Pembrey 13th and 14th May, 2006

I have never had a good result at Pembrey so I wasn't really looking forward to the visit. Last year I ended up involved in someone else's accident on the first lap of race one and that finished off our weekend and pretty much the 2005 championship chase. The year before I had a really bad cold and the year before that the rear roll bar had been cracked resulting in a last and almost last in the two races of 2003. Not my favourite place.

I arrived at the track on Friday morning for our test day and was pleased to see that the sun was shining and our brand new truck was parked at the front of the paddock ready for the new awning to be put up. It wasn't long before the test session started and although I was using used tyres I immediately put in a low 58 second lap. We were pleased with this time as we knew that the bench mark was my 2005 fastest lap time of 57.3 seconds on brand new tyres. The second test session was halted early with a Jedi single seater car buried in the wall at turn 6, apparently the brakes failed and the driver had to be removed by ambulance with two broken legs. After lunch I posted a quicker time of 57.8 seconds so we spent the rest of the afternoon putting up the new awning.

Saturday arrived and I was looking forward to getting a good qualifying lap in early. I followed 2005 champion Mark Harrison out of the pits and spent the most of qualifying chasing Mark around the track. Mark grabbed pole and I was 3rd with Jeremy Timms splitting us. The race got underway with a great start from Jeremy who had been creeping forward before the lights went off. Jeremy pulled away from Mark gaining a 100m lead whilst I was busy defending into turn 1 as I had missed 3rd gear. Fortunately I managed to retain 3rd place and I spent the race chasing Mark with our cars only a meter apart for most of the race. The race was ended early when Neil Harrisons car was deemed to have come to a stop in a dangerous position. This meant that the last lap was deleted from the records which cost me a fastest lap of 55.9 secs. The race was won by a lucky Jeremy Timms who did not have enough fuel left for a full distance race, with Mark Harrison 2nd and I was 3rd. Mark and I were now joint second in the championship.

Qualifying for Sundays race didn't go as well as I had hoped and now I was in 4th place on the grid. Mark had bagged Pole again with Jim Blockley taking second. I had been locked in third place until the last seconds of the session when Jeremy Timms knocked me back to fourth. I was a bit gutted because I knew that starting on the wrong side of the grid was going to be very hard. I had a good start as the lights went off but then got held up by a slower Jim Blockley, this allowed a flying Geoff Fern to come down the right flank and demote me to 5th. I followed Jim and Geoff for 6 laps watching them try and kill each other and at one point I had to brake hard to avoid running into the back of them at the very fast Honda curve. This allowed Neil Harrison to make his move and he and I had a drag race down the front straight. To be fair to Neil, he had been chasing hard and his overtaking manoeuvre was very fair, as such he was always going to win the chase to the next corner and I was about to yield when Jim Blockley and Geoff Fern chose exactly this moment to have there crash. Neil took the inside line and I had to brake hard to follow him. At this point Dave Dudley crashed into the back of my car, spinning me around to face the way I had come. After the obligatory wave to Dave I managed to restart the car and take off after Neil. I spent the rest of the race racing by myself with the last 3 laps nursing a fading brake pedal. Jeremy Timms once again under fuelled his car and retired out of gas. Fern and Blockley were out on the spot and this all promoted me to third behind winner Mark and his brother Neil Harrison.

Mark ended the weekend back in the lead of the championship and I am firmly in second place.

A special thanks to my mechanic Paul and his fiancee Sami. Paul has been helping me for the last three years and it was great to get two good results while he was running Nemesis for the weekend. A note of congratulations to Jeremy and his wife Sheila who enjoyed the birth of a new baby daughter over the race weekend.