Rockingham Rounds 17 + 18
After some success at Brands Hatch I really felt as though Rockingham was going to be another good weekend, which would really indicate the ‘penny had dropped’ and that a bit of luck was finally coming my way.
It didn’t start to well to say the least. Once again my pace on old rubber was good and during the day before everyone put new rubber on I was a decent 8th quickest. Then as the day goes on when it’s the right time for new rubber, the whole grid puts new rubber on. Not me though.
Anyway with this in mind when we finally put new tyres on my car for Qualifying One, I go out and the car is completely un-balanced and all my effort that went in to setting the car up during the test day may aswel have just been spent twiddling my fingers in the back of the lorry. I qualify an unbelievably disappointing sixteenth. Between first and second qualifying I do my best to fix the balance of the car, it is improved slightly for second qualifying but still not great I qualified fourteenth.
I go back to the hotel going through and through in my head where I lose time to the others and what I can do to improve the car through there. After speaking to Steve Soper (team principal) we come to the conclusion that we’re running the completely wrong aerodynamic settings in comparison to the rest of the field. This was indicated to them through my own feedback to them during the test day, but it just takes them a full test day and two qualifying sessions for them to realise it!
I do have two other team mates, one of which is leading the championship (Phillip Glew) and in his sixth year of car racing you would expect to be able to balance and set-up a car relatively easily in comparison to myself and my half a season of car racing. Well, if you thought that you would be wrong because he copies my set-up as the weekend progresses. Don’t get me wrong, he is just a slight bit quicker than me at the moment but with his experience and my inexperience you would expect that from him. But when he came into the team I was expecting to learn from his feedback and vast experience, when in fact he’s to learning from me.
In Race One I overtook eight drivers going from 16th to 8th and am leading the rest of the rookie field by far. I’m comfortably sitting in eighth slowly catching the pack in front of me and under slight pressure from Olllie Smith behind me. When three laps from the end Ollie tries a lunge on me at Tarzan corner that just doesn’t fit and low and behold he ends up taking me clean out of the race!! So I guessed that luck hadn’t blown my yet, but I kept my head up and rejuvenate myself for race two which was going to be just as much hard work as race one.
In Race Two I get another great start and get up to 9th and catching the leading rookie in front of me when I and a few others go off on the grass from Ross Curnow’s oil spill on the previous lap. I rejoin the grid in 10th losing only one place, but the water temperature on the dash is going through the roof and if I don’t stop the engine’s going to blow up. I carry on driving and lucky enough the safety car comes out and I rush into the pits, the team come running over and pull the grass and gravel out that was overheating the engine. I catch the pack back up under the safety car by going around the oval part of the circuit. I rejoin the back of the pack. I am now dead last in twentieth. There are a further twp laps behind the safety car before the green flags are out, there are seven laps left in the race to try and salvage some points.
I come from last overtaking nine drivers including all five rookie drivers to go across the line in 10th place and 1st Rookie. To myself I’m thinking what a fucking drive!
As I arrive in the pits to be congratulated by my team the Formula BMW Clerk Ian Watson approaches me and says, ‘Jordan your team have been notified and I am notifying you that you did not score a point and finish as first rookie as you made no attempt when catching up with the safety car to go round the infield part of the circuit instead of the oval’. I argued with him my first point being that under the safety car, the track is neutral and explained that I had gained no unfair advantage….I started last!!! He did not agree and through out my protest. Once again like race one, I was robbed of victory!
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