After finishing Silverstone without too much to do to the car we went into the round at Oulton Park fairly confident of a good race. In qualifying the car felt the best it ever had and we qualified a strong 8th out of 26. This was to be my highest ever start position, on the 4th row of the grid. I was slightly apprehensive as I was amongst a lot of cars that I hadn’t been around before, so I wasn’t sure how they raced. I got a good start overtaking a few, but was on the outside at the first corner and was pushed wide onto the grass losing quite a few places, but was still 2nd in Class.

There was a big accident after the second corner, which sent our main Class competitor into the barrier and retirement, which meant I was now 1st in Class with 2nd in Class close behind me. There was a pack of slower cars in front of me that were bustling for position, which meant that I couldn’t overtake unless I went onto the grass. Knowing I still had 15 minutes left of my session before handing over to Toby, I kept with them and waited for an opportunity to overtake whilst closely watching my mirrors and defending from the other class car behind.

About a lap or so from the end of my session I had a lapse of concentration and one of the cars behind got past, which in turn let through our class competitor and meant we had dropped to 2nd in class. Our competitor was chucking out fluid, which went over my windscreen and also the track making it very difficult to keep up. He went into the pits on the next lap and I carried on for my last lap before changing over to Toby. When I came into the pits our competitor was still there having problems with the car, which meant we had taken back the lead in class, with the next car in class about 20 seconds behind. Toby had a great race and we just missed out on 5th overall after 40 minutes by 1 second, but this was to be our best ever result, 6th overall, 1st in class and fastest lap in class – a great relief after all the problems we had endured during the season!

On a high, we couldn’t decide whether to take part in the last event at Snetterton, on the new 200 circuit, but we eventually decided to give it a go and set off to Norfolk at the end of October.

We had checked the car over in the weeks leading up to the event and felt that we could end the season on another high. I went out for the first stint in qualifying and the car had a minor vibration coming from the front end, which didn’t feel too bad, but it would need checking once the session was over. I was getting good speed and down the straight I was maxing out just before the left-hander into Brundle. My bogey corner is the new Coram, which is a long fast right-hander that tightens before a 90 left at Murray’s. People kept catching me here, but when I had a slower entry into Murrays I was getting a much better exit onto the Senna Straight, most times pulling away from the cars behind. I just needed a few more laps to build up my confidence on that corner, but that was the end of my session, so I handed over to Toby, mentioning the vibration to our pit crew.

2 laps into Toby’s session we noticed the chequered flag out and wondered if we had mis-judged the change over and left Toby with no time to do his laps. Then we realised that we hadn’t seen him come past. What had happened? Had he crashed? Had the engine failed? We didn’t know. We left the pit wall and I found a driver that had been out on track, he told us: “I’m sorry to say that your engine is all over the track”.

Relieved that Toby hadn’t crashed, we went back to our pit space and waited for him to return. Whilst waiting what seemed like forever we heard many stories of what had happened. One that Toby was dropping oil into the hairpin and then spun on it into the barrier, another that the engine had exploded so violently that the whole of the front end was destroyed and the wings and bonnet had blown off! He finally got back with the car and it looked intact, until we noticed a huge bulge in the bonnet that wasn’t there before! Toby said the flywheel had destroyed itself, taking most of the gearbox casing and engine with it! A large chunk of the gearbox casing and flywheel were on the track, along with some plug leads! Luckily he was unhurt in the incident and it just meant another engine rebuild, but this was a sad end to our season, with a plus side that it would have happened at the start of the next season and we wouldn’t have 5 months to fix it between races!!

On removing the engine and taking apart what was left we found we needed: Flywheel, Engine Block, Gearbox casing, Starter Motor, Clutch, Gearbox Input Shaft, Head-work and Crank to name a few bits. Most of these items have been replaced and work is on going on the major parts. We are hoping to have the engine and gearbox back together in the next month ready for testing before the season starts again in April once again at Snetterton.

We will be racing with the Ford Puma in the CSCC Tin Tops series again this season and will hopefully have more class wins. For more information on the club and the series please visit their website www.classicsportscarclub.co.uk.

Yours in Racing,

Lisa Selby

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