Apira Springspeed Nationals 2017
We arrived at the track with a level of anticipation, Brad has been the Apira ( Avon Park International Racing Association ) Super Pro Champion for the last 2 years , a great achievement but we are determined to make it 3 in a row !
The weather forecast was fine for the next 2 day’s but Bank Holiday Monday didn’t look too good so it could be an event where the qualifying points would be crucial.
In Q1 Brad got off to a great start with a 0.042 reaction time but Wayne got the dial in slightly wrong and had dialled 7.81 but Brad ran 7.799 and broke out by just over a hundredth of a second.
Q2 Brad very nearly got the perfect ET award but red lit by 0.001 ( 1 thousandths of a second ) but Wayne’s dial in was 7.75 and Brad ran 7.77 good enough for No 1 for a while until Chri Parker in the other Nick Good Motorsport car took it at the end of the session.
Q3 Brad cut another great light at 0.065 but once again Wayne got it slightly wrong dialling 7.76 and Brad running a 7.755 breakout by 5 thousands of a second, this dropped Brad to 4th.
Q4 Brad cut another great light 0.025 reaction time but Wayne’s dial in of 7.75 and running 7.79 didn’t improve our position.
Q5 Brad’s reaction was 0.102 but Wayne stuck with the 7.75 because the track appeared to improve but we ran 7.79 again so no improvement.
Q6 Wayne was convinced the data showed the car would run a 7.78, Wayne dialled 7.78, Brad cut another great 0.072 light but Chris Parker in the sister car ran 7.80, Wayne changed Brad’s dial to 7.80, big mistake ! the car ran 7.788 which would have put us second to Scott Hauser, however 4th was still a great result especially as this put Brad on the bye run side of the ladder, if Brad won a couple of rounds we would have a bye run into the semi finals, with hindsight ( a great thing ) Wayne tried a little too hard to get the number 1 spot over the event but Wayne knew with the rain coming on Monday the extra points could be valuable in this championship.
We woke on Sunday to the predicted rain, this was a real shame, the crew had prepared a great track all weekend and had put on a great event, the rain was only light and stopped, the crew dried the track only for it to rain slightly and spoil the efforts of the track crew, this also happened on a second occasion but the crew continued to battle the weather and eventually they were rewarded with a track we could race on at 4pm.
Brad still had his competitive edge beating Wayne 3-2 at connect 4 in the RV !
In elimination’s round 1 Brad cut another great 0.075 reaction time to take the win against Ron Bartlett, this unfortunately as far as we got, there is a noise curfew at 5pm on holiday Monday’s and unfortunately time ran out so that was the end of the meeting. This result means that Brad is still leading the UK championship and we look forward to the next event which is the Main Event at Santa Pod 26th – 29th May, the entry for Brad’s class is currently 40 of the very best Super Pro drivers from various European countries so this will be a great event !
There is a lot of speculation that this could be the last year we race at Shakespeare County Raceway, it looks like a new town with 4000 houses and the full infrastructure are going to be built on this site, this will be a great shame, it is a great venue with a really hard working team, let’s hope the planners do not get there way !
