Round 2 of the MSV Trackday Championship 2021 season brought us to Silverstone, on the shorter National Circuit. I was racing in this on myself, and also doing the Focus Cup, which had testing on Friday, and the Quali + 2 Races on Saturday. Sunday would then leave us with the MSV Trackday Trophy , where I shared the drive with Ryan this time.

Below is the layout of the Silverstone National Circuit:

Saturday

It was another busy day, with a compact schedule, I was jumping between the Golf and Focus in Qualifying, then from the Focus straight into the Golf for the Races.

Focus Cup Qualifying

Testing on Friday gave us every condition possible, raining and wet in the first session, then gradually drying to a fully dry track in the 4th. With the weather forecast to be wet overnight and in the morning, the guys reset the car back to the wet setup ready for the Quali session first thing.
Into Qualifying, it was pretty slippery and I did not really stitch a good lap together, despite having a pretty clear track most of the time. When I came back to the pits to find I was in 5th, it was a pretty disappointing feeling, especially as I knew on a few of my laps, I had dropped 2 or 3 tenths at Luffield, which would have been a pole position. But that is racing, and with less than 0.2s between me and P1, and only 1.09 spreading the top 10, we were in for a great race 1!

Simon Rudd put it on Pole with a great lap early on, way quicker than anyone else until it started to dry. Unlucky for him, some Turbo issues cut short his qualifying, so he had to sit in the pits watching everyone chip away at his lead. The session ended with him in front of Mark Proctor by only 0.081s!
It was clear conditions were improving as the session progressed, with most people setting their best lap times on their final lap.

Starting from P5, I had to navigate through the mid-pack at the start and try to keep out of trouble as much as possible!

Focus Cup Race 1

It was going to be hard enough from P5, so I made my life even harder when I missed the assembly area and Green Flag Lap all together! With the compact schedule, not helped by the fact that the organisers were pushing everything forward, by the time of the first Focus Cup Race, they were 25 minutes ahead of schedule. I had been with the team talking through the setup of the car and talking to the guys from Pro-Am Racing, when I looked at my phone and saw a messaging saying we were ahead, panic stations!
I ran over to the Focus Cup Garages, they were empty. I then ran over to the Assembly Area to see my car coming back towards the garages, and I could hear that the rest of the field were lining up onto the grid. At this point I didn't even have my helmet on.
I quickly jumped in the car, got myself strapped in and headed down the pitlane. It was going to be a Pitlane start, so instead of 5th, I was 19th, dead last and had to wait for the cars to clear the pit straight before I could even set off.
A marshal told me to wait until the Green light showed, then someone else stood in front of it! When they moved it was on Green and I made my getaway. On Cold tyres in damp conditions, it could have been a disaster, but the few seconds sat waiting, I decided that I would not let it defeat me, and I was determined to get to 6th place, which would put me on Pole for Race 2.

As you can see from the above, I did better than that, managing to bag a podium from the pit lane. I was over the moon! The good fortune that benefited me had not others, with Chris Wallis retiring on lap 1 and Simon Rudd retiring from Pole on Lap 4. His retirement brought out the safety car, which helped me in 7th catch up to the lead pack of 6 cars in front.
You can see that I made good progress on Lewis Ryan and Charlie Barre towards the end, but ran out of laps to make any further progress. To say I was happy was an understatement, and this will be up there with one of my favourite races for a long time!

Focus Cup Race 2

Everything is shuffled up for race 2, all the grid is reversed in batches of 6, so with me finishing P3, I was back a place to P4. After P19 to P3 in race 1, hopefully this would be a piece of cake! I did have the small matter of a 45 minute race in the Golf to contend with first!

When the lights went out, my start was pretty even with the guys in front, then Mark to my left missed 3rd gear so conceded the position to me.
We all shuffled round as I was too cautious into Becketts, but by the end of Lap 1 I was behind Spencer Fortag, and by lap 3 had made it to P1. I didn't push too hard and was able to maintain the lead to the chequered flag. Not quite as exciting as race 1, but some good points in the championship!

Simon Rudd put in some cracking laps and managed to pull from 18th to 7th at the end, only 6s off the lead.

Amazon Prime were following us round to make a video series on the championship, take a look at the Round 2 Video here:

So with 4 races down in the Championship, I have a healthy lead, but with 7 rounds, and 700 points still in play, anyone could be in for a chance! Next round is at Castle Combe. If you want to join us, give the guys at the Focus Cup a shout!

TDC Qualifying

The timetable was shuffled round at the last minute, so we were first out in the Golf at 9am. It had stopped raining early in the morning, so was just a little greasy to start with, before a more dry line started to appear.
The main issue was getting a clear run as the short track and a full grid meant that it was busier than a Bank Holiday weekend on the M1!
As you can see below, I managed to stitch together a good lap to secure Pole by 0.320s in front of Luke Schlewitz in his Golf Mk7 GTI that normally races in the Production GTI Championship.

