Time Attack Round 2 Knockhill

Time Attack was back at Knockhill once again, the weather didn’t look too hot as I approached Knockhill from Aberdeen.

I left at 6.30am, it’s not all that early but on a Sunday I think you will agree its early lol Once I was at Knockhill, I got my myself to race control to sign on for the day.

The pits were alive with all the cars being prepared for the oncoming abuse. A Lot of the cars from last year have reappeared for this season, a few have had make overs, Bo Neilson’s Astra has had the full BTCC aero added giving it a very aggressive stance

The BC Racing Impreza was fresh from its win at Oulton Park and looked very good on track unfortunately a podium place was just out of reach.

Romain Levesque’s Crx was absolutely flying all day, its great to see an unlikely Honda in the mix, the turbo setup defiantly helps keep it in the fight. A well deserved 1st place in the FWD class was his reward.

Marcus Websters R32 GTR was on form aswell, giving me multiple chances of a flame shot, which i finally got late in the day much to my  excitement (haha). Marcus rounded of the day with a 3rd place podium in the Pro 4wd class.

Local Lass Fiona Kindness in her R32 GTR continued her podium form for the 2011 season and her winning form in general with a 1st place in the club pro 4wd class, her husband Adam competes with his Impreza in the club challenge class and did well considering the amount of diversion’s off track due to mainly the weather and secondly the pirrelli tyres.

One little rant I will have is that i did notice when track side how much tyre noise there was, the majority of the fwd cars were clearly understeering. Thats probably down to the weather in a way but i cant help but think the “control” tyres are actually not that great in keeping control of these high spec cars. Hey ho enough about what i think lol

Mike Mahoney and the Wallace guys were out in force, Matthew Lawsons Evo IV was competing as a one-off, and he did very well, the car ran faultlessly and was great to see Matty getting to mix it up in the Time Attack pack. Mike however didn’t fair so well, the first session the car was going well but was suffering from a misfire, the second session, after about 5 laps the car developed a differential fault which was terminal for the diff. Back in the pits Mike got the car up for inspection and quickly swapped his diff unit out for Mics (wallace performance) who had been at the track day the day before. With the car ready for the final session, Mike was flying, lap after lap the Wallace Evo VIII was on form, blasting around the circuit. However with 6 mins remaining in the final Mike entered the hairpin, he had to contest with the SVA imports Evo VI which had nearly stopped on the hairpin due to the “pass on the left” rule. This unbalanced the car and pushed itself and Mike towards the grass on the exit, with one wheel on the grass Mike tried to coax the car back onto the track with a healthy dose of manfoot, unfortunately it didnt comply and sent Mike even deeper into the grass and even worse the tyre wall! Below is a cycle of the pics i got, as you can see the impact was pretty heavy, Mike managed to climb out the car and was ok although slightly stiff from the collision.

The car will live on, first estimates are just panel damage(hopefully nothing too serious) hopefully the guys will have time to get the car back to its former glory in time for Brands Hatch on the 25th June

With only 6 minutes left in the session it was game on for the Pro class, Gavin Renshaw had been going well all day and with a lap time of 55.024 seconds he was the winner of round 2, a stark contrast to Oulton where a track rod failure left him unable to compete.

Well done to all involved and a good luck to the guys who have to get their cars repaired.

Thacko

#timeattack #thacko #bhp #scotland #wallaceperformance #aberdeen #trackday