the first time I got back, so I was very happy with 78.43, putting me 8^th. This was the first run without ABS and the difference was incredible, allowing me to brake 20yds further into corners than on the previous run. The car’s handling in the dry is excellent and the current set up allows for plenty of trail braking if you’re careful, which is really useful for getting the nose into the chicanes. We decided not to make any changes to the cars set up before T2, and just to brake a little later and carry a little more speed. It worked, and T2 was better a 77.09sec run at an average 86.4mph, meaning I climbed ahead of a Mazda turbo to 7^th in class, and 6.35secs quicker than my first practice time. Unfortunately in P3 I was unable to improve posting 77.83sec, and the Mazda got back past me, meaning I ended in 8^th in class. I’m still pretty happy with this though, and on closer inspection it’s worked out very well for my championship standings.

As I said, many of the contenders were from outside championships, and 8^th in class got me 20.20 points in the Bristol scoring system, putting me 3^rd in class and, unbelievable, 5^th overall for all the Bristol Contenders, of about 40 runners, based on class index. This has put me up to 8^th place in the Bristol standings, which is a great result, even though I’m not going to be able to complete this season, I have one more event, at Colerne in August, to try and push myself up as high as possible. However, this is a very good sign for next year, when I’ll compete a full season, with (hopefully) some upgrades and more circuit knowledge which should mean I can be competitive for the overall championship.

I’ve uploaded some results and Bristol Speed Championship standings on the top left of the page. Unfortunately there were no photo’s from ‘Combe, as my usual “mate with camera” was at Glastonbury!