Rockingham - Nippon Challenge - April 2013

[Steve Lawtey]

Last weekend I was racing at Rockingham International Motor Speedway in Corby, England. Here's a brief race report with some video and photos;

Qualifying was poor with learning the hard way that taking too much infield curb is bad for your wheels. 2 cracked front wheels meant slow punctures which were spotted too late to get tyres/rims swapped over. 11th on the 36 car grid wasn't ideal. First race had to be run on the wet (treaded road) tyres and all I could manage was sliding around the track to a 9th place finish. After that James from Service and Sport Tyres came to my rescue by swapping the (thankfully) undamaged dry tyres off the damaged rims and onto the spare wheels so that I could try and make amends in the final race. I had a sneaky feeling I should be somewhere closer to the pace of the pack that fought in race 1 for the final step on the podium, as it turned out I had a bit more pace to boot. Possibly the best 15 minutes I've had in a car (driving ), I managed 2nd overall, 1st in SuperGT and set the fastest lap of the race. Only disappointment was not being directed to the podium for champagne and photos.... Anyways, got some usable footage from in car, on the shonky wobblecam with appalling sound



Gets a bit repetitive once I take the orange and black Scooby Clinic Impreza of Danny Precious as I seem to just lap in 2nd place until the chequered flag, footage from about 9 minutes in from the chasing 200SX of Adam Lockwood shows different.....



Some good slowmo footage from trackside, starts about 30s into the video for the Nippon pack









For the stat lovers out there, the full timing sheets for the day can be found on the TSL Timing website;

http://www.tsl-timing.com/brscc/2013/131432nip.pdf

Many thanks to Mark and Dave for driving/pit crew duties, Ben and all the guys at Eurospec for their hard work and support, and to the guys who came to spectate and support on the day.

[B-Man]

Glad to see another racer on the forum, even from across the pond.