Race Report - 750 Motor Club - Donnington UK

Date: April 1, 2024

After all the work was completed over the previous year or so it came down to this. My first REAL race! I woke up on the morning of the Easter bank holiday weekend to find rain, LOTS of rain...

Not quite the start to the season I was hoping for but this is the UK and a little bit of moisture is usually expected.

This wasn't "A little bit of moisture" though. This was as if Thor himself had decreed that today was the day for the entire rainfall of the year to fall on this tiny patch in the UK.

I arrived on time, so I thought, then found out it was a 10 minute walk to the driver briefing and after unloading the car I had to run the length of the paddock to get there.

I was late.

Still a private drivers briefing was probably advantageous for  my first ever race and after a minor telling off they gave me the drivers briefing they had just delivered to everyone else.

Next up was working out how to get out on track for qualifying. You may think this was easy but actually there is an assembly area where you have to get noise tested first and then you end up out on track.

Running late I got there just in time and then out on track for my first competitive session. It was wet! Very wet but I managed to complete the required 3 timed laps to qualify for my first ever race.

Back into the pits, a quick check over the car (not quite enough of a check as you will see shortly).

Then race 1.

Lining up on the grid I literally felt like all the greats who came before me, a wet race at Donnington on very much not wet tyres. Could this be the run from the European F1 grand prix where Senna overtook most of the field in the first lap?

No, no it couldn't.

The car is underpowered and by the first corner I had lost one place to be stone dead last!

Still, had a bit of a battle with the car in front of me while watching the rest of the field streak away in the distance.

 I managed to get past him on the back straight and then saw blue smoke in the rear view mirror.

Not my car thankfully!

He had retired with some sort of engine failure but I still did my very first overtake. 

A very lonely race then followed, lapping quicker and quicker getting wetter and wetter but learning the car and what it could do until...

Hit the brakes into the final chicane, tried to change down from third to second and it wouldn't come out of third.

I tried again, I pulled through the corner and grabbed the gearstick even harder but no, it was stuck.

Straight into the pits, and onto the trailer.

My first ever race over with only 2 laps to go until the end.

Gearbox dead.