Sep
24
Amanda Black BWRDC Blog – Another Win at Oulton Park
I arrived Friday morning for testing at a wet and soggy Oulton Park. Having only ever completed four laps for my ARDS testing in Aug 2010 and completing a 25 minute track day session, I was pretty much having to learn the circuit again. Feeling very disappointed that it was raining I took testing in the wet slowly. Luckily after lunch the track did dry up and we managed one dry session before it rained again for the final session. Leaving Oulton on Friday night I was not feeling particularly confident and there was only myself and one other driver on the grid that had never raced there before.
Saturday morning came and the sun was shining and the smile on my face was beaming. Having had very limited running in the wet, I decided to get behind an experienced racer Andrew Outterside for qualifying. We had a great battle and Graeme Smith, the three-time champion, also entered the fight. I could not believe that I had qualified second with a time that was faster than the current lap record. That made it five races in succession that I had started on the front row.
The weather remained sunny and bright for the race. I managed to have one of my best starts of the season and seemed pretty even with Justin Cox from pole position. Suddenly out of nowhere came a very fast starting James Russell from the third row. James, Justin and myself battled around for the first lap. I managed to get past James on the inside of Island bend and continued to work hard to catch up with Justin. I lined up Justin on the inside of Druids. Getting a faster run out of the corner, Justin slipstreamed past me into Lodge Corner. This time I got a faster exit and passed him on the pit straight. With the first lap completed, myself, Justin and Graeme continued to swap places. On lap four I got into the lead and managed to work hard to pull out a gap from second place. Putting in qualifying-style laps I managed to achieve a new lap record on lap five to extend my lead. Every lap after that was under the old lap record and I managed to go faster still on lap eight, posting a new club record of 2:05.336, beating the previous record by 1.3 seconds and achieving this without a tow. A race win was recorded with an eight second lead.
