From the Howler's Mouth

After a great result last week at Stoke we rolled up to the infamous Astro Frankley track full of confidence. To our surprise, we were greeteed by a brand new layout meaning we would have to knuckle down with only 4 minutes to learn the new demanding and more technical track. Straight into our 1st qualifying run and the new RB powered HyperStar was immediately on the pace! With a few small errors and lost seconds we ended up 6th in this round. For round 2 and we gave the car a simple tweak. With a 1 degree toe-out on the front wheels and by reducing the front caster I was prepared to carry on learning the new and testing track. The car in one word was 'dialed'. But for a costly mistake with a back marker which cost us six valuable seconds and putting us 4th in the round leaving Simon Willetts with TQ. Round 3 saw 'a clean run at last' and showed the cars true potential ready for the ?A? final. We put the HyperStar 1st in round and seven seconds faster than Si's TQ run. The grid lined up for the main final, 1st Si 'Butch' Willetts, 2nd Sloppy, 3rd Jon Howells (Me), 4th John Holmes and 5th Reece Sawyer. With the rain starting to spit the flag dropped and off we went ?Tokyo Drift Style?. TQ man Simon took full advantage of the grid and, with not a great deal of traction, we set off chasing him down with the rest of the field in hot pursuit. Seven minutes into the 20 minute final Slop went out with transmission problems. This left 3 cars fighting it out and this is when the all important fuel strategy came into play. Who would try one stop?. Eight minutes in Si showed his hand as he came in for a top up. I quickly followed him in as I didn't want to give my main rival a tactical edge. Car 5 (Reece) tried his luck and went for it which bought him back into play! 'Race on'. Knowing we needed ten seconds to keep us in second place with our second fuel stop around the 15 minute mark and Reece fuelled to the finish, the new Hyper performed giving us the gap and bringing us home second to Simon followed by Reece rounding up our top three, 'Tokyo Drifters'. A big thanks to Lloyd and Kev the 'Top Gun Fuellers'. Also, a big thanks to the Frankley team for putting on another excellent meeting. John Howells