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BDC Round 2 @ Silverstone

Posted on 27. May, 2010 by Wayne in The Scene

Wayne Keeber reports on the BDC Round 2 at Silverstone…

A return to Silverstone for round 2 but this time using the Brooklands and Luffield corners of the main track. This round of the championship was run in conjunction with the Japanese Tuning Show.

I managed to get a practice day in before round 2 and I used this to bed in yet another clutch combination and get some seat time to get use to the car. Nothing broke on the car and it only needed a couple of little jobs doing before going to Silverstone, with the event on Sunday this gave me the Saturday to sort the bits out and make sure it was ready for 100mph entries! With everything loaded and ready to go by 11pm on Saturday night, this was 5 hours faster than round 1 preparations.

It was an early start on Sunday morning, making sure everything was loaded and ready we then set off to get to Silverstone for 07:30am  for scrutineering. With some changes made (from suggestions by scrutineers in round 1) the car passed with flying colours and we were ready for practice. Before practice was the drivers briefing in which we are told what we can and can’t do, what the judges want to see and, where and how many points we can score.

Practice consisted of two 30 minute sessions, the first was spent learning the track and how the car works on it. Finding the limits I had a couple of spins and shredded the tyres after about 4 runs, and with the sessions being only 30 minutes, by the time the wheels were changed the session was over. 30 minutes before my second session and in that time I did some checks on the car and found the gearbox to be leaking oil in to the car. The oil leak was minor so I lined up for session 2. Once again I had done a set of tyres after only 4 or 5 runs which meant I had to go back in to the pits for a change which ended the same as the first session, again.

With the top 16 qualifiers going through the names were read out and I had qualified 11^th, better than I was expecting as my runs didn’t feel as nice as my practice runs. Anyway, this meant I was out again this time twinning with the other drivers that made the top 16. We made our way on to the track for the top 16 battles and as we were lining up awaiting our battles (me against Steve ‘Stiggy’ Evans in a Toyota Starlet), his car failed with a snapped clutch cable. This was very unfortunate as this would have been a battle with the biggest car against the smallest. With the failure of Stiggy’s car it meant I was automatically promoted to the top 8.

With the top 16 battles over there was a short break while the running order for the top 8 was decided, I was drawn against Danny Eyles in a Japspeed S15 and he was on fire all day. We lined up for our practice run with me leading as I had qualified higher. During the practice run I was able to judge where he was stronger than me so I adjusted my line for the first scored run so he could sneak up the inside like on the practice run. The score was 6-4 to Danny. The second run with Danny leading didn’t go so well for me as I made a mistake shifting to 2^nd and gave Danny a nice lead. I tried as hard as I could to close the gap but it was to big and again the score was 6-4 in his favour. I knew it would be difficult to beat Danny as he was on form all day, he eventually went on to win the whole event.

All in all it was a fantastic day, the track was awesome, the quality of driving was brilliant and apart from the small oil leak on the gearbox nothing on the car broke. I finished 8^th out of 40 that stared the day.

The next round of the BDC both Pro and Semi-Pro is at Lydden Hill on 19th June.

Current BDC Pro standings;

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Tags: bdc, drifting, POTN, wayne keeber