Trofeo Abarth At The Silverstone Classic

[Abarth Girl Racer]

I have previously heard a lot about The Silverstone Classic but have never had the chance to attend it before, and I was absolutely amazed by the size of the event and the cars that turn out for it. I fully recommend it as an event to add onto your Motorsport calender if you haven't attended it before.

I arrived at the circuit Thursday morning ready for the days testing, unfortunately we only had two 30 minute sessions so really not enough to do any quality testing, however enough to shake down the Thames Abarth 500 Assetto Corse and for me to see which layout we are racing on as it changes everytime I race at Silverstone it seems. Sure enough even though we were on the old GP track it was with a slightly different configuration than when we were there for round two.

I always readily admit Silverstone is my least favourite circuit I race on. I'm sure it is great in a modern F1 car but the way it now has to be to fit FIA F1 regulations makes it a very dull place to race a small tin top. Just flat, wide an open it has little character in my opinion and I struggle there as I like close barriers, tight corners and hilly sections like Cadwell Park, Oulton Park and Brands Hatch where there are many points of reference on a lap.

However the car ran faultlessly on Thursday and we managed a few little tweaks during the two sessions. I found myself being very careful in testing though as we were mixed in with some very expensive and rare historic machinery and I did not want to be involved in an incident that could potentially write off an irreplacable bit of history.

The weekend was to start in earnest Friday tea time with qualifying and this is when we suffered from the major frustration of being in motorsport. Having parked up Thursday in a car that was running well and except for a change of tyres hadn't been touched since I drove onto the circuit to qualify with a racecar that was misfiring badly at 5k revs. I returned to the pits but with nothing obvious to fix I went out to set the best time I could in the circumstances. After a couple of laps I had come up with the way to minimize the impact of the misfire as much as possible and the lap times started to fall. I was lieing 7th and only a few hundredths behind 6th and on a quicker lap when a wheel bearing failed sending me back to the pits again and ending the session. By the end of qualifying I had been knocked down to 8th.

For race 1 on Saturday my team of 14 year old Lunar Racing students had managed to change the wheel bearing and cure the misfire but the car was down on power, I had to work really hard to keep up in the early part of the race as every time we got onto the long straights everyone just pulled away from me and also despite a good start found myself back down to 9th. However about 5 laps into the race we had a light shower meaning for about 4 laps we were on a damp track on slicks and this took away the power disadvantage and I was able to move up the field a little eventually finishing 5th which in the circumstance was a pretty good result.

Sunday I started race two 7th and was looking to score as many points as possible for the championship. However unfortunately instead we suffered our first DNF of the year. Despite moaning about the circuit earlier I was pretty happy with the runoff areas when half way round a turn I suddenly lost steering and as I quickly exited the circuit found I had also lost brakes. A couple of exciting airbourne moments followed as I raced through the grass outfield before gathering it all up and limping back to the pits where I nearly ran over my team boss as despite my gesticulations stood in front of the car unaware of my lack of brakes.

So all in all Silverstone was not the highlight of my year by any means. However before the season started I said that the race that matters this year is Brands Hatch DTM in September. With DTMs policy of having a female driver in each of the marques this will be one of the only opportunities to race in front of the powers that be. So we will now pull out all the stops in order to make sure we have the racecar for the job.

Kc
x

[Cyberdog]

Brilliant review. I really like having an Abarth race driver on the forums.
A brilliant read

Did you see the celebrity Abarth 500 race when you were there?

C

[.Lefteris.]

Originally Posted by Cyberdog

Brilliant review. I really like having an Abarth race driver on the forums.
A brilliant read

............

X2
Thank you Kc

[Abarth Girl Racer]

Thank you for that, I will try keep them coming.

I am happy to confirm I will be racing in the Trofeo next season as well

Kc

[.Lefteris.]

Originally Posted by Abarth Girl Racer

Thank you for that, I will try keep them coming.

I am happy to confirm I will be racing in the Trofeo next season as well

Kc