Carey Motorsport: QUBMC Summer Lanes 2011

Saturday at the Summer Lanes was great fun. I haven't done a flat out bit of driving for ages and it was brilliant to be back in the Nova again and even better the sun was shining. The Summer Lanes is open to all cars so there was quite a mix of cars among the 40 crews that started. My Nova, MX-5's, 1980's Starlets, a BMW CSL, Minis, Midgets, a Manta and the ever present RWD Fords. We completed 16 tests and everyone seemed to be having a great day out.

Rachel and I had a good run but made a mistake on the first run through the long Evervale test and incurred a test maximum which meant we posted a 5:31 rather than our 2:19. Losing over 3 minutes put us well out of the running but we kept our heads and didn't make anymore mistakes for the rest of the day, ending up 18th overall at the finish. Without our penalty we would have been 9th which I would have been happy with. Some of the lower cars had problems with the rougher sections of the route but as the Nova sits quite high my main worry was punctures. I didn't hear of anyone getting a puncture so maybe I was worrying about nothing.

I have a few things to look at before the next event. The engine felt a bit down on power, I'm not sure what was wrong but if felt a bit "flat". We turned down the fueling to pass the MOT emissions so maybe we went a bit too far. The handbreak wasn't as tight as I've been used to so I had to reverse a couple of times, not very tidy, or quick. Traction was also a minor problem, some new tyres might help or it might just have been that the lanes were greasy from lack of use.

I filmed the rally on my in-car camera so if I ever work out how to edit the footage I'll put up a link to it.