Oulton Park 26th June 2004

The Oulton Park round was the second event of the year that Nik was able to contest in the UK.

He was unwell throughout the previous week and despite my concerns about his fitness to drive, he insisted on racing.

We managed to get him into the car on the Friday afternoon and he set a respectable 1.28 second lap on the Island Circuit. This was we thought good enough to get him at the front of qualifying.

For official qualifying on the Saturday morning Nik ran with an unchanged set-up and the same tyres as Friday, he set a 1.28.2, which was good for us, especially as we had to almost lift him into the car. Unfortunately, it was only good enough to get third on the grid, with the new Gunn car of Wilds on pole and the new Fox Lola of Chapman second.

The race was a wet affair, from the off both Nik and Anthony Wilds sat and spun, Chapman was brought into the pits with no lights and the Lola of Colin Rodger, sped into an enormous lead, with Manderson in the Pinto car next up. Wilds and Johnson diced over the next few laps with what looked like a pair of difficult handling cars in the very wet conditions. Anthony managed to get by Nik and for a couple of laps and was then fending off Nik until he gave best and was overtaken. Nik pulled out a lead and set off after Manderson and Rodger. As the rain eased, Nik found more grip and closed rapidly on Manderson , soon passing him and closing the gap to Rodger. The time came down to less than a second between them when Nik out- braked himself at Nicker Brook and dropped back. Soon back in the hunt he closed again only to repeat the incident before finally closing in to take a close second spot over the line.

A very poorly Van Diemen driver was driven home immediately. (Thankfully he now seems to be recovering).

We had to be content with second spot, Rodger drove a good race and his car looked to have a better set-up than ours. Nik said the race was a blur and was unable to give us much feedback, except that the car was too stiffly dampered. We are working on further improvements to the suspension and hope to be able to keep up with the improvements from the other new cars. What is clear is that the Duratec cars are now starting to show their real speed over the Pinto runners, wet or dry they are several seconds quicker and what’s more look it!

Cheers, Nik