Scott Malvern: Fun, Sun & Trucks at Donington!
August 22, 2012
It’s amazing to think that as I write it’s almost the penultimate Bank Holiday of the year here in the UK and the next one after this will be Christmas! This year is really flying by and many motor racing championships are now fast approaching their conclusion. The next time I compete in the Protyre Formula Renault BARC Championship at Silverstone at the beginning of October it will be the final two rounds of that championship as well.
So last weekend at Donington Park was the penultimate event of the series and there was plenty of activity as for the second time this season we had a triple header which meant a back to back double qualifying session on Saturday morning followed by a race on Saturday afternoon and two more races on Sunday and with the exception of a few spots of rain in the second qualifying session all of our on track action was conducted in very warm and mostly sunny conditions. Once again we had a bumper 27 car field re-enforcing just how popular this championship has been this year and a very large crowd helped by the fact that we were sharing the billing with The British Truck Racing Championship and what a bunch of great characters and great racing they produced!
I came incredibly close to grabbing pole position in the first qualifying session; in fact when the chequered flag came out I still had it but rival Josh Webster just ahead me on the road managed to grab an extra lap and with it pole for the first race by the slender margin of just a hundredth of a second! After just a five minute break we were out for the second qualifying session which would set the qualifying times for the grids for races two and three. Again it was incredibly close but this time it was my turn to grab pole by just seven thousandths of a second with what turned out to be the fastest time by any car (or truck for that matter) in any class for the whole weekend! Unfortunately my second fastest time of the session would only be good enough for grid four of race three so I knew I would have some work to do there.
Race One Saturday afternoon was a bit of a boring affair really. Josh and I both made good starts from the front row and pulled away from the rest of the pack and although I sat on his bumper for much of the race there wasn’t a way round to be found and with our pace being so incredibly similar achieving an overtake through any of the high speed corners was going to be difficult with the aero effect. At just over three quarters distance my tyres started to protest at the hard time I’d been giving them and with two more races still to come on Sunday it was better to back off and take the solid points for 2nd place.
Some weather forecasts on Sunday predicted heavy rain but though it clouded over a couple of times the downpour never materialised and our second race Sunday lunchtime in front of a very sizable crowd was once again in warm sunshine. I made a good get away from pole but it was all for nothing as before the end of the first lap the red flags were out! We re-gridded for a restart and once again I made a good clean get away and was pleased to be able to run in clean air for the whole race and gradually ease out a gap of almost 4 seconds. On the final lap I made a big effort to ensure that I bagged the fastest lap as well.
