Despite the terrible weather conditions on Saturday and the fact that Mike had never visited the circuit before or driven the car in the wet, with no practice Mike managed a decent couple of grid positions in the heats.
On Saturday, Mike moved up through the pack to take 12th place from 20th. On the final Mike drove well from the back and ended up mid-pack. On Sunday, Mike was towards the rear of the heat, but 'fought' through to another 12th place. Unfortunately the conditions were still slippery, and a car Mike had just overtaken decided to find a non-existent line inside Mike, and t-boned his passenger door. Mike continued for a lap, but then the impact must have dislodged a brake pad so Mike lost those and following some 'autograssing' rejoined down the pact and without any rear brakes he recovered his 12th slot.
With the pad lost and no spares or shop at the circuit, Mike decided to sit out the final for safety reasons. We thought about putting all the braking load to the front, but didn't want to risk it in such slippery conditions. Had we a spare pad, we still couldn't have fitted it as we later discovered that the retaining clips had gone. We need to find a fix for this as this happened in testing at Mallory and we put it down to a problem with the axle. That has since been changed, so we perhaps need to wire them in place.
Some valuable points lost, but lots of experience gained for 2010.
On Saturday, Mike moved up through the pack to take 12th place from 20th. On the final Mike drove well from the back and ended up mid-pack. On Sunday, Mike was towards the rear of the heat, but 'fought' through to another 12th place. Unfortunately the conditions were still slippery, and a car Mike had just overtaken decided to find a non-existent line inside Mike, and t-boned his passenger door. Mike continued for a lap, but then the impact must have dislodged a brake pad so Mike lost those and following some 'autograssing' rejoined down the pact and without any rear brakes he recovered his 12th slot.
With the pad lost and no spares or shop at the circuit, Mike decided to sit out the final for safety reasons. We thought about putting all the braking load to the front, but didn't want to risk it in such slippery conditions. Had we a spare pad, we still couldn't have fitted it as we later discovered that the retaining clips had gone. We need to find a fix for this as this happened in testing at Mallory and we put it down to a problem with the axle. That has since been changed, so we perhaps need to wire them in place.
Some valuable points lost, but lots of experience gained for 2010.
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