General:
What more can we say about the pace and reliability of the EERC Mazda RX-8 other than quick and faultless. 5 class wins, including 1 outright win, and 2 second places with numerous class poles and fastest laps. All of this from 7 races in its first season of competition. Unfortunately my experience was telling me this faultless run couldn't continue and the law of averages was against us.
This would be proved true although we were still able to bring the car home in a very creditable position.
Qualifying:
It was a shame that Natasha had to bed brake pads during her stint in qualifying to enable the car to be at its best for my run. The traffic wasn't a problem due to a slightly smaller grid (probably due to people saving their cars for the 24hr race in September) and the length of Oulton Park full circuit - 2.69 miles. We qualified the car on our 3rd class pole of the season, 10th overall.
Race - Saturday 6th August - 2hour endurance:
Natasha took the start of the race and initially struggled due to her lack of track time at this venue in the EERC Mazda RX-8. Her diary tells the story of her stint, and she was improving with each lap. The decision had to be made by the team for a relatively early change of driver to try to combat the pace and position of the Ridley Holloway / Mason Honda Civic.
I initially battled hard in my early laps in an attempt to make up time, in the hope of 'jumping' the cars in front whilst they were in the pits doing their mandatory stops.
This appeared to be working very well and after the pitstops we were placed a competitive second in class and had a real chance of catching and passing the Honda. Given the lap times and the gap, this would have been very late in the race and we were not sure if he could have increased his pace if we started threatening his lead.
Unfortunately this is when our first 'gremlin' of the season occurred. The car was intermittently losing power and the only answer to combat this was to pit and reset the electrics and ECU. Although the engine is standard the fuel systems have been changed due to the additional fuel tank required for Endurance racing. It is this that was causing our problems.
This meant our challenge for a class win was no longer realistic and we fell back to 3rd in class due to our additional pitstops.
Once we realized I could reset the problem from within the car we were able to increase our pace and importantly lose no more time with any further un-scheduled pit stops.
We were therefore able to take back 2nd in class and 10th overall. We also achieved the fastest lap in class which is the fourth of the season for the EERC Mazda RX-8.
We can all therefore by very pleased to have gained another excellent result and keep our tally of top 2 places and finishing every race intact.