At Mendip, we have a Gary. Garys are useful things that restart generators all day when they keep conking out, patch in spare generators when the first one permanently pegs it, and a billion other things that you don’t realise need to be done until somebody points it out. I wasn’t Gary-ing yesterday, but I will be in a fortnight. So I kept myself as much out his way as I could, and got on with the business of competing the B6.4d and giving the Optima Mid it’s first run out.
2WD first. I shoved in a good first session using Tivvy settings. 13 laps when the best was 14, so happy with that. I don’t really want to talk about the 2nd heat, because on the first corner of the first lap, I stuffed it into the outer fence like a dickhead.
I completely broke the servo horn, which was obvious on first inspection. Not so obvious was I think I damaged the actual servo. It worked, but seemed a bit wonky. Bugger.
Luckily, The next two Quali sessions went more to plan. Despite the slightly wonky servo, 2 sucessively quicker 13 lappers. Without the servo breakage, I wonder if I could have qualified 2nd or 3rd in the B Final. But as it happened there was enough to take 7th, which was enough. The finals were good fun, and hard fought despite the dropouts. The generator problems and the very sunny, warm day, caused a very long day and quite a few to get headaches and so forth. But perseverance eventually yielded an extra place on quali, and the knowledge that, without the servo issues, and if I had used a second set of tyres, there was a lot more to come.
The Optima Mid was just a giggle. Once I twigged that the steering Servo was essentially buggered, It went around lovely. A bit twitchy on turn in, a bit high on ride and rolly, but nothing that can’t be cured.
Overall, a great, knackering, long, tiring, excellent day. 🙂