I reckon that it is time to move on from the last column, where I could brag that we had won a race, and move from the past and into the present. I kept the good news as long as possible until I got a bit guilty, so this is what has been happening since then.
First, let's talk about Salt Lake City, and then it's off to Le Mans....
Salt Lake City was full of expectations for another good result - did you know we won at Long Beach (oh no, there I go again!). We tested at Miller Motorsports Park a couple of weeks before the race and gathered lots of important information - like how cold it can get when it snows there, how cold the wind can feel and how difficult it was to make any sense of the day. Still, we did get more miles and we did learn a few things, so it wasn't that bad.
We were hoping that the race would be a lot warmer as it was a real nightmare on cold tyres - we must have been 20 seconds slower than normal on an out-lap.... When we returned for the race, thank God, the sun decided to come out and warm things up. Practice didn't go as well as we would have liked, as we weren't fast enough. To make matters worse, the new de Ferran Motorsports team turned up and smoked everyone! I mean, what was all that about? I thought is was really not on and very rude of Gil to do that - and he is a mate as well!
I remember doing a race at
Silverstone and being the top dog in the Class B F3 Series, thinking I had another pole after qualifying. Then I realised, after reading the results of the session, that some bloke called de Ferran was on pole.... I asked 'who the hell is that guy, he shouldn't be there'... I did make amends in the race, as I went round the outside of him at Stowe on the first lap and took his nose off - then he spun out of contention. I thought at the time that no-one messes with ' the Brabs'! Well, that all sounds good... but the truth is that I never saw him and turned in, he spun as I took his air away from the car.