Reflections

Had a chance to think about how Thursday went - it was pretty much what I expected, ups and downs. The sessions were busy and I only got a clear track a handful of times, most frustrating thing was that I spent my third session (the only dry one) constantly having to get out of the way so I was never really able to concentrate on what I was doing - at least there's nothing wrong with my awareness of other cars around me (a complaint levelled at a couple of other slower cars.) Had one moment when I forgot to check my mirror at McIntyre and suddenly Dave Newsham's meteoric #50 was up the inside of me from nowhere - I was too busy watching him and dipped the left side wheels into the gravel... kept it straight and didn't panic which was a relief. Also of frustration was that the last session of the day had to be called off as the medics had gone home early... I was pretty upset about that as I really wanted to try and use that session as an excuse to try a couple of quick laps having mostly just felt the car out and worked on individual corner lines in between letting faster guys through in the first sessions.

I reckon I'm a safe enough pair of hands - I managed to get through the wet sessions with no major dramas (just the incident with the #50 and a half spin down Seat in the first session when I went in too hard, caught it and got it going the right way so happy with that) and never felt out of control as such, but then it's not like I ever really pushed all that hard - just wanted maximum seat time with no silly offs or worse.

I didn't see the times for the first session but I'm told that was when I was at my closest to the front (somewhat ironically) - my time in the second session was about 11 seconds off the fastest guys and about 4-5 behind the competant SMRC runners, which I'm ok with given that I was the only driver of the SMRC lot that I'm aware of that has no previous racing experience. The other two scholars have a steep learning curve but I've got a sheer cliff-face!

So it looks like I'm the only driver starting from absolute zero - hope the crowd don't laugh at me too much in April. :) My plan for the first round in three weeks is to use the three heats to just do what I didn't manage to do yesterday and probably wont get a chance to do in the Saturday test sessions the day before the race - pound around with the track to myself (which will only take about a lap and a half going by the speeds yesterday!) and see if I can start to show a little aggression in my driving and not be quite so timid with the throttle and so on.

Anyway, thanks to Aly, Michelle, Carol and everyone who managed to make me feel a bit more relaxed about all this - it was nice of everybody to make excuses for me. :p