That aside the car felt so much better than it has in the past. Earlier in the year, I could go round a circuit in my old Kumho championship car quicker than I could in this one which told me that we had a problem. We knuckled down and now I have the confidence in the car that I didn't have before. It's as fit as a butchers dog and with it having scared me to death earlier in the year, I now have confidence with it. We'll make steps forward but you don't get many chances with these guys.
A few changes to the gearing didn’t work in qualifying but in the first race, with a set-up that we had altered a little bit, we had a good run and finished 16th and eleventh of the Independents which was good and I had a decent battle with Erkut, the new Vauxhall driver. We swapped places a few times but my tyres went off like I’d flicked a switch. I felt like he was holding me up from about lap six through to lap twelve but when I got past him, the tyres just went. Whether it was because I’d been running off-line a little bit to get past him, I don’t know but it meant we had to make a bit of adjustment for the second race which seemed to work and we made another adjustment for the final race which worked even better. It was a good step forward and we’ve got two circuits coming up that we know better than this one so we can go racing there which is a big thing.
The car now feels like a totally different one to the one I raced at
Thruxton. We’ve got to grips with the suspension now but it’s just taken us a little bit longer than we expected because of the lack of testing that we had in the dry. But this is a two year programme, Quayside Distribution my sponsors were at
Croft over the weekend and are happy with what is going on and are already talking about next year so I just need to improve my fitness, my performance and my confidence and the results will start to come.
