Last weekend saw me embark on my historic race inauguration. It was at a circuit that I had done plenty of laps previously, the High Tech Test Track of Paul Ricard in the rolling hills of the South of France. The car that I had the task of taming was Steve Tandy’s 200mph+ monstrous Group C Nissan RC90. I managed to get to grips with it which resulted in Steve and I standing on the top step of the podium.
Thursday’s first stop was Silverstone, I have reached the last 14 of the KX Akademy. The final interview saw me have 30 minutes to impress a panel of judges head of which was Jason Plato. The 30 minutes saw me being grilled on my racing to date and my future plans. I felt I handled the interrogation well apart from casually racially abusing one of the judges. Soon as that was done I had to shoot down to Gatwick the catch the flight out to Marseille.
Friday saw us take to the track for 45minutes of testing, car owner Steve was very generous giving me the lion share of the session so I could get a good feel for the car. A car with 950hp takes a while to get said feel , but times were soon getting competitive. Top team CGA Race Engineering run the car and do a superb job leaving me able to concentrate on the job in hand.
Saturday morning was the first Qualifying session. I was given the job of setting our grid position, I was given a fresh set of Dunlop tyres to give me the best chance. My lap was good but being new to car I was still learning as I was hurtling down the back straight at 215mph bouncing off the rev limiter in top gear. The lap was good for quickest out of the 19 cars on the gird. However a second qualifying session would see us demoted to 2nd, still very positive to have the car on the front row.
Sunday was race day. An hour race, as is the norm in historic racing the car owner starts the car. As I’m still saving so the 7 figure price tagged car is possessed by Steve so he would tackle the opening stint. A sterling job saw Steve keep within 5 seconds of the leader giving me a chance to push for the win against the Mercedes C11 which was used by Michael Schumacher as a “training car”. A slick pitstop saw the thirsty Nissan’s fuel tanks replenished for my stint and off I set. After 15 minutes the gap which had plateaued was starting to come back to me. 5 minutes later the lead was all mine, as veteran racer Bob Berridge suffered a gearbox failure and had to pull to one side. I had a good lead over the Porshce 962 so I could switch to the low power setting (700hp) to save the engine. I crossed the line to take the chequered flag for my first historic race victory also Steve and mine third victory together this year. It was a great weekend as was made even better by Steve telling me I could join him at Imola two weeks later for the final round of the Group C championship.
Source : Joe Osborne