Brands Hatch Indy – 24th April 2021
Race report:
“We started the weekend with Friday testing, this meant an early wake up and a one and half hour journey up to Brands Hatch. The weather there was lovely with the sun beating down on the track and not a cloud in sight. The day was split up into 4 half hour sessions, with our first session being at 10:10. The two morning sessions didn’t quite go to plan with the car set up not being quite right and a couple of mechanical miss haps, meaning the alternator tensioner and crankshaft pulley had to be replaced. The afternoons testing made up for the poor start we had, I was matching others lap times showing that I had the pace.
Saturday came around and I headed out on track for qualifying at 9:55, the track was extremely slippery as someone had dropped gearbox oil all around the track. This lead too many cars spinning off into gravel traps, luckily I managed to keep it on the black stuff! With several cars flying off the yellow flags were out for most of the session and there was even a safety car at one point, as a result of this I was only able to put in one flying lap. This got me P3 in class for race one and P4 in class for race 2. All together there were 19 cars on the grid 8 of which were in my class.
(In qualifying your fastest lap is your grid position for race 1 and your second fastest lap determines your grid position for race 2).
At 13:05 I lined up on the grid for the first race of the season, I managed to get a good start but wasn’t able to do much with it as I got boxed in by the cars ahead, this allowed Tylor Ballard to come around the outside pushing me down to P4, this soon became a four-way battle for the lead. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to keep up my initial pace which meant I started to fall away from the leaders. A mid-race safety car bunched everyone back up but upon the restart was forced to defend from the Josh Bacon in the car behind, this battle lasted several laps until the Josh Bacon overtook me going into the first corner. Overall a race to forget.
Race 2 saw me start P4 in class, I got a fantastic start in which I was able to claim P3 by the first corner! We had altered the cars set up from race 1 however I was slower than the other cars around me (and 0.7 seconds slower than I was in testing), this meant I was having to defend from the cars around behind me. First up was Tylor Ballard who used his superior grip to get a cut back on me coming out of the first corner. After he got passed, I managed to keep in his slipstream and started closing up to him but before I could shape up a move he suffered a problem with his exhaust meaning he was down on power which allowed me to breeze past him. I was then once again caught by Josh Bacon and what followed was an epic fight between us, he was a lot quicker than me at this point of the race so I knew I needed to get my elbows out and make my car as wide as possible. Many laps past with Bacon’s car filling my mirrors, we both desperately wanted the last step on the podium. With the last few laps drawing in the racing got harder and tougher with us trading paint on a couple of occasions. I managed to hold onto 3rd place and came across the line just two tenths in front of him.
Next up is Oulton Park on the 22nd May.
Joseph Dalgarno”
You can watch Josephs interview and second race below…he did an amazing job at getting the MyAlloys name and logo out there! Great work Joseph, can’t wait to see how the next race goes!
Click here to view the Brands Hatch Results PDF
