Dunlop Mini Miglia Championship
Rounds 3 & 4 Snetterton 300
Qualifying
A large entry of Miglia’s lined up for qualification, so trying to find the best place to be for either a slipstream tow or the ultimate clear lap was always going to be hard to call. It wasn’t long into qualifying when a number of cars had problems which caused a safety car to be deployed and slow down the order. Up to that point, I hadn’t achieved a clear decent lap and was 12th fastest, so instead of sitting behind the safety car, I chose to pit and make a couple of changes to the car and more importantly the right track space to set a better lap as there was only minutes to spare. This happened to be the best call, as we immediately set 5th’ fastest time in the 1 lap that was left on the clock.
Race 1
Rain made its presence yet again and the race was declared a wet race and we were ordered to carry out 2 green flag siting laps before the race got under way. Unfortunately the race officials started the race time on our 2nd green flag lap, which meant that we only got a 10 minute race!
I managed to get a great start propelling ourselves from PS to P3 and managed to get our head down between 5 of us that were pace makers. We battled hard with Rupert Deeth the reigning champion, but the conditions made it hard to pass, and the race time only meant that we only had 4 laps, so the best option was to sit comfortable in P4 and bring the car home and bag 17 points.
Race 2
Dave Drew in his Miglia #29.
Fortunately the weather was fine for the second race, however our grid position was P6. Another great start again propelled us again to P3 and the battle for the lead was between myself, Deeth and Deegan in the Peter Baldwin Miglia. All three of us battled hard consistently changing positions from lap to lap. We lead briefly and showed very promising power, so my plan was to keep the pressure on, and make the important move on the last lap in a place I knew it would work, however on the penultimate lap we caught the backmarker car, which was shown numerous blue flags to move out the way, which he chose to do, but suddenly mid corner In the fastest part of the circuit he closed the door causing me to slam in the rear of him causing substantial damage to the bodywork and knocking my wheel alignment out. This compromised me significantly, which meant that we lost a further couple of places and managed to finish PS overall and collect another 16 points.
Although I feel upset about the blue flag incident I honestly believe we had another race victory snatched away from us, but we have to go away being positive that we finished the race and the best of all of this is that we now are leading the championship by consistent top finishes and next we head to Thruxton in two week’s time in a high profile meeting which is where we won our first ever Miglia Race. So really excited about this one.
Blog courtesy of Dave Drew – Mini Sport Miglia 29
Stay up-to-date with all of Dave’s results through the 2018 Championship on Mini Sport’s Facebook here.
