At least my nearest rival in the Championship, the #117 BMW was all the way down in 13th, and 5th in class.

You can see just how consistent the Elise was able to be on its tyres. In the middle part of the stint it was at least 1s a lap quicker that we could do in traffic.

I was at the top of the position chart at the wrong time! The #2 was up to 4th by lap 15 so it didn't take long for him to get to P1.

Everyone was well behaved so we had no safety cars, and the Lotus took the fastest lap off me on lap 5 then proceeded to batter it.

Fastest Laps

Our fastest race laps are below:

The Lap record from 2022 was not beaten. That was also a Lotus Elise.

I remained on top of the championship standings for another round at least!

ClubEnduro Qualifying

While the results did not seem too bad, the cars needed a fair bit of work. Ryan's slave cylinder had gone, which meant the box was coming off. Mine seemed to be OK until the guys spotted a small oil leak from the gearbox, which turned out to be a broken weld on the brace inside the box, so another box to remove. They were still on it at 4am Sunday, so were all looking less than fresh at 8am when we got to the track. I was determined to repay the guys today with a good result.
There had been a fair amount of rain overnight, and whilst it was pretty dry on the roads on the way in, the track itself was still pretty wet. This would spice things up a bit!
We did not have any Elises to worry about today, but the TCRs would be a threat, as would the E92 of Josh and Dave. I felt pretty comfortable in the slippery conditions, doing a bit of unintended drifting whilst still improving on my laps.
Ryan had gone out to do 3 laps and then handed over to Dylan for the rest of the session so he could get his eye in after sitting out the Saturday event.
A Red Flag for some badly placed broken down cars gave the track more time to dry out, and the laptimes quickly were down to dry pace when the session resumed. I waited in a pits for a few more minutes, then went back out as the #117 BMW and then #19 TCR pushed me down the order. Tye came on the radio to say I was in 2nd, with Dylan 0.015s behind me, but it was actually the other way round (TSL showed Parkin S twice which confused him), so when he corrected his mistake, I decided to push one last time. It worked as with a 1:13.549 I was at the top of the timing screen, and came back to Parc Ferme as I knew the car didn't have much more in it.
Dylan was still finding space and pushed again, with a 1:13.775 promoting him to P2. A 1-2 Quali session after all the hard work from the guys was a boost to the morale back in the garage for sure!

With the improving track, most competitors did their best laps close to the end when it was basically dry.

I was at the top of the screen for most of the session, being able to answer what most threw at me as the track improved.

Qualifying Laps

Our fastest Quali Laps are below:

ClubEnduro Race

A front row lockout for the team. It was going to be spicy going into turn 1 for sure!

Our start was pretty even, with me just keeping my nose ahead of Dylan. He feigned a move up the inside into Rocket on lap 1 after I drifted wide on the exit of the previous corner, but he didn't do anything crazy. We just concentrated on getting a gap while the guys behind battled away.
Dave in the E92 suffered a bottom arm failure early on, so they were out. The #23 TCR, my main rivals in the championship, were keeping us honest so I was keen not to hold Dylan up as my tyres went off. I made a mistake out of T3 and let him through. We had a few laps of traffic to deal with until the safety car came out, giving our tyres a nice rest.
We'd got a Class C Civic between me and the TCR in 3rd, so decided to go very early on the restart. We'd a gap of 0.657s before the safety car, this jumped to ~3.3s at the restart, enough breathing room to let me save the tyres.
We increased the gap a fair bit and I also jumped ahead of Dylan on lap 23 as he got boxed in between a lapped car. It was either that or we both lose a load of time, and it is a long race!
The pit stops were starting to happen near the front of the field at the halfway stage, ~45 laps in which is when Dylan came in to swap with Ryan. They were 14.669s behind me and ~4s ahead of the #23 Cupra. Normally I would go early but with the track being so brutal on the tyres, I could not risk a massive stint on a single pair of tyres. I pitted on lap 50 with a 21.847s lead to P2 which was still the Cupra.

Ryan and Dylan's stop was not as fast as it could have been, but I had a good stop, with plenty of time to spare. I was in the pits for 10s less than the #23 which was correct as per the penalties from Round 2. The #18 TCR, that had to come from the back was in the lead as I exited the pits, but he was still yet to make a stop, so when he did, I was back in the lead with a 20s lead to Ryan in P2 and 35s to the TCR in P3.
The traffic was hurting Ryan in places, but he was able to maintain his gap at around 10s for quite a while, but then a yellow flag zone caught him out. The Panda that had been lapped around 20 times at this point was going pretty slowly out of the exit of Peel, and Ryan passed him just as he entered the yellow zone. It was marginal, but instead of asking for footage after the race, the Clerk of the Course decided to just issue a 2 minute stop go penalty, ruining Ryan's chance of a podium.
His gap had dropped to less than 2s before he served the penalty, not helped by a half spin at Rocket and when he came out, he was several laps down with no chance of getting back up.
From there for me it was a case of keeping it clean and the tyres in good shape. Ryan punched in some decent laps for the final part of his stint, but the gap to the next car was too much.
I had a worry towards the end as it looked like it started to rain, but it was actually gearbox oil misting on the windscreen. This escalated to the clutch slipping in the higher gears. I just nursed it to the end.
Our full races are below

In the end it was almost a 39s gap to P2. It could have been a fair bit more if I were not nursing the car towards the end. Ryan and Dylan ended up in P4 overall, but a lap down to P3 and 2 laps down overall. It would have been an easy podium, and maybe a P2 had Ryan maintained the gap he had before he learned of his penalty.

I was 2 - 3s slower on the last few laps so the gap could have been over 40s. You can see where Ryan found out about his penalty, the lap times dropped off by a few seconds when he stopped pushing through the traffic.

The lapchart shows we didn't move much once everything settled down.

The drive stats show I did 97.12% of the race, not sure who did the other 2.88%! Dylan beat my lap by 0.041s during the race!

The early safety car helped us cool the tyres, and we didn't need another to reduce paid of the the pit penalties, but we will need one at Snetterton now we have the full 30s to contend with!

Fastest Laps

Our fastest race laps are below:

The 2017 Lap record was beaten by the TCR. They did it early on in the race, I am not sure I could have done that with full fuel without taking too much life out of the tyres.

With the race win, I extended my lead in the Championship by 2 points, it would have been a bigger gap if Ryan had maintained P2.

Another mixed bag for the team. Saturday was OK with a nightmare after when the guys were re-prepping the cars. This was forgotten about after Qualifying, and almost erased from our memory if we'd got the P1 and P2. Hopefully Snetterton is successful for both sides of the garage. We are going to struggle with the top speed of some of the vehicles we are against.

Photos courtesy of Trudy, Jonathan Elsey Motorsport Photography and 750MC

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All the details and dates for future races we are entering can be found on the Darkside Motorsport Page.

06 07 2025

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