Silverstone June 2023

Silverstone GP circuit is one of Rich's favourite circuits so we were looking forward to having 2 races of 20min each. John couldn't make it but the sun did and so did another 23 drivers in the midget and sprite challenge.

 Rich secured 2nd in class in quali just behind Pippa Cow but was suffering from understeer on the setup that worked so well at Oulton. Adjusting the tyre pressures for race 1 improved matters a bit but the balance was still off and then despite a good start, the chance of a win was significantly reduced due to a bizarre problem. Coming into the new start finish straight the foam padding on the tonneau came loose and starting hitting Rich in the face before knocking the main power switch off and leaving him coasting down the straight whilst fighting a rubber snake of padding. Getting going again there was a gap of several seconds to Pippa which he chipped away at finishing just 0.9s off the lead.

The series had another excellent social event with a hog roast on the Saturday night but Rich used the time before to tweak the setup on the rake and rev limit settings ready for race 2.

Sunday was another glorious day and Pippa and Rich again battled with the class A cars until Rich made an uncharacteristic error and missed the heel and toe on downshift into the loop causing a low speed spin. Having dropped 6 seconds to the flying Pippa, the win again looked out of sight but Rich banged in some quali laps while Pippa got caught up with traffic. on the final lap Rich got right on the back of Pippa who started to look a bit ragged, locking the brakes into village before running wide at luffield. unfortunately for Rich yellow flags down the straight meant he couldn't capitalise on his better drive off the final corner so had to settle for second and a new lap record.