Being A Racing Driver, pt2

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Just got back from my second round in the Michelin Renault Scholarship. Much to my surprise, I think I’ve got a better than 50/50 chance of progressing to the third round. I hope that’s not tempting fate, mind.

As with the first round, the morning was split into 4 sessions. The first session was refamiliarisation with the car and the circuit. It was a case of repeating 2 fast laps, followed by a slow lap of feedback from the instructor (Mike Reed, this time). At the end of this session, I was ready to admit defeat. I’d had little in the way of positive feedback and plenty negative. My main problem, it seemed, was my lack of consistency. And poor lines. And poor braking. And... well, I felt I’d thrown it away already.

The second session was more of the same and was, thankfully, better. I even found myself catching another contestant, dropping back to get more room and then catching him again. Even so, I felt I’d improved by only about a quarter of what I needed to do. Imagine my surprise when I was told I was much closer to getting it dead on. Nice.

The third session was intended to replicate a qualifying session with just 2 flying laps on the circuit. These were timed too, so the pressure was on. I managed a 1:23.5 and a 1:22.7, which sounded average to good when comparing with others. I knew I’d made mistakes, mind. I just didn’t get into a rhythm soon enough. But then, that’s what qualifying’s all about.

The final session was there just to make up the numbers, as far as I could tell. A single lap of the circuit, but in the opposite direction to all previous runs. Apparently, they just wanted to see how well you picked up racing lines — not easy around corners marked only by 3 cones. I truly ballsed up the chicane (half of the marker cones were scattered, making it rather hard to spot), but I doubt this session really counted. They probably just wanted to have a fourth session to meet the blurb in the brochure. Hey ho.

Overall, the notes the instructor made sounded reasonably positive despite the bad start, so now I just cross my fingers again. The results will arrive in the post in the next 7-10 days and I’ll copy them here. In the meantime, I’d better get exercising — the next round includes a fitness assessment, complete with the dreaded bleep test (eek!).

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