[Malcolm]

Our class battle looks set quite early on but to finish first, first you have to finish. The Cosworth retires early in the race for unknown problems so in reality it is now between us and the MR2 as the BMW is roughly 4 seconds a lap slower. The MR2 is pacing faster than us and builds up a comfortable margin of over half a lap. But this is a two driver race…..

Every car has to do a mandatory pit stop. If the car only has a single nominated driver they have to simulate a pit stop by coming in, stopping the engine, getting out, shutting the door and then getting back in, not being allowed to restart the engine until the harness is pulled up tight. For two driver teams such as ours, you come in stop the car and engine, swap over drivers, harness up, restart the engine and off you go. Pit lane speed limit is 60 kph. The pit lane is not long so you don’t waste too much time on entry and exit laps. Pit stops happen in a window of between 15 minutes and 30 minutes into the race. The MR2 pulls in at 17 minutes and goes to what I think is its garage. The driver does not get out but instead a crew member looks at the front of the car. Then quite swiftly the driver drives to another pit garage further up the pit lane and a driver swap happens. No idea what all that was about but it looks inefficient. As they are in the pits, Glenn goes past and takes the class lead. As he is coming round again we give him his pit board signal to come in next time around. The MR2 pulls out the pits 50m in front of him having had a long pit stop and driver swap. But we are now nearly a whole lap ahead.

Glenn and I have planned our pit stops allowing for the differences between us as drivers. Also we have designed our cockpit to make things easier to swap drivers. If you are lapping a second a lap slower than your competitor but can pit 5 seconds faster you gain 5 laps of breathing time. Applying that principle now to the MR2 allows me to exit the pits with a 40 second lead over the MR2!