The track was getting better, but I didn't improve after the first pit stop and Luke didn't either. Mark and Mark Higginson in the Civic shaved a chunk of time off, but we stayed in the same order.

The fastest lap changed hands a few times during the session as we all got a feel for where the grip was in the tricky conditions.

The Pole lap is shown below:

TDC Race

After my chaotic first race in the Focus, I had to drive like the wind on my in lap, dump the car in the pits (much to the confusion of the marshals) and run to the assembly area to jump in the Golf. In my haste I had left my phone in the Focus, so was not able to start the Live Stream for my start from Pole!

You can watch the full video below, or read the race summary further down the page:

I had a fair bit of wheelspin off the line but everyone else seemed to have the same issue, as it was now raining pretty bad. Luke in the Golf put a bit of pressure on me for the first few corners, and how quick it was on the straight, I thought it was going to cause some hassle in the race, but he made a few mistakes early on so I was able to keep him behind and pull a decent lead on him and the rest of the field.
In the end I had pulled almost 25s over P2, and managed to achieve the fastest lap, but not by much, with a 1:11.255 vs a 1:11.478 from Luke!
The lap was Red Flagged with just less than 5 minutes to go after a Clio was upside down on top of the carrier at Copse. It looked like a bad crash, but after speaking to their team, the car had front flipped after the splitter dug in the gravel at about 5mph. I guess the mounting points for that splitter were over engineered!

Our pit stop was pretty good, only just less than 2s over the 2 minute minimum, but Colin and Sam had a 1.330. Luckily they were not close enough to cause any hassle!

Consistency was the key in this race, I was within a second of my best lap time on just about every lap, and in a 45 minute race, that is what wins.

Another fantastic result for the team gives us 2 out of 2 in the TDC, with 37 points from each race and a comfortable lead in the Championship. The guys from Pro-Am in their Class C Clio have also jumped to 2nd after two solid results.

Sunday

Trackday Trophy Qualifying

After a great Saturday, the pressure was on for Ryan to help us continue our winning streak! It was certainly going to be a much more chilled out affair!

This time it was not as straightforward. Ryan put in a great time early on of 1:06.712, but it was only enough for 2nd behind Sam and Colin in the Integra. The track was getting better so I was confident I could improve on Ryan's time.

I did, with a 1:06.575 on the first clean lap, but then traffic killed me for another few laps. I needed to beat a 1:06.391 and pulled it out of the bag with a 1:06.306, just as Colin Tester did as 1:06.255. They had us by 0.051s!

The top 2 cars were on Yokohama A052s, another great advert for them. A video of mine and Ryan's fastest lap times is below:

TDT Race

As I had already hogged the driving seat for a significant amount of time this weekend, Ryan was going first for this race. I was hoping to not have another repeat of Donington, where the car ended up in the gravel!

You can watch the full video below, or read the race summary further down the page:

Luckily, it was not the case. Ryan got a great start, jumping Sam's Integra into turn 1, before losing the place again at Brooklands, unable to keep the Honda behind due to it's straight line speed. After a few laps of battling, Sam made a mistake and Ryan was able to snatch the lead and increase the lead to almost 7s before they pitted on lap 18.
Conditions quickly changed from perfectly dry to heavy rain - brilliant British weather! We were on the radio to Ryan telling him to stay out as long as he could keep doing decent lap times, as we would not want the tyres to cool down too much during the stop.

This time we made a real hash of the stop, I am blaming Ryan again firstly for the time being 4s longer that Sam and Colin's. He basically didn't set it going, and couldn't remember what the secondary timer was saying. Luckily James had timed it over the line, but that didn't help me driving down the pits. Ah well, better safe than sorry!
As I pulled out of the pits, the Safety car was waiting at the side with it's lights on. The quick change in conditions had caught out a Porsche sat in the gravel at the exit of Copse.
It was pretty mental how bad it was, so a few steady laps to find the grip was welcome! Eventually the Porsche was scooped up and we were back racing for a while longer. The safety car had left everyone in front of me back past to catch up with the back of the pack. This hurt the Integra as they were around 40s behind us by this point, and a lot of bunched up traffic to navigate.
They did well to claw back ~20s, but it was still not enough to take P1 away from us. Another great result!

This time we even got the fastest lap, early on when Ryan and Sam were battling. There was over 6s a lap difference when I took over, the conditions had deteriorated that much!

We have done a VLOG on the weekend. As Ryan was not there Friday and Saturday, he had to quickly summarise the story so far before we went into Qualifying.

Thanks again to the Focus Cup Guys, and our Team, we have proven that preparing the car properly, being on the right setup at the right time, and being consistent every lap is the key to winning. Unfortunately others in the paddock do not see that, and instead of upping their game, they try to drag us down by complaining to the organisers. This has resulted in us being hit with a 20Kg 'Success' Ballast for the next round of the TDC at Caste Combe in June. Hopefully that does not hurt our performance too much!

Photos by - Sarah Hall Motorsport, Mick Walker and MSV.