Going into the second weekend of the season was a bit difficult for us, as I’d not really run the touring car round Rockingham before after the problems last year and missing media day this time around.
While we can sit and moan about it, we aren’t a team with a big budget and haven’t done a lot of testing, so we just had to get on the with the job we were there to do. We are a one car team and don’t have two cars that we can use to try different things out in practice, so we are finding out feet all the time.
Missing media day and testing meant we were on the back foot but we have a great bunch of guys who all have the same goal and are capable of doing a good job. That is the good thing about the team and it is very much like a family. It is thanks to the sponsors and the team that things are as good behind the scenes as they are on track.
I was over the moon with how qualifying went on Saturday. I'd have been happy to get into the top ten as we haven't had a lot of running with the car and had an engine problem in the second session so it is very satisfying to get the result.
In the second session, the warning lights came on, so I turned the engine off and hopefully we have managed to save it - although we changed the engine as a precaution before qualifying. I think it was the same lap of the second session and I was following Plato again as I was last year so it was a case of déjà vu – I just couldn't believe it as it was exactly the same. But at least we had a spare engine and could get the job done in qualifying.
Race day was a mixed bag for us really but overall it was a good change in fortune compared to last year. We had a good first race, not so good second race and then came good again in race three. The balls were drawn in our favour to start from pole position and then the heavens opened to change everything again. From then on, it was into the unknown as you don’t know who is capable of doing what and you don’t how fast people will be.
