The onboard camera on Mark Gilbank’s car caught the start. [Courtesy of Chris Clark / Premier Sports]
It’s a hard track is Sheffield, we try to race each other as best we can. I was having a good race with Mark Gilbank for a few laps, I wanted to pass him without having to bury him, then he hit a white top wide and I went for the gap, but he shut the gap, and, well, that were it…
They don’t normally have those marker tyres there, I didn’t really notice it. But I did see it when I hit it, I thought “Oh, that’s not good…”
It bent the axle, did two shockers, and the wing was pretty bent. I thought about doing something with it, then Nigel was loading up so we asked if we could borrow his, he said “Yeah, course!”.
I’d say they make a massive difference on shale, not so much on tar. You try walking into the wind and holding a four foot by six foot piece of plywood above your head, you’ll feel what difference it makes. I remember in the old days at Long Eaton, John Lund turned up late, he unloaded and went straight out for the consolation, he didn’t have time to put the wing on the car. He span out three times. I mean, this is John Lund we’re talking about, he never spins out, he was gold top at the time!
We were rushing and with there only being one support formula we were up against it. We just about got it back out, we swapped the shockers and did our best to straighten the axle, but we’d lost all the set up.
We had a play with it after the consolation but I think we’d lost the way a bit, it wasn’t right all meeting.
Thanks to Nigel Harrhy for the loan of the wing, and to Darren Foster for this superb photo sequence.
