My Norfolk Weekend – Daniel O’Brien

Dan O’Brien give us his account of Round 2 at Norfolk Arena.

It all started straight after work on Thursday straight home to assemble the world’s biggest jigsaw. Getting a weekends worth of stuff into a 3dr Corolla was always going to be a challenge!

Friday – Set up & practice

A bright and early start for us on Friday morning. We had to leave at 5.30am as I was having some tires delivered directly to the track. We had to make sure we got there early in case we were the first delivery.

Team Competition Clutch assembled bright and early and were greeted by James Bull with a much-welcomed Bacon Roll. Once the Gazebo was up the tents had been pitched it was time to just eagerly await our 1st practice. I had noticed a misfire while driving the car but as it pulled through the rev range I wasn’t too concerned.

With the Super Pro drivers having to wait until last, it seemed an eternity before we could get out on track.

Out on track for the first practice it quickly became apparent that the ‘straight forward’ track from the sidelines was far more technical than first thought.  The 2nd clipping point just before the last corner proved very hard to pull the nose of the car into. Given the way the track ran it was very easy to get carried away down the back straight and carry too much speed missing the clipping point.

After the 2nd practice session things fell into place, a nice confident feeling for the morning as it was straight into qualifying.

After the evenings practice we had a look over the car noticing an earth wire was not connected making sense of the misfire. Being quite late it was too late to test out our findings to see if we had solve the issue so we just looked to the morning in anticipation. Time for a good nights sleep I think.

Saturday – Round 2

Well the morning came and it was a little while before the Super Pro class was due to qualify. An ideal opportunity to pop out grab some fuel and see how she is running! Wow what I though was a slight misfire (it had been a while since she had been driven running well) turns out was holding the car back all through the rev range! Felt like a totally different car, there may have only been about 270 horses, but it was enough to excite me.

Well clock was ticking and I was desperate to qualify after the first round at Donnington missing out by 2 points.

It was time for my practice run. Nice and simple, just wanted a clean run under our belt. But disaster not even round the first corner and a boost hose decides to part company with the intercooler pipework!  I limp off of the track thinking am I even going to get chance to qualify?

As soon as I am off of the track I was lucky enough to have Steve Moore, his Dad and James Bull assist in getting me running again. With that I was straight back to the track entrance.

With out time to even think about nerves I was set off, the plan was to play it safe. Well it was until I found such a nice line around the first corner and so much angle coming out it would be a shame to waste it, to top it off I found the clips, all was good in the world.

On my second run I just thought ‘hey go for it, do better and have fun’, so that’s what I went and did well until the boost hose went again and I spun. We got it fixed for the 3rd run but given the lack of confidence I now had I was never going to better the 1st run.

Down to the judges now I guess.

Awaiting the judges verdict is mind numbing, we headed to the briefing room, Mark Buckle the man with the results has the driver’s attention as he can make or break a weekend with his next words.

He starts at 16th and works his way up; with relief my name appears at 13th would this prove unlucky?  Well in some ways yes and in a he’ll of a lot of ways no.

My draw was against Remmo Neizen, a name that needs no introduction. Win or lose I was determined to come away from the battle a better driver for it. I had never focused so intently on the battle in front of me before, my first job was to stick to that Teal and blue monster In front of me.

Well what can I say; I tried and certainly gave it my best shot. From my perspective I didn’t feel I put a wheel wrong but the grip and power of Remmo’s car put I sizeable gap on me down the back straight, enough to give him the advantage.

Now it was my time to lead, to run my line and to dictate the pace to work in my favor. Sacrificing speed for lots of angle I put in a real tidy run but Remmo had an answer for everything matching me move for move.

It was an awesome battle and I loved every second but given the advantage in the first run Remmo progressed. Even though I lost, the response I got coming off of the track was amazing, left me knowing I had put up a good fight.

Time to relax and watch the rest of the finals….

Sunday – Team Battles

Well today was going to be an interesting day. Team Competition Clutch was consisting of myself, Gav Cummings and Sid Crowfoot. We had never driven together but knew we had similar styles behind the wheel, the only issue was the fact that Gav and I drive S-Bodies but Sid rocks a Laurel.

After a couple of practice runs it was decided that Sid would go up front to dictate the pace with myself following and Gav playing the Anchor. Practice seemed over far too soon although we did start to string together some real good solid runs.

The qualifying process was 2 judged runs with your best one going through, 21 teams????? Sure this was going to be tough!

Well we lined up and off we went, I just focused on Sid and got as close as I dared. Crossing the finish line I looked in the mirror and there was Gav, on que on my boot, happy days. Run 2, same again, things felt good.

We came off of the track to lots of positive feedback, but then from what we understood others were pretty good too.

We had a long wait before the results got announced, we went to the briefing room. Sat there as Mark Buckle started reading the results 16th ……….. Getting to 5th we thought there was no way we had done it, pretty gutted, BUT then to here we qualified 2nd! Really? Wow.

We had a top 16 battle against my old teammates MPH Customs, a good battle but we got through.

In the top 8 we found MnM Engineering, the guys who built our cars this should be interesting. After the 1st battle we couldn’t be split! 1 more time we hear, cool let’s go again. This time a real close one also but we just scrape it and proceed to the top 4.

At this point it was time for a tire change, we go out for our battle against Skyline owners. Unfortunately I made a mistake closing too much on Sid and having to straighten giving the battle to the Skyline owners.

In the 3rd / 4th place battle we narrowly missed out on the podium to GDA leaving us in 4th but real happy overall with a fantastic weekends drifting!