The JP Correspondence - View from the Back Brands GP

[petebee]

* given the complete failure of our onboard camera, this is what happened from memory. In reality there may or may not have been dragons and unicorns.

The morning started off with a lovely sunrise and the day looked set to be a beautiful day but that did not last.

Qualifying was a close run thing with only a couple of seconds between the five racers. Jonathan Greenwoods simply stunning Dulon MP15 took the lead of the group with a best time of 1:51.119 with the very steady Eddie Guest hard on his heels at 1:52.104. Very close behind was Mary Whittaker in her Diemen RF82 with a time of 1:52.144. Next up is the suprise to the group with Joe Vennor putting in a faster time than Peter Bassill. Joe in the Lola T664E clocked in at 1:53.837 ahead of Peter in the Ray 98Z at 1:54.610.

Come race time the big debate was tyre strategy. With a quickly drying track, the correct tyre choice was key. After long converstation with paddock partner Joe, Peter switched to wets as did everyone else in the group apart from Eddie who came out on wets. Arriving in the assembly area, there was all three tyre choices present, slick, intermediates and wets but who would prove to be right was yet to become obvious.

Lined up on the grid, the lights went out and the start proved exciting. Peter jumped up past Joe and Mary to challenge Eddie only to mis-judge the line and fall back to last.

After some excellent defensive driving, Peter slipped past Joe at Hawthorn and was treated to a beautiful firework display from Joes engine dragon. A challenge on Mary was attempted only to be deterred by Mary's secret weapon, a fire breathing dragon sat onto of the gearbox (in collusion with Joe?? No mention of dragons in the Blue Book). Peter put in a solid challenge on Mary at Pilgrims Drop taking advantage of Mary's backfire issues to catch up with Eddie.

The battle between Eddie and Peter was close and hard fought with Peter finally finding the courage put to in a rather late challenge on the approach to paddock hill, taking the outside line and staying fully committed. Peter held Eddie off but following a complete logic failure coming into surtes where Peter selected 1st instead of third Eddie as able to close to less than a hairs length and stayed there until the end of the race.

During the race, nothing was seen of Jonathan or Unicorns. Did he race well or go off? Everything was clear when seeing the timing sheet. Jonathan pulled a 23.4 second lead from the rest of the pack putting in a fantastic drive.

Now what can Sunday bring? Lets hope it is better weather.

[petebee]

Oh what a Sunday.

Qualifying was a mixed bag with Mat Jordan leading the way in the RF89 in at 1:47.850 chased very closely by Eddie Guest in the Lola T640 at 1:48.040. Next up was a surprise as Peter Bassill came in at 1:48.626, a personal best for the GP circuit despite entering Druids at twice the normal speed and spinning with no style at all (The judges award 1.0, 1.1, 1.1, 1.0 on style and technique). Jonathan Greenwood set a time of 1:51.630 in the still extremely sexy Dulon MP15 and bring up the tail of the group was Joe Venor in the T644E at 1:56.192.

Back in the paddock Joe got busy sorting a grounding out issue, solved simply by bringing the nose up by 2mm while Peter investigated a "breaking issue". On close inspection the left outer pad had vanished and only the backing plate remained.

More to follow...

[petebee]

The final bit....

OK, so I didnt expect a mention in startline but heck here we go.

So, ok, yep, we got to the qualifying. Joe got his car sorted which was massively important to the JPS paddock tents, as not having Joe takes some of the fun out of the race.

In the assembly area Joe and Pete were grinning like cheshire cats. Eddie took a gamble and came out on slicks then the devil decided they all had 15 minutes to change to wets. There was rumours of a broken differential from Petes car, but he was still smiling.

Eagerly they waited, on the starting line, engines pumping and jumping in time, the red light flashed and then goes off and ... well Joe got the start wrong and Pete made 5 places up before the first corner and bottled the battle with Eddie on his right. Coming back into the group behind the very lovely Mary, it was a big battle to pass her. At some point in the proceedings Pete passed Jonathan and caught back up to Eddie.

Joe had an epic battle with Mary and digging deep found the power in the Lola to pass the F2000 car and valiantly he maintained a growing gap. Now of course that had nothing to do with feeding Mary's dragon burgers from the Pit Diner of course, could it?

After that Pete was seen doing an inspection of Eddies gearbox until Graham Hill Bend proved a little too "drifty" and Eddie got some space. An amazing battle then ensued with Jonathan fighting extremely hard to pass Pete, keeping the pressure on for the remaining 5 laps.

In the end position it was a truly challenging race with some excellent drivers.

Thanks all for a great weekend. Until the next time.

Pete