80's Hot Hatch Battle - Castle Combe Race 1 Civic Vs Nova Vs AX GT

With more power and a bit less weight in the mighty EF Civic, for the first time this season a fully dry track I had no excuses for not improving my lap times in the dry this meeting. Now I had some trust in the car, I knew I had areas around the track I could make improvements. I focused on braking later into Quarry Corner and Ethan persuaded me to stay up a gear into camp corner, basically I had to grow more balls. We did just that in qualifying and produced a new PB 1.2 seconds faster than previously with a 1:13.4 putting us on the 2nd row and 3rd starter for race 1 and 2.
We were very realistic coming into this race meeting. We still run a stock K20A2 with just mapping and basic breathing mods and the entry list was full of very experienced drivers and very fast cars so the qualifying result was a surprise to all of us. Sadly Will De Claudio dropped a valve in qualifying as he would have been battling out front no doubt. Craig Fleming returned with his mighty K20 EG, Craig Tomkinson in his super developed red top Nova and the featherweight Citroen AX GT of Shaun Goverd, we were in for a hard weekend. The great thing about this championship is that although its extremely competitive, generally everyone gets along. We all have a good chat and a bit of banter in the pits and although the gloves come off when the flag drops we all trust each other’s driving which often makes for intense battles. Race 1 got under way and the Civic EG suffered shifter problems, we chased the AX GT for 9 laps before it suffered braking problems and skipped out the 2nd set of chicanes leaving us with just one car to chase down, the very fast Nova. The back end of the circuit saw us able to catch up through the corners most laps as we both dodged back markers, but as soon as Folly and camp came along the Vauxhall started to disappear again with its extra power. On the very last lap we finished bumper to bumper two tenths apart and I missed spotting the chequered flag doing another lap at full tilt and just missing the back of Craig as he slowed crossing the line. A brilliant race. A 2nd overall and 2nd in class was a perfect start to the day with another PB achieved as a 1:13.2 just missing out on the race lap record.
As always, a huge thanks to the Wiltshire College & University Motorsport team as well as all our great sponsors.
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