G'day all, time to recall yesterdays events. I arrived at the track a little after lunch and headed straight to the garage to find Matt and ask what the day had in store for him. The first thing he said is we are back in the race. With the 22 car being destined for the scrap pile, rules of the blancpain series state that the chassis that you start the weekend with cannot be changed so when the car returned to the garage and was deemed to be to badly damaged so that was that. But the team went to the race director to ask if they could use the spare chassis for the race, which they allowed but with some penalties. They must start from pit lane and they must serve a stop go penalty of 2 minutes which in essence is a 3 min 11 sec with the 71 secs it takes to get from entry to exit of pit lane. So with the good news we head off to the hospitality marquee for some lunch and while seated eating i am hearing the gentlemans gt3 series going by. It is then that i hear what i and Matt agrees is one best sounding cars to compete in the GT3 class... The BMW Z4. There was 2 of on track and it is the most recognisable and enjoyable sound coming from the track i have heard thus far this weekend. So with about 3 hours until warm up and then super pole i enjoy the the F3 European championship and there 2nd race if the weekend and the scrapping and dicing and even a little shuntting of the Peugeot 308 series, talk about no beg your pardon.. V8 utes in the early is what i liken it to...
I return to the garge with about 45 mins before the warm up session and Matt informs me that they allowed 1 shakedown lap as the gentlesman race is concluding. This will give them about 40 minute to iron out any issues for the 30 min warmup session which Matt will not get to take part in. The first lap he will get in what is essentially a new car to him will be his first lap of the race, possibly the 3rd hour. So it comes back in and there are some slight issues, steering is a little right hand down, the throttle is a lot lighter in feel than the car from the first 3 rounds and the pit limiter is out all things that are quickly sorted and the car is ready for warm up. Straun and Matt P both compete 4 laps at race pace and are happy with what happened.
With end of warm up the super pole session starts which is basically an out lap and then 2 flying laps. The top 20 was run in reverse order from the previous days finishing order the 23 car with Lucas Ordonez at the wheel will head out in the 2nd group of 8 cars. He again as he did yesterday sets an amazing time of 2'18'09 which at the time had him in 4th but in the end was good enough for 10th spot. The 55 Kaspersky Ferrari that has Fischella in the car set a 2'17'3 to take the pole and with their garage only 3 spots over the joyous shouting coming out of there was something to hear. So again we head over to the marquee for dinner and i have the privilege to sit with Matt or Simmo as he is referred to, Straun Moore, Alex Buncombe his father Jonathon and brother Chris. I ask Alex what is your top 3 track that you have raced on? Bathurst was the first words he spoke forward by Spa and The Nurburgring. He could not give me an order of preference. We then started talking parts of tracks around the world and the corkscrew of Laguna seca was brought to up to which the reply was multiply that by 4 and you have the esses of the mointain. Whilst being totally mesmerized by the conversation taking place Jonathon tells me about his 3rd place finish in the 1977 edition driving a Ford Capri behind one PETER BROCK driving Vauxhall Magnum. 2 drivers per team and 13 hours of solid rain and No sleep what so ever. So an early finish of about 930 as it will be a long and hopefully a trouble free day. VARDZ OUT
please excuse typos
Last edited: Jul 31, 2017
