A week after the last ClubSport Trophy I was back at Brands in the Golf for the 750MC RoadSports Series race, I then had a week at Idiada in Spain to test some tyres (more on that soon!), then was back with the BRSCC for the next CST race at Donington on the National Circuit this time.
Last time at Donington I had suffered an Actuator failure, so I was hoping this time would be more successful! The previous CST round was pretty good though:

Below is the layout of the Donington Park National Circuit:

For the ClubSport Trophy, TT would be running in Class B - Sport Pro, which is a maximum of 205bhp/tonne with the driver. Class A - Elite is 206bhp to 235bhp/tonne. Tyres are MSUK 1A / 1B/ 1C so I will be using the Yokohama A052 instead of the TTCR spec Nankang NS-2Rs.
The BRSCC uses TSL for all the timing info, so the results can be found using TSL link.

Testing

As with the last round, with the race being on Sunday, I did not do any testing, and would be straight into Qualifying.

ClubSport Trophy Qualifying

As always for the CST, I would be running the Yokohama A052s.
This time I was not able to get some good space for a while, just meeting slower cars right at the start or end of a lap, costing me time. I'd done a 1:18.491 early on which kept me at the pointy end, but I knew the car had much more.
Right at the end I was able to put in a 1:17.674 which put me on overall pole, beating all the Class A cars as well!

It showed I had been held up for most of the session, as my last lap was the best of all in each sector.

I'd actually been 2nd quickest in all 3 sectors, but Alford just didn't stitch a perfect lap together.

I'd pipped Alford by less than 0.1s right at the last moment, keeping Tom on a knife edge on the pit wall.

Qualifying Laps

Our fastest Quali laps are below:

ClubSport Trophy Race

This is my 5th front row start out of 6 races in the ClubSport Trophy now. Hopefully it can continue!

There were a few crashes and oil spills in the MX5 race before ours, so we were sat in the assembly area for quite some time while the mess was cleaned up. This meant they shortened our race to 40 minutes and informed us before we headed to the grid. Eventually we were good to go. I had a terrible launch, as the clutch seemed to grab and make me creep forward too much.
I managed to get back in front of Alford at Turn 1, but as we entered McLeans the red flags were out. There had been a massive crash at Turn 1 with 5 or 6 cars involved. We trundled back towards the grid and sat waiting for the clean up crew to work their magic. The message board above the track displayed that the race was reduced to 30 minutes, and Tom came on the Radio to say we had a 10 minute pit window, starting after 10 minutes of the race had elapsed.
When we were eventually off again after a 2nd green flag lap, I had an even worse start and was behind Alford and had an Elise nearly down either side. It was going to be hard to get back through with the Golf much faster in a straight line.
I got my head down and just concentrated on keeping the gap as low as possible. A few laps in the 370Z that won at Silverstone was through. He was also quickly past Alford, suspiciously quick on the straights and not so much in the corners. he'd clearly struggled during the qualifying session to get a lap together.
I kept the pressure on until Alford pitted quite early. Until I had done my stop, I would not know who timed it better. The 370Z was also in the pits quite early, and before I had stopped, he had managed to get himself beached in the gravel at the exit of Coppice. So the race was on to beat the Golf!

As you can see above, I went over by 2.5s, but after getting a penalty before, I did not want to cut it too fine. Alford was not so lucky, and was over 1s too quick to exit the pits. Tom had come on the radio to say TSL was showing a red marker next to Alford's number, so we knew a penalty was coming his way, but at the time we did not know what for. Eventually it showed as a 31s time penalty, it had to be for a short pitstop, so I just needed to keep within 30s for the last 10 minutes and I would get the overall win!
In the end I was just over 12s behind, so with the penalty applied, I was 19s in the lead!

I did my fastest lap on the last lap, when I knew I needed to keep the Golf close. His pace had dropped off to be similar to mine towards the end. There was not much consistency due to the traffic we encountered from very early on in the race.

May in the 370Z had clearly got to grips with the car during the race to put in some blistering laptimes, but I was happy to be close to them both in Sectors 2 and 3 where carrying speed is more critical than power.

Our fastest laps from the race are below:

The race was live streamed here:

Thanks to Tom B for all the spanner work this weekend while Luke was on Holiday.
Also thanks to our main sponsor in this car, Partly, who are helping us with fitment data for some exciting changes to the website, coming this year!

Photos courtesy of Mick Walker.

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