Sorry, It’s a long one…

Hello everyone,

Apologies in advance for not Blog last week, I was on holiday the week before and this last week has been a hectic one. Amongst the usual racing, practice and livery creating, I’ve needed to edit certain videos and attend sponsor meetings. I’m not complaining one bit as I love what I do and hope for bigger and better things in the future.

First things first, the holiday. It was my first winter holiday and I had been looking forward to this for almost a year. After a long night of travel, we finally made it to our destination in Austria, we made it to the Achensee valley and there was snow, and lot’s of it, well lots for this English girl that on ever really see’s a light dusting. On our first outing on ski, we tried rentals, they were okay but too tight and I lost feeling in my feet after only ten minutes, we kept trying different size boots but non of them really seemed to work and the pain in my feet and lower legs became unbearable. Fast forward a few days later and it was night and day the difference as we had managed to go to a ski store and buy some boots that fit much better and also got ski helmet and stocks too (professional skier now lol).

Mid-week we changed it up and went what they call Rodeln (sledging) down the mountain, the weather was nice and sunny and some epic photos were taken, the top of the mountain was steep and controlling the speed was difficult and I may have crashed into the soft snow at the side but no broken bones so all was fine, the bottom third of the run was difficult though as it was very bumpy and all chewed up so it was a little painful to ride over. All in all a fun afternoon on the mountain but I did pay for it later in the day and the subsequent days also with a lot of pain in my hips and lower back. We finished off the week with some more skiing and a little trip into town to buy the usual holiday trinkets such as shot glasses and some Applestrudel Liquor.

Now back to what you are all here for really, the racing. This week I have five races to bring you.

First up we the Banana Boffins series run by Alethea Boucq and her community. This week was round three at Donington park. Having just come back from holiday I only had Monday evening to really put in any practice/set up work, it took a while but I managed to find a pace I was sort of happy with but I knew I wouldn’t be super quick. Come race day I managed to qualify mid-pack so I decided I would fill up full and run the fuel out and pit when I needed to. The race start went pretty well for me and I managed to avoid any lap one carnage placing me comfortably in the top ten, the rest of the race was a lonely one as I was too slow to catch the front group and the early crashes caused the drivers behind a big gap which took them a long time to close down. I just kept my head down and put in consistent laps looking after the car and running very deep into the race before pitting meant I was in second place just before I pitted for the remaining fuel I needed for the race, place three, four, five and six were on a charge and I just didn’t have the pace but I managed to hold onto sixth place at the end of the race, a fantastic result which I had a lot of fun with.

Wednesday saw us race in the RPM league at Mangy Cours in the GT3 Ferrari, this was going to be a hit-or-miss event as I had not driven the track until 2 hours before the green flag. Qualifying went great as I started in the top twenty overall and third in class. However, the race was a disaster, I again avoided lap one carnage but a few laps later I got greedy with a sausage kerb and the car snapped hard right and into the wall, from there it went even further downhill as I got many silly little off tracks which eventually led to me being disqualified from the race three corners from the chequered flag do to too many incident points.

Friday I was supposed to be racing ninety minutes at Bathurst with Yvonne in the V8 supercars but due to work commitments Yvonne couldn’t make it so I drove it on my own. The V8 is an interesting car to drive to say the least but without traction control or ABS it is very much a handful to drive, add the mountain into that it made for a very stressful ninety minutes. As I was new to this group of drivers I decided I would not qualify and start from the back, this helped as a few drivers binned it in the first few laps and I made some easy positions. Once I’d settled down into a rhythm my pace greatly improved and even had podium pace, but due to never driving this car my consistency was just not there and I finished eighth although sixth was on until I got loose into the chase on the last lap.

Saturday was supposed the prestigious VCOxLFM Flextreme but unfortunately due to some silly individuals that decided to Hack the race servers, the event had to be postponed. Instead, we decided to race a VRS Endurance Race, three hours at Interlagos in the GT3. The less said about this race the better, Yvonne got rear ended avoiding an unsafe rejoin early in the race, and fifteen minutes of damage later we decided I would get in the car and do some stints, unfortunately, a few laps into the stint I pulled my headphone charger out of the headphones which meant the sound disappeared (this never happened when I did it before), so I ended up doing forty-five minutes with no sound at all. Again I got too many off-tracks and when I pitted and put the sound back on. Things went better in the next stint as I put in some really fast laps but constant blue flags as we were ten laps down didn’t help, to top it all off I got a drive through for too many incidents points a few laps before the end of my stint, I gave the car back to Yvonne and she finished the race nice and steady, forty-second out of forty-seven was a disappointing result for us in the end, hopefully, better on Sunday.

Well Sunday VRS went a little better, I managed to qualify in twentieth and had a fairly good pace, I tried to look after the car but after half an hour I made a silly mistake and tried to go around the outside of the car’s I was fighting at turn one, turns out there is no grip out there, I spun the car and then got bumped on the front which gave us five minutes of damage. A pit repair later I come back out and drove another two hours to try and make up as many spots as we could, I was flying and had the pace to fight for the podium but as we were four laps down it wasn’t to be. Yvonne jumped in the car for the last thirty minutes to ensure she did her fair drive time and we finished thirty-second, could have been better but at least I enjoyed myself more.

Team Happy Life Sandwich lol

Thank you all for taking the time to read this and I will see you all again next week