Silverstone has to be one of my favorite tracks of the year and it’s also my local event. Round 5 is takes place on a single day for the the Super-pro class of the championship as part of the Trax Show. Trax, one of the biggest car shows of the year with both drifting and Time Attack sessions there was plenty for the huge crowd to see. The car was taken to the track the night before so we could avoid getting stuck in traffic and being late.
We headed onto the track for our one and only practice session which meant every run counts to learn how to drive on the judged line and get right on the clipping points. With around 6 runs done that was the end of the session, the judges had changed the line from previous years and I was pretty happy with how I had driven. Once I got back to the pits there was enough time to check the car over before getting ready for qualifying.
Going into qualifying I thought that I may struggle to get into the top 16 with the slight power disadvantage to some of the others on a fast and flowing track. 1st run was done and this was a neat and tidy run but I thought I could do better. While waiting for the 2nd run I was told that there won’t be time for the normal 3 qualifying runs so these 2 had to count.
I set off for my next run and the initiation and 1st clip were the best I’d done all day but a slightly scruffy transition messed up the rest of that run so I was hoping my 1st was good enough. It was actually good for me that we did only get those 2 runs as we discovered after qualifying that I had lost a driveshaft bolt and the others were unwinding themselves to. We got the qualifying results and to my surprise I had managed to qualify in 5th place position, I was over the moon with that.
So, onto the battles. My Top 16 battle was against Marc Huxley from Huxley Motorsport, the guy that made my Soarer look as good as it does. We had a practice run to warm the cars up and ourselves after the break from qualifying. On the 1st judged run, I was leading and I gave it everything I could because I knew Marc would be peddling like mad behind as he always does.
The 2nd run we switch and I’m chasing this time, all is going well until I drop a front wheel on the dirt inside of the kerb on the final clip. This gave Marc the win but I was still happy even with that mistake, I did better than I thought I was going to which has given me some confidence.
All that was left to do after the completion of the competition was to pack up, head home and start getting the car ready for the final round in a couple of weeks.
As always I would like to thank my sponsors for their continued support and help this year, Steelmate Automotive, Huxley Motorsport, SRB Power, XXR Wheels UK, EverythingDrift, RBPhotography, Garage Whifbitz, Utopia Signs
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