The winter season kicked off for me this past weekend as I made the return to the Don Valley Stadium Sheffield for the first round of the Mirage British Indoor Winter Series. The surface is a rubber running track and we were using the Nosram VTEC 27R control tyre with no additives allowed. The grip level is comparable with low-medium asphalt tracks until late in the day when the traction comes up.
There were 120 drivers entered in 27 turn, 19 turn and Mod classes and this year all the top drivers went for Mod class instead of glory hunting in the feeder classes. I had support from fellow XRAY team drivers Alistair Graham in the Mod class whilst the Lee brothers and Jake Young supported the 19 turn class.
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I ran the prototype 008 car which I had used at the KO GP earlier in the year and with the outdoor setup the car felt great from the start. I was comfortable in practice and went into rd 1 optimistic about the day. Ali was also feeling good with his 007 EU chassis.
Qualifying went quite well for myself and Ali with Ali having some good runs to qualify mid grid and I had some bad errors which cost me TQ by a few tenths. My fastest lap was over 0.5 sec faster than pole man so I knew the finals would be a battle.
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The first final was a fairly good race with me on the pole mans bumper for about 8 laps until I found a way past on the mega tight track, I went on to build a very big comfortable lead and won the leg running the only 19 lap run of the day.
The second final was a little bit of a disaster off the line as I tested some different tyre temperatures which simply did not provide any grip at all. I fell down the pack and had to wait for the tyres to reach optimum temperature before passing people. I managed to fight through and catch the leader on the final lap finishing 1 tenth of a second behind him.
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I won the meeting overall due to having the fastest final time. The 008 prototype car was very well balanced on the tight and twisty track and the setup was easy to find first time out. Thanks to XRAY for such a good car.
1 Ben Cosgrove â“ XRAY T2'008
2 Stewart Noble
3 Elliott Harper
4 Sam Smith 5 Alistair Graham â“ XRAY T2'007
6 Dan Fallows
7 Adam Skelding
8 Jonathon Aird
9 Dave Allen
10 James Hart
