Mallory Park - Clio, take 2!

Mallory Park, second round of the Clios - for me anyway!

Like Brands Hatch, I'd never driven Mallory Park before, all I really knew of the circuit was my friend lost a wheel going round Gerrard's earlier in the year! That and unlike Brands Hatch, this track wasn't a local one! Annoyingly the test day was on the Thursday before the Saturday race, which aside from adding a massive expense car transport wise, also didn't fit in with my work schedule as I was due to be working in Bridgend in Wales on the Friday (I'll come back to that later!)

Due to the lack of testing day, again I recruited my friend to come to a track day with me to sit in and shout at me. Mallory was where he did his ARD's Instructors license and as with every other track he drives, he knows how to pedal a car round it quickly! Unfortunately the company that run the Clio for me were unable to make it to the track day, so again it fell to my trusty little road mini to save the day. What a day of lessons it was!

About 30mins into the 2.5 hour drive, while I was on the M25, my tyre pressure light came on in the Mini. Not a rare occurrence, normally set off when one tyre dips lower than the rest. Anyway, I got the tyre pressure screen up and kept an eye on it... Hmm, rear right tyre was going down, and fast! Not ideal! Anyway, after a visit of every service station petrol pump on the M1, I made it to Mallory. Now normally I have 2 spare tyres in the back of the Mini. Obviously not on that day though! Cue a panic to sort out a replacement.

If you know Mallory, you'll know that once the track is open, the cars are trapped inside, so I knew I needed to get there on time to get my car in the circuit at least! I figured once I was there I'd have to get the wheel off, carry it over the bridge and get a repair person out. It sort of worked that way. Basically my friend and I spent the morning driving round the surrounding towns trying to find a replacement tyre. Apparently 18inch Mini tyres are not an easy find. In the end we found one garage which had China's finest cheap tyre - not the best for track, but the size was right and it solved the problem! Afternoon running resumed, I got about 4 sessions out before my brakes and front tyres were destroyed. Expensive track day all round! Poor little Mini!

Cue the race day, my job on the friday, unbeknownst to me when I took it, wasn't wrapping till Midnight. I ended up getting back to my hotel at 1am, got my head down for 2 hours, before having to get up at 3am to start the drive to Mallory - I was very much cursing having to be a the 'new to the circuit' briefing first thing!

Quali

P7 in Class, P14 out of 18 overall. I was 8/10ths off the quickest guy in my class with a 55.449. Lots of time to be found and corners to be braver into. I fell into the trap of following the car in front for a few laps, and unfortunately he wasn't a quicker car, my brain only engaged in the last couple of minutes of the session to maybe back out and leave a gap ready for a hopefully clear push lap.

Race # 1

P8 in Class, P13 Finish. Very annoying race - I didn't have the best start off the line, entirely my fault and I apologised to the clutch profusely after! However what made it even worse was someone spun going into Gerrard's - right across my path, meaning it was time to hit the anchors and avoid. Thankfully all was avoided, but my 'nemesis' from Brands Hatch had overtaken me again, and annoyingly this race I couldn't get past him. This was made even more annoying when I found out after that my quickest lap was 4/10ths quicker than him - and quicker than my quali pace with a 55.434. However on the bright side, I got some great defending practice as one of the front runners in my class had had an off, I think I held him up for about 10 laps before he decided to off road it on the grass going into the hairpin to get round me. He came up to me after the race and said 'You completely ruined my race, but that's the best fun I've had all year trying to get past someone - well done!' - That made my day!

Race # 2

By this point I was starting to flag, race 2 had been delayed quite considerably due to a lot of red flags in the previous races and one pretty gnarly accident in a different - thankfully everyone was okay! I was starting the race in P13, and unlike the first race I had a great start, leaving my 'nemesis' behind (again just to note he's actually a lovely guy!), coming round the first lap I was on the tail end of the front 5 in my class and I was buzzing. Unfortunately the combination of my buzzing and sleep deprivation lead to a big lock up into turn one and a 2 wheel off road excursion, allowing 3 cars behind me back past me - including my nemesis! Cue my hunt for an overtake again! I managed to get back the first position with a lunge at the hair pin, which was helped by an mis shift from the other car. Then I had what felt like an eternity of trying to get past the 2 battling cars in front of me. I was starting to make mistakes left, right and centre and was over driving massively and getting no where. Realising that was the case and knowing I had a massive gap between me and the car behind me, I dropped back slightly and decided to use the remainder of the race to experiment with the car a bit more and get used to it's handling. All of my track experience is in rear wheel drive, so I'm very much still befriending the ways of front wheel drive! Anyway what a decision that turned out to be - on the final lap the 2 cars in front of me collided in the hairpin, wiping each other out of the race, if I'd carried on I probably would have been car 3 in the pile up, instead I got to drive round them and claim my 2 lost places back - P7 in Class and P11 finish.

Learned a lot of lessons from Mallory, from carrying spare tyres on track days, to not working long days before the race weekend!