Saturday Morning Qualifying was off to a frosty start. It is hard to believe that at this time of the year the car was covered in frost at around 7 am. Someone left the freezer door open in Delmas it seems.
Qualifying, however saw things heating up and managed to get the car 1st in class D and 8th overall on a 2.18 .4 which was 2 seconds ahead of the next class D car which put us in the mix of the leading class C cars all on high 2.17 .5
Heat 1
As per usual the start of this race was chaotic and a 1st corner incident is virtually guaranteed. Every effort was made to avoid a collision having been in the thick of things of late and by lap 2 or 3 was leading class until all hell broke loose when the backend of my car started steering itself. I immediately pulled off the track as I thought a rear stub axle had broken, got out of the car to check and couldn’t see anything wrong. Eager to get back on track I jumped back in the car and made my way back onto the circuit only to realise the problem was not a figment of my imagination but a reality as the car would step out at every corner. Driving slowly, I made it to the pits only to find that a back-axle bolt had worked its way loose which was causing all the hassle and I was lucky to not have had a serious incident.
Heat 2
Thanks to Thabiso and Patrick who had identified the problem, double checked all the bolts and set the toe angle on the rear wheels – the car was ready to rock and roll again. Unfortunately, this put us on the back of the grid with a couple of A class cars who had also picked up issues in Heat 1 making my race extremely busy chasing down the rest of the class D brigade. When the flag dropped, I had managed to work my way back to 2nd place.
The final leg of the Clubmans MPC series is in November and we are still in the running for the championship if we don’t have any hiccups on the day.
Written by: Wayne Lebotschy