| Thursday, October 15, 2009 11:03AM | Behind The Wheel With Brett Smrz |
The start of today was great. I had a great night of sleep last night, and after spending some time thinking about the track I dropped quite a bit of time. At the end of the day, I was only 1 tenth off of the pace.
We threw new tires on straight away in the first session, which was very nice. The car had much more grip than it previously had. Scott Malvern was running on old tires, and was still the quickest, but it turned out that his new set of tires didn’t make him any quicker.
Every single session I kept learning new things about the track. It is a very tricky circuit. I could compare it a lot to Infineon Raceway. Infineon has a bunch of little tricks that take some time to learn, and it seems that Brands Hatch is the same way. Luckily, we have some team mates that are experienced on the track, so we are learning from them as well.
I did spin the car today, trying to learn its limits. I feel I have to do that at times, just to know how far you can push the car. It wasn’t a very big spin. I asked Cliff and Dave if they would make my car have more over steer. (I couldn’t stand the under steer anymore). They definitely got rid of the under steer, and I slid the car a bit too much in Druids (Turn 2). I thought I had it saved, but I over corrected, and it spun on the exit of the corner. I got going quickly, and set my fastest lap of the session after that.
The last session of the day, I started to grow some more confidence in the car. I was carrying more speed in almost every corner, and I got down to the leaders times. I only dropped 3 tenths of a second today. (That shows how tough it is to drop time here) I have a bit more time to drop tomorrow. I think another new set of tires should do the trick for me tomorrow.
Thanks go out to Cliff Dempsey Racing for working their buns off to get me up to speed. They are all very confident that I will have the times by Saturday morning (as well as myself). Special thanks go out to Michelle Dempsey. She has been cooking non-stop for the past 3 days! I don’t know what the team would do without her. I think they would all starve.
I will see you all tomorrow. Thanks for keeping up on my blog.
Brett Smrz\
