Round Five of Cheap Car today.
Lots of changes to the car before the event: Swapped to AD08 tyres, Ferodo DS3000 pads, different offset wheels, and ABS delete.
Funny sort of day, entirely because of the rain. Lots of the usually fast cars were WAY off the pace, and some of the usually slow cars were way faster than usual. The #99 Celica usually finishes in the top three, but today I lapped it in the first stint!
We seemed to run in our usual position, but made more mistakes than usual.
Qualified 14th, which sounds not-great, but we were bedding in the new brake pads at the start when it was relatively dry. By the time the pads were bedded in, the track was wet again... So a good time was pretty much impossible.
I started the race, it was pretty wild with cars going everywhere. Picked up a few spots, lost a few, but stayed out of trouble. The car was working well and we were definitely faster than a lot of cars that qualified ahead of us.
We spent most of the morning in 9th or 10th, then rose to 8th when the #03 Integra DNF'd with a broken CV.
Picked up an over-drive penalty when Paulie missed the pit board while duelling with another car.
Has a period of double yellow flags when the Lexus IS200 shortened itself against a wall.
Progressively rose up to 6th at the end, despite all of us spinning the car at different times (Pete managed to do it during qualifying, which is much better than doing it in the race).
We were 7th as Petey started the last stint, but he hunted down and passed the 6th place car in the last couple of laps, which was nice.
EVERYONE copped over-drive penalties - mostly one or two laps of penalties... But we copped three, which dropped us back to 8th. Turns out that we all forgot our pit strategy and f$%ked it up...
Was a tough day, in a lot of ways. There are lots of positives though. Need to drive the car in the dry to see if the changes were actually positives. Feeling pretty sus about the tyres, but everything else seems to be an improvement,
