I've been a bit snowed under and had a bout of man flu to top it off, so there's a bit of catching up to do
.
We arrived at Saturday Gurston meeting to see the Fifth Gear TV crew setup in the corner of the paddock with an army of Ariel guys crawling over their Atom making sure it was firing on all 8 cylinders.
Jonathan Smith, Tiff's co presenter was wandering the paddock and had a good look at our car. Jonathan was double driving the Atom with Tiff. There was quite a difference in their times in the morning practice runs, but during the normally quiet linchtime break
, they were going up the hill together. I guess it was a bit of a teaching session and that will be the gist of the feature for the programme. Jonathan got to almost within a second of Tiff's time at the end of the day.
Jonathan is a bit of a classic Audi fan, he wrote an article for the Audi Magazine earlier in the year, test driving Audi UK's early blue quad lamp ur quattro. I noticed he stopped a conversation he was having when Andy was about to launch from the start line and came rushing across to lean over the fence to see another start. A little chat revealed he has a GT Coupe!
The programme is due for broadcast next Friday (13th May). It's the night before Cornbury, so we'll be in the hotel, but will have to try and catch it.
Anyway..... our day. Morning practice was OK, although everything seemed to be happeneing a bit quick, somewhat rusty from the previous season I think.
On returning down the hill from his first timed run, Andy was stopped by a marshall and handed some bits that had fallen off the car on the way up. They turned out to be the lockring for the spring platform on the nearside front suspension coilover. That ment early retirement.
We elected to dash home and swop the front suspension back to the original struts to enable us to compete at Clay Pigeon the following day.
The tight kart track on the Sunday provided the usual 3 wheel entertainment with times improving slightly.
That was until Andy didn't quite make it through the chicane and clipped the tyres on the way out. It broke the bumper, wheel arch extension, the very bottom of the wing, pushed the headlight back a bit and slightly creased the leading edge of the inner wing
.
It wasn't that major, with a few of holes drilled for some extra fixings, a couple of hastily fashioned metal brackets to tie the bumper back together and some obligatory gaffer tape, we were back in business.
Fortunately the headlight surround survived
.
So, a new bumper and wheelarch extension have been fitted up and should be painted tomorrow along with the repaired wing. The inner wing has been dressed out and it should go back togther this weekend. In the meantime we need to address the suspension issue and get ready for Cornbury next weekend
.
Fingers crossed that it will be a bit less "eventful"
.