The weekend of June 11^th started ok. The Visa was still making this funny grinding-crunching noise at low speeds when off the throttle and turning left, but I got to Abingdon in one piece.

After the 1st timed run on the first course I was 3^rd out of 10 runners and about 4 seconds off the 2 escorts in the class, which was ok and a second up on the next front wheel drive car, a Peugeot 205 GTi in 4th. On the 2nd timed run the Visa misfired after coming out of the chicane, which had followed a left-hander. Going round the last corner which was a very fast left-hander in 4^th, the petrol gauge went off the scale, I got over the line and it conked out and I had to be towed back to the pits. The gauge was reading fine so I concluded there was some weird fuel starvation problem going on. Anyway I still went quicker.

Fast-forwarding a bit to the journey home, the gauge indicated half a tank, so I put in £28 but it was still not full. Speaking to this Citroen bloke later (more on that in a bit) he says you can only get £35 in at the most, so clearly my gauge is totally wrong and hence why I thought I had fuel but didn’t have much.

Anyway, back to the sprint….during the convoy run for the 2nd track things got worse, with the car misfiring, cutting out, kangarooing etc and only just got it back to the paddock. Turned out to be a dodgy contact on the air flow meter. I sorted this and set off on the sprint slowly...don’t know why. The 205 was clearly better suited to this circuit layout in comparison to how my Visa had been going on the morning layout. I suspect the gearing was wrong as I was low in 2nd and having to snatch 3rd for short times on most bits. The Peugeot driver was over a second up and so after 1 timed run, he was 0.08 up overall in 3^rd, leaving me 4th! It went down to the last run where I drove the nuts off the car, went over half a second quicker...and so did he and a bit more, beat me by 0.14 in the end! If it hadn’t misfired in the morning leaving the chicane the position would have been mine. So no trophy for me.

Sadly for him though, the timekeepers appeared to mess up the timing and gave one of the fast Escort’s times to the slower one, which then bumped that Escort driver up to 3rd and the 205 guy and me down to 4^th and 5^th. Karl Stevens I think it was, noticed this on the board and went and told them, but it was too late by then so officially I was 5th but in reality 4th just beaten by a car on softer tyres.
We went to the beer tent in the evening briefly before going off to a local pub with Andy and Iain Gibson, who were doing the rally sprint the next day with a friend of theirs. That night I was extremely glad I had brought my MP3 player to listen too, as at 3am it was the only way to drown out Ian Crocker’s snoring! I can see where his car gets its tractor sound from now!

We headed back at about 11am the next morning, and I left the Crockers to go into Reigate, where I was meeting a member of the UK Citroen Car Club who wanted to write an article on me and the Visa for the club magazine. He had an almost immaculate E reg white GTi in his drive.

After the chat, I tried to start my car but nothing, ignition but no go. After trying to sort it for 2 hours with most of the dash removed and lots of cursing, I rung the recovery. The chap who came out concluded it was the starter and with a bump it worked. It was probably the only thing I hadn’t tried. I went as far as checking the wires to it but when there have been issues before, it’s been earthing and such like.

So now I have the joy of removing the inlet manifold etc to change the starter motor. The grinding noise has got worse so a new driveshaft or wheel bearing is required I guess, so I had to pull out of the upcoming Goodwood.

So not the best weekend but the tracks were good, it was interesting having two different circuits, both tricky in different ways especially the two chicane bits.

The fortunes of the other 7Oaks competitors out there were a bit mixed. Andy Webber got through scrutineering then his distributor seized up, so he left to find another and returned after lunch! Keith and Ian Crocker had a good weekend, but they didn’t go twice as quick as me, even though they have twice as many cylinders !