Oulton Park 24th June, 2006

I had not raced on the Fosters circuit at Oulton Park before although last year I had one of my favourite races here on the longer Island circuit configuration. Oulton Park raceway is set in the grounds of a stately home in Cheshire and it is really quite beautiful. The start of the circuit is like anywhere else, a pit lane with a control tower and other race associated buildings but then you plunge down hill and the scenery opens out to manicured parklands and oak trees with even a lake on the left. The second half of the circuit is through a forest before coming up hill to the start finish line again.

We had booked a full days testing at the circuit but the morning sessions were hindered by traffic as slower formula fords were also testing in advance of their own race day. In the afternoon I managed some quick runs but we flat spotted our practise tyres and could not afford to run up mileage on the race set. After the test was over my team mate Andy walked the circuit with me and gave some valuable advice on improving my lap times.

Qualifying was strange. We were delayed starting as the caterhams that had been out before our session had drooped oil on the track. Normally when this happens it is in one or two corners and then the offending car has usually pulled off the track. In this instance either the driver managed to get all the way round the track before his engine gave out or half the cars qualifying must have been dropping oil, as there was an oil slick right around the circuit. The marshals deal with this problem by spreading cement dust onto the oil which added the extra problem of becoming a constant dust cloud for our first few laps of qualifying, worse for me as I exited the pit lane with my visor slightly open. Despite what I thought was a decent run I only qualified 6th and so I left myself plenty of work to do in the race.

On the race start I had a problem on launch and Russ Giles went past me into turn 1. As we came round the corner I could see that Jim Blockley was in trouble and his car was in the air and nose diving back into the track. This caused a red flag and a race restart. Fortunately Jim was ok but his accident also resulted in the retirement of Jeremy Timms. I was now effectively up to 4th.

The restart was then aborted as a car at the back of the field caught on fire so it was quite a long hot wait for both the cars and the drivers before we were finally dispatched with a new green flag lap.

On the second restart my team mate Andy blending across Geoff Fern to give me a clear run at pole sitter Mark Harrison, I assumed 2nd place whilst Andy played rear gunner for me defending any startline challenge from Geoff Fern or Neil Harrison. As part of our agreement I then allowed Andy back into second place at the end of the first lap and settled in to the chase. By lap 6 I went past Andy again and started to hunt down Mark. I followed him for the next few laps never more than a few inches from his rear wing until we came across the first of the back markers on lap 11. Mark had the better of the traffic and pulled out a lead of about 100 meters but not to be deterred I then set the fastest lap of the race to close the gap down again.

Just as it looked like I was going to make a challenge for p1 my brake peddle went long as had Marks and we spent the last 4 laps having to use our gears to slow down which allowed Neil and Geoff to close up on what had been a 30 second gap. On the last lap we came across another back marker who ignored the blue flags and boxed me in at Fosters corner. This allowed Neil Harrison to overtake me for 2nd to which I was unable to recover.

I finished the race disappointed to be third but with the consolation of fastest lap.