22nd October 2019
With the Silverstone International Finals, team meal and a bumper 'Graph Tuesday' - we've certainly had a very busy few days!!
For this week's blog, we are going to start by throwing it back to last Thursday (17th October), when we headed to Silverstone for the Greenpower Trust 2019 International Finals.
We were all extremely excited to have qualified and have the chance to race at the home of British Motor Racing. After a very early start (don't think anyone enjoyed having to be at school for 5am!), trailers were loaded and we headed down the motorway to Towcester. At this point, nerves where definitely setting in - after all, it's been no secret that our cars have been extremely temperamental and have seemed to play tag-team on which car was going to break all season! So who knew what was going to happen?!
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We had qualified for the final in 3rd (Dylan) and 8th (Basil), however with Race 1 now being a grid qualifier, we had the chance to improve on these positions. Thankfully, Basil got this memo and managed to finish in pole position - however unfortunately for Dylan, he slipped down into 9th place!
Whilst we were extremely happy with Basil's performance, we knew that in terms of the international championship, this result counted for nothing. It remained all to play for in Race 2.
Having spent the lunch break celebrating Vic's birthday, repairing Basil's horn mount and looking over Dylan to see if there was any obvious reason why he wasn't performing as well as we know he can, it was soon time to get ourselves ready, and head out onto the grid for the last race of 2019.
With the weather clearing up and 100 competitors on the grid, Race 2 was shaping up to be a great culmination of the Greenpower calendar!
At exactly 15.30, the safety car pulled away and we were off, with Cate and Sophie expertly navigating both the traffic and corners! Having completed both our planned pit stops with one hour to go, all we could do was sit, wait and see what our batteries had in them. With less than 10 minutes to go, Basil was sitting in 4th place behind Zephyr from SGA Rusko. As we started to approach the last 5 minutes of the race, we had another quick glance at the live timings, only to see that Immy had managed to get Basil into 3rd place! We honestly couldn't believe it!
Meanwhile, Lil nursed Dylan home and finished in 17th.
Later that day, we also realised that after beating Zebedee's lap record of 3'7.052 (31.6mph), Basil now holds the Silverstone track record after completing a 2'55.935 (33.6mph) lap in the qualifier. Huge congratulations to Cate for that one!!
What a day! What a Race!
Having not stayed overnight at the final this year (...and not wanting to miss out on the tradition of having a team meal at the finals!), we decided to have a celebratory end of season meal at a local restaurant the following Monday. It proved to be a lovely way to celebrate the 2019 season! Here's a snapshot of the evening (...and my personal favourite photo of the night!)...Erin after having a drink chucked down her!!
Finally - back to tonight. With our first Tuesday night following the final, we spent the evening having a super duper, bumper Graph Tuesday.
We pulled all the tables together, chucked a load of treats in the middle, and all sat round the white board ready for our race day debrief. As usual, we began our discussions with what we felt went well and what maybe, didn't go so well, before moving on to things that we need to look to improve or review for the 2020 season.
Having sufficiently pulled Silverstone apart, we then moved onto looking at the Graphs. For the first time this season (I believe?!), we had SIX full graphs to look at....I don't think the team have ever been more excited!!!
Richard took us through each graph one by one, explaining to us what they mean and what we can learn from them moving forward. With Dylan not performing as we'd hoped at the final, his graphs were particularly interesting to look over as we try to get to the bottom of what his issue may have been.
After going through the graphs....and eating too many sweets (..if there is such a thing?!) in the process, it was time to pack away and put the tech suite back together.
With half term next week, I think we are all looking forward to some well deserved R&R.
2019 - you have taught us a lot!. This year - we've raced Train (our beloved borrowed Kit Car), attended 6 Regional Heats, managed to break the cars in more ways than we thought possible, spent many hours inside Richard's Garage fixing said broken cars before ending the season on a high with a lap record and 3rd place.
We've laughed, we've cheered and we've smiled, but most importantly we've loved every single minute, and can't wait to do it all over again.
Here's to 2020....