Brands Hatch Mini Festival
Rounds 9 & 10
Qualifying
30 Mini Miglia’s booked in for the biggest entry of the year. We took the opportunity to test a week before the meeting and the Mini Sport Miglia was incredibly quick and set up was spot on, so I was feeling very confident going into qualifying. What I didn’t anticipate was significant loss of power during qualifying which initially worried me that we had serious engine problems and due to this loss I could only manage to qualify 12th overall, so 6th row of the grid!
Post qualifying investigations findings was throttle linkage that had failed and only gave us 3/4 throttle, so annoying as it was, at least I didn’t have engine problems but was on the back foot for the first race.
Race 1
Confident that I could make up lost ground, the race started, and I had a really good run into Paddock turn 1, and already had taken 4 cars, however exiting turn 1, I was to discover that one Miglia had got a tank slapper and was just gathering it up which presented myself with what I instantly thought was a gap for me to gain another 2 positions, however that gap suddenly became squeezed which meant unavoidable contact with Charlie Budd, which set off a chain reaction involving Jason Porter. This incident meant other Miglia’s took avoiding action and ended badly involving a further 4 Miglia’s, which included Martin Wager, Darren Moon, Kieron McDonald and Rob Howard. My car inflicted extensive damage to the nearside rear radius arm, wheels and all my arches ripped off. The race was stopped to clear the track and I was fortunate to be able to limp the car back to the pits where a spare wheel was fitted to the rear, but the radius arm was severely bent and almost un-drivable as it went down the straight like a crab.
I knew that it was now damage limitation and the options I had were to see how it felt and continue just to score any points or retire. After 3 laps of seeing where the limits were I managed to get faster and posted 6th fastest time of the race and managed somehow to finish 8th overall out of the remaining 22 cars, so wasn’t a bad result considering.
Race 2
Unfortunately the weather played a part and was very wet, which wasn’t what I was praying for, so starting 6th on the grid was right in the mix for what was going to be an interesting race. I tried the limits of the car and after a few dodgy moments I got my brain in gear for trying to protect my championship lead and aimed to just bring the car home without damage and managed to finish 7th overall which was good enough to extend the championship lead we have to 18 points clear of 2nd place driver Aaron Smith.
Overall the Brands Hatch Mini Festival was our worst scoring rounds of the year however we have to take the positives from it and move on to Cadwell Park for Rounds 11 & 12 on the 8th / 9th September, where I hope to get better results.
All the Best
Dave Drew
Mini Sport Miglia #29
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.
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