MR2 Racing with 750 Motor Club, Brands Hatch Indy

I decided to do this race meeting with ‘guest’ membership as most of these 750 rounds clashed with other racing commitments. Also the first Red Dragon MR2 meeting was also at this circuit so I thought this would be a good event to do to get used to the car and the circuit.

The classes in 750 are A, B and C. A being mk1 MR2’s, B being mk2 MR2’s and C mk3 MR2’s.

I was one of 6 mk1 MR2’s in class A, the rest of the field was made up of mainly mk2’s. A race win was never possible for a mk1 but a class win is what we were all racing for.

Qualifying;

With 55 cars entered quail was split into 2 sessions, I was in the first session with a total of 29 cars, I qualified 20th. After the second session of quail the times were combined and ended up being 43rd overall.

Heat 1;

This was made up from the last 32 cars in quail (23rd to 55th) so in this race I was 21st on the grid. There was a green flag lap before the standing start.

As this was the first ever race I’d been in I was extremely nervous and didn’t know what to expect. As the lights went out and everyone accelerated towards the first corner, Paddock Hill Bend I couldn’t believe the amount of noise and mayhem that was going on around me. I felt like my senses were being ‘bombarded’.

After surviving the first couple of laps and the mayhem had calmed down, I was able to gather myself, and start racing. It was clear that the mk2’s were a lot quicker than our mk1’s on the straights but my car seemed to handle so much better than the mk2’s I was racing. It was like a game of cat and mouse catching them under cornering with them pulling away on the straights. I found this to be incredibly annoying and made overtaking difficult.

The race was red flagged after about 7 minutes and we had to re-start, this was a good opportunity to make some places up if I could contain myself amongst the mayhem once again. When the lights went out I initially had a good start although getting 2nd gear proved difficult and by the time I had selected it I’d lost more places than on the initial start, however I was able to make them positions back on the opening lap and at the end of lap 1 I was in 22nd position. With a couple more overtakes by the end of the shortened 8 lap race I finished 19th.

Due to a massive accident with the front runners in the Final 1 the race schedule was cut short for the day so we didn’t have a second race.