Racing News

02-Jun-09

Surprising 4th overall on SPEED Series Debut

My first race of 2009 went rather well with a surprising 4th overall finish on our debut in the SPEED Sports Prototype series at Spa Francorchamps in Belgium. I say surprising because I will openly admit I had much learn about aero led race cars and perhaps to complicate things further neither of us had practiced since a very uncompetitive track day in March. However, the track day was at Spa which proved very useful for building confidence around Spa’s flat out corners but not crucially for set up.

Switzerland based car owner Andrew Derodra took the start and found a very decent rhythm, pushing harder as each lap went by. This was made all the more impressive because Andrew last raced in the Hungarian Renault Clio Cup 2 years ago and has only driven the Juno on a couple of occasions, mostly wet ones! Andrew’s stint lasted an hour and half and I can honestly say he was flat at 140mph through Eau Rouge for the vast majority of it. I took over from Andrew in 6th place overall and got my head down to make sure we at least stayed there, it was already better than both of us had anticipated.

This was a great experience, taking Eau Rouge flat for the first time in this sort of car is a bit like suddenly understanding the Matrix but it did make me realise we need to make some big changes to the set up in future to find race winning pace. Thankfully I now trust and understand the car much better so can make set up changes without feeling I was making excuses.

You can see what an awesome car and track this is from the cockpit in this onboard video