18' 750MC Club Enduro - Rnd 2 Oulton Park - An Unfortunate 2nd place...

Here is the best of the footage from our view during the 2 hours of the Club Enduro championship at Oulton Park!
Apologies to any driver that may have been bleeped at, heat of the moment and all that... they were nice words honest..!
RACE REPORT
So... Oulton Park​!!
Effectively Round 1 of the 750MC - Club Enduro Championship​ since "Round 1" was cancelled due to some frosty white stuff...
Testing was wet, which could have been interesting since it was our first go around the track in a RWD car..! There were definitely some squeeky bum cheek moments... But all was well, and the car felt amazing from the get go!
Qualifying on the Saturday morning was dry but cold. We put a slightly different set up on the car, and again it felt amazing from the get go!! Unfortunately the session was riddled with cars going off and breaking down, which in turn set the safety car out infront of us (not ideal when trying to set a FAST lap time)... So my session was really just warming the car up for Andrew Winchester​ to go out in. Thankfully he managed to get a few laps together and get us 2nd in class!
Onto the race. The sun was out in force, El scorcio!! We had Josh Orr​ in the car for a rolling start to kick us off, which went amazingly well! We had our radio comms with the pits, which allowed us to perfectly time the lights and get a jump on others which didn't have the privilege.
Before we even got to the first corner we were up into P1!! But the race wasn't over yet, unfortunately... For the subsequent laps after we had a very quick looking red E36 BMW breathing down our neck. Added into the mix was some slow off the mark class A and B that we had to negotiate! A few flying laps later we found ourselves out of sight and over 10 seconds in the lead! Happy days...
About 40 minutes into the 2 hours there were a few crashes on the track which first of all brought out yellow flags, then ultimately the safety car. By the time we had figured out if we could pit and make it to the end of the race with the fuel we could put in, we had to do an extra lap behind the safety car... Which unfortunately meant that we lost a good chunk of time to the BMW in 2nd place. We left the pits after a clinical pit stop by Andrew Lamont Motorsport Ltd​, to then be held at the end of pit lane for a good 30 seconds before the safety car came past. You're not allowed to leave the pits while the safety car and train of cars pass, but you shouldn't be stopped before it comes (at least that's my interpretation of the rules). Because of the time lost from this and the fact we came in that lap too late, we lost the lead. Not by much though we were only a few cars behind in the safety car train.
The race was restarted, now with Andrew Winchester Racing​ at the wheel. Overtakes were made, and we were right back onto the bumper of the BMW in 1st!! A couple of laps battling with eachother was amazing to watch on the timing screen and pit wall, but unfortunately this was brought to an abrupt end when a lapped driver looked like he was taking an outside line round a corner to allow for an overtake, then decide to turn in on us.
Luckily this was not race ending for us, but massively compromised our lap time by bending suspension components... This turned what was looking like a likely win, into fighting to hold onto 2nd place... What made it even worse was that the throttle pedal was intermittently sticking to the floor..! We were around a minute and a half ahead of 3rd place, so we were contemplating pitting to sort the issue but we would have lost our place, so we cruised to the finish in 2nd place and 9th overall (out of 42!!)!
Overall the weekend went amazingly well for us, just a few things happened in the race that didn't go our way which is racing unfortunately. We still have plenty of rounds to go in the Championship which we can hopefully get ourselves up a position..!
Race footage to follow in a few weeks, photos hopefully over the next few days.
Thanks to all the guys helping us over the weekend Andrew Lamont​, Ian Hoggins​ & Steven Wilkie​, much appreciated! Hard lines to Mark Geraghty​ & Ian Bonthrone​ who unfortunately had a DNF due to mechanical failure (we know plenty how frustrating that feels..!). All the marshalls who we are thankful that we didn't have to bother at all over the weekend, and the 750mc​ organisers!
Also our sponsors!
T7Design Ltd​
Opie Oils​
Part-box.comM