Practice at Shelsley was interesting.
We got 3 runs on a track that was slippy at first, but quickly came good as the field took their first runs.
I had in my mind some advice from Sean at McClurge Motorsport in my head, and I wanted to try something different. It is practice after all.
The basic rift was to change up a gear and use the torque of the engine to pull the car though.
After many years doing Shelsley, this would be hard to try, but, I did and netted a slow 35.16, but the car was great.
Second practice was a more concerted attempt, using the same strategy, and a 34.22, still very slow.
Third run came round, so tried something a little different going into the hard-to-master- bottom Esse, and came away with 33.69, still a full second off my PB.
A measure of the Esse approach is the speed trap just before the bend, well, 100 meters before, but all 3 speeds were 75/80/81 mph, speeds through the bottom and top Esse were 42/42/45 mph but the last run was 0.5 sec faster through the Esses.
It is quite confusing on a hill to judge the time v speed of the sections but that 0.5 in the Esses resulted in a 0.5 off the final time.
Max speed over the finish was 95 mph.
So, for all of this I'm still 1 second slower than last year at the same venue.
"The older I am, the faster I was" comes to mind.
Two people have pulled out of the class due to mechanical disasters, and at this rate I'm last but two in a 6 car class, and the NG V8 is right on my tail.
Spanners crossed for a good day and some far bigger b@lls tomorrow.