On track Photo Credits @ B46 Photography
The Beginning of October saw the last round of the 116 Trophy 2023. This time it would only be a short drive to our local track Oulton Park, a place where I have been to watch racecars many times with my dad since I was about five years old. Thanks again to Mike, and Adam Kluj Transport services for getting my racecar there safely and in time for Fridays practice sessions as on this occasion the endurance race would be taking place on a Saturday. Also huge thanks to Darren of DT motorsport for setting up the car perfectly for the conditions making it easy for me to quickly get up to speed in the damp conditions and my first time driving this circuit in the rwd BMW. Finished my second session on the Friday really happy with the car and my laptimes of 151.93 on a drying track, especially on old tyres. We spent the rest of the day getting everything prepared and garage area set up for the qualifying session on Saturday morning.
Later in the evening after some more amazing food, (thanks mum.x) I went for the 3.6km track walk with my dad. It was soon dark but we continued round the circuit by torchlight. It felt a little strange when we finally arrived at one of my favourite watching spots.... this time stood looking up from the other side of the barrier.
It was surprising to see just how steep the hills around Oulton circuit actually are when you are walking round and not sat in the car.
Saturday mornings qualifying session and as we were racing on the Island layout of the circuit the longer than usual laptimes meant we would have less laps in the time slot allocated, and with 42 cars on the track I struggled to get a clear lap in. eventually when I found some space I posted my best lap for P18, but I had to abort the next lap where I was already half a second up halfway around. We were almost out of time and ended up pitting for the driver swap with Matty, this left him just enough time to complete his mandatory minimum of three required laps before the session was over, disappointing to be P23 when my Friday pace would have had us starting the 90 minute race from around P12.
The afternoon race came around quickly and we had decided that Matty would start our race and we would take one of our mandatory pit stops early. He was unlucky to have a lengthy safety car period on the second part of his run and only got one more fast laps after the SC pulled in, before having to hand the car over to me at the 45 minute mark.
When I rejoined after getting in the car we were quite far down the order P34 because the cars were still bunched up from the safety car period. We were hoping that we could take places and some of the other teams had yet to make their second pit stop. It took me a lap to get settled in but then I got busy picking off the cars in front. Frustratingly I would suffer another lengthy safety car period on my stint too, which left us with very little racing time to the end to make up places,.... and then there came another incident with just 5 mins left to go which sadly brought events to an early finish. So we came back to pits P18 under red flag conditions, not as far up the field as we knew our pace should have taken us.
We could have done with a few more laps and this wasn't the best way to finish our last race of what has been a very enjoyable season of learning and racing with the 750 Motor Club. Thanks to all the people making this work behind the scenes and everyone in the paddock, its easy to see why the BMW 116 Trophy is such a popular and friendly series with one of the biggest UK grids.
Thanks to all my sponsor partners for an amazing season I really appreciate how lucky I am to be racing at these circuits, it really is what dreams are made of. Also thanks to everyone for their support and messages of encouragement throughout the year, and all the names on the car it means a lot, purchasing the One Nine merch, and everyone who has helped in any way at all both on and off track, especially Aston who has been awesome on the pit wall and comms, and Darren who has helped us keep on top of the car setup and mechanicals, when you are a small family team running on a tiny budget every little bit helps. And my big bro Matty for being a great mentor and teammate both on and off the track, helping me to improve and develop my driving over the season, I feel that I am ready now for the next step in 2024.....but what will that be???.....
But before all that....we are not quite done with 2023 yet. Checkout my upcoming events page to find out what I will be driving in this weekend 28th October for the end of year finale.
Sandro#19
"Unleash what you CAN do"
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