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Thruxton -
24th July - "Pearson battles against the elements at Thruxton"
The heavens
had truly opened up for the 7th Round of the BARC Formula Renault
championship, with qualifying starting under very heavy rain
with an awful amount of standing water on the track - making
for very tricky driving conditions indeed. It was unsurprisingly
not long before the red flags came out to stop the session due
to the high number of cars off the circuit. Ian subsequently
chose to take this opportunity to have some set-up changes made
to the car: "I was really struggling with the car over
the puddles, the car was actually floating at well over 100mph
at some points on the circuit". It was soon apparent that
the changes had worked because Ian was well in the hunt for
an overall pole position - not just his class pole position.
At the end of qualifying session, Ian was rewarded for his efforts
with fourth overall on the grid and more importantly, another
class pole position - a massive 4.5 seconds faster than his
nearest class competitor.
For the race
the drivers were presented with a difficult set-up choice to
make, as the track was still not completely dry. Ian opted to
go for a full dry set-up on the car but unfortunately with the
weather still very undecided and a last minute shower to add
to the confusion there was not enough time to completely change
the car back to dry settings. Ian simply had to live with the
increased ride height, robbing the car of vital aerodynamic
performance.
Ian made an
excellent start and was up to third place overall for a brief
time but with the power disadvantage with the FR2000 class cars,
he just couldn't hold onto his position at Britains fastest
circuit. Ian was by no means left by behind by the leading trio
and did manage to keep them in sight whilst in fourth position
overall but remaining first in his class. On lap 5 the rain
started to come down again making the conditions very treacherous
indeed, these difficult conditions caught two of the leaders
out - they made contact resulting in one spinning into retirement,
thus promoting Ian into third place overall. With cars off the
circuit and in dangerous places the race was red flagged on
lap eight, with the finishing positions classed as they were
at the end of lap six. Ian gained another class victory and
a third overall; the championship is now getting tantalisingly
close.
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