Friday afternoon saw us driving over to Louth to compete in the Cadwell round of the 750 Motor Clubs ‘Roadsports’ series, after a couple of hours we arrived at the track and even managed to watch some of our competitors testing before we headed over to sign on. After signing on we had to get the car ready for scrutineering which as usual was no issue at all.

With the car all ready it was time for some dinner so after much discussion we decided to head into Skegness and see what it had to offer in the line of food and entertainment, the food was great and I even won £8 in the amusements. 🙂

Saturday morning and it was time to get ready for qualifying I was out first so it was my job to get the tyres warm and possibly put one fast lap in before handing over to Dave who should of been able to go for some quick laps, unfortunately due to another car breaking down and causing a dangerous obstruction at the pit lane entrance the marshals decided to cut the session short meaning Dave didn’t get to put a fast lap in meaning we qualified 17 out of 28 which was not good and meant we had a lot of work to do in the race.

Race time and it was raining, this is great news for us because it evens out the class considerably as the bigger faster rear wheel drive BMW’s, Mazda’s, etc can’t get their power down and are very twitchy in the corners.

Our game plan was Dave (rain god) to start and be in the top 8 (from 17th) by the end of the first lap and then I would go out and slowly hunt down the leaders and move up the pack to a podium finish.

The red lights went out and Dave launched the Clio from its starting point past several cars and then got blocked by two cars who had left a gap just wide enough for a Clio with NO mirrors to pass through (now I know why both mirrors were in when he pitted) it was a great move and by the time he came round to finish the first lap he was in 5th place, this was even better than we had expected, the next several laps saw Dave battling with Steve Hewson in his supercharged Peugeot 106 and the white Podium Prep Mini Cup Car, whilst he was trying to hold off the little Peugeot the Mini managed to sneak past the pair of them and got a clean getaway to chase the leaders.

Dave and the Peugeot were trading places up until it was time to pit, the Peugeot pitted on the lap before us so Dave had one clear lap to try and gain some time before coming in to let me have a go, pit stop time and due to our win at Donington we had a 10 second extra pit stop over the little Peugeot (10 seconds is a lot to make up in a race)

I went out (mirrors still bent in) knowing we were in a good position but not sure where exactly! so I concentrated on just doing fast consistent laps and pass anything that was in front of me, this must have worked as I managed to set fastest lap in class B.

Towards the end of my stint I was catching up with one of the bigger BMW’s (who I thought was class B but was actually A) and wanted to pass him thinking this could get us the podium we wanted after several laps of bumper to bumper racing IT happened!! second to last lap I changed up from second gear to third and there was just a crunchng and grinding noise from the gear box and I had no drive! I managed to coast into the pits but it was game over the box was completely shot!!

Once we got the car back to paddock and chatted about what had happened we found out that we were running 3rd in class and would of got a podium before the gear box failed!

We can’t complain really as we have been racing for 3 years and this is the first DNF.

Lastly we would like to say a massive thank you to our sponsors who help us to compete in these races.

Watch the video below to see Dave’s start.