Well, that's that then...
Posted by paul on April 17th, 2007
Last weekend was the first race meeting of the year at Silverstone. It didn’t go well…
The first piece of bad news was that sticking with my venerable 8-year-old engine for this season was a bad move. A lot of drivers have upgraded to the Suzuki GSXR, and it has a lot more power. On one occasion I exited the hairpin right underneath Frazer’s rear wing and by the end of the straight he was a good 5-6 car lengths ahead.
The second piece of bad news was that the car was handling terribly, and chewing up front-left tyres. After a lot of head-scratching, we came to the conclusion that the problem was most likely a result of the chassis not being straight after the accident at the end of the season at Snetterton.
All of that was made moot by what happened in the second race on Sunday - at the start of lap 2, Kat Impey spun on the exit of Copse (very fast - taken in a continuous 4-wheel drift in fifth gear at around 120mph). I was unable to avoid Kat and ended up hitting her very hard indeed. Two further cars then went into the back of us, and the debris hit a couple of other drivers.
The marshalls and paramedics had lots of fun getting me onto a back-board and neck brace and carted me off to the medical centre to be checked over. Luckily there wasn’t any serious damage - although I’m definitely feeling it now!
The car is a complete write-off (as is Kat’s). There are a few bits that I might be able to salvage, but basically it’s a “start from scratch” job.
So, that’s it for a while at least.
Drat.
4 Responses to “Well, that's that then...”
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April 26th, 2007 at 09:21 AM Hi Paul, Sorry to hear about the demise of your race machine. But rememeber any accident you walk away from is a good one! :-) And does this mean you're now going to purchase a shiny new Suzuki GSXR? And did my e-mails finally pass your spam filter? (If not note the new e-mail address!) all the best Dave
May 30th, 2007 at 08:44 PM Shame on you. A true Brit would already have constructed a replacement from washing machine spares and sticky-backed plastic! As the man says, any crash you walk away from is a good one. Paul
June 4th, 2007 at 09:03 PM Sorry to hear about the accident. And for those too polite to ask - did anyone get it on video???
June 10th, 2007 at 09:35 PM There is, I'm told, an on-board video from Kat's car. But I haven't seen it yet. I'm not sure that I want to, to be honest... :-)