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Had a difficult weekend (as usual) with my Cooper T59 in the Formula Junior race. As Iain said above, I was busy Friday night trying to get the clutch to declutch, and of course Iain, the nicest guy in the paddock, jumped in to help, in particular when it came to getting the gearbox back into the car. (I think he is 2 years my junior so his back should be better than mine…)
Anyhow, the Friday night fix did not fix it. Still no clutch so I had to sit out the qualification and start from dead last in race 1. Then the engine would not pull below 8000 rpm without a lot of feathering of the accelerator, but the remaining 1000 rpm up to my red-line was nice. Guess I only managed to pass two cars.
Changed the jetting for race 2 in the hope that it might be getting too much fuel, but it proved to be to no avail, so I got off the grid in last position, or so, again. Then with one lap to go, the silencer fell off and the car took off like a rocket. At the same time, Iain came up to lap me so I let him by but then, on the uphill straight to the bus stop chicane, I had to lift off in order not to run into him. I was content with just showing him that I had more power than he had in the Elva. Glad the silencer fell off, otherwise I would have still been puzzled. My last lap was a full 8 seconds quicker than my other laps...
By the way, Mike Gregory in the De Tomaso Isis made the mother of all jump starts in race 2. To me it looked as if he left when they started the sequence with the lamps, but he said he could not understand why everybody else was sitting there waiting…
I hope that the injuries to Jim's back are not too serious. He somehow tangled with Marty Bullock and then Went nose first into the concrete wall, but the car did not look heavily damaged.
Got home at 2.30 this morning after a 550 km drive north to Sweden from Copenhagen. Laundry and then pick up my other Junior and head for Nürburgring tomorrow.
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