When I arrived there were fewer cars than expected which suited me just fine. Before getting into the high speed part of the days proceeding I invited Ainsley Lochan, one of our top three drivers to run through the stage with me giving me pace notes as he would have done it. This proved very useful as his style of pace notes was a lot simpler than mine while being more descriptive. This is definately one of the changes I will make going forward.
Finally it was time for the high speed stuff. I started off relatively slowly and increased my speed bit by bit as I got more used to the stage.
Upon returning to the pits for a break, Barry McKenzie, another one of our top 3 drivers gave me some pointers on how to make the "90s" faster. "Turn in, tap the hand break (rather than holding it as I did before), turn out and turn back in. So I went out for a few more runs with that in mind.
After the lunch break I went back out with Barry navigating...that was an experience. He explained the science behind his "balls to the wall" style and insisted that I try it. While he's shouting "keep left" and "don't lift...DON'T lift" over a semi-blind crest my mind is thinking "It's Barry...he knows what he's talking about" while my right foot is thinking "flick both of you..I'm coming up". On each subsequent run I got my right foot more and more under submision...
In fact now looking back, the two times I nearly ran off the road was when I lifted...
A few more days like this and I should be good to go....for now I'm looking forward to the next event on September 19th to start putting what I learned into practice.
Photos courtesy Nicholas "Dumplin" Bhajan
lol.... great blogg
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