Yesterday was the eighth and final round of the Scholarship, a race at
Snetterton.

On the way into the race, I was lying fifth in the championship. There was
a remote possibility that I might improve my championship standing to
fourth, but I'd have to rely on Graham finishing much lower down than usual
for that to be a possibility. Another zero a la Oulton could drop me down
to eleventh :-( The overall championship win had already been sewn up by
Jason, but second was still up for grabs with three drivers having a shout.

After my Oulton debacle, I was keen to make ammends here! I'd been to
Snetterton before (for a Lotus Seven Club track day), so I already knew the
circuit reasonably well. Along with approximately 2/3 of the field I'd also
booked a test session the day before the race.

The test session went reasonably well, and by the end I was pretty
confident that I was getting most of the track right. During the last
session, John Bennett and I had a seven or eight lap battle in which we
swapped places more times than I could count. This was a very useful
exercise, making it clear that it's one thing to overtake someone at
Snetterton and another thing altogether to keep them behind you! There are
lots of places where you can overtake, but only two where you stand a
reasonable chance of making it stick (into the Esses and into Riches). Both
of these require a good exit from the preceeding corners (Sear and Russell
respectively). It became clear to me that my exit speed from Russell in
particular wasn't good enough :-(

Race day dawned clear and dry (thank goodness!). The first session the day
before had been damp thanks to the sort of misty drizzle that you only seem
to get in the UK, and the track was lethally slippery.

Qualifying went reasonably well. I didn't get into the queue quite quickly
enough and ended up going out further behind the front runners than I
wanted. Luckily I managed to get past the three cars in front of me within
the first couple of laps and found some space. I didn't quite manage to put
in a "perfect" lap, due in part to some uncooperative traffic, but it was
good enough for a grid position of 6th. That would do!

Arthur Gilmour was the class of the field, qualifying on pole again.

I was unable to repeat my Oulton start, losing one place into the first
corner to (I think) David Meadus. I managed to regain the place almost
immediately by forcing David to take the inside line into Sear and passing
him on the exit of the corner. I then found myself right behind a battling
Dean and Alistair. While they were dodging around each other, I sat quietly
behind both of them and got a wonderful slipstream which allowed me to nip
past both of them on the inside into the Esses. All that practice trail
breaking into the apex paid off! I managed to scrabble round the right
hander in front of both of them and took off after the three car battle for
the lead.

For the next few laps, I was on my own. Dean and Alistair were slowing each
other up by fighting each other behind me, and the battle for the lead
between Arthur, Jason and Colin was a little way in front. I got a
grandstand view of the fight - the lead changing two or three times each lap.

The leaders were slowing themselves down with these antics, however, and
eventually I caught up with them. This was looking good - a win wasn't out
of the question! This was when my poor exit speed from Russell came back to
bite me. Although I was running right on Jason's tail, I was unable to get
close enough to him down the Senna straight to get a decent slipstream :-(

After a couple of laps of this, I screwed up my exit of Sear (watching the
car in front instead of where I was going - a classic beginner mistake) and
dropped slightly behind. On the exit of the Esses, however, Jason got onto
the grass while trying to pass Arthur and all of a sudden we were running
side by side on the way into the bombhole. I had the inside line, so was
pretty confident that I'd get in front of him. Jason, however, is made of
sterner stuff than that - he was much braver than me, and took me round the
outside! You've got to hand it to the guy - he didn't win the championship
for nothing!

After that, my race settle down. Arthur and Colin were up ahead, still
constantly swapping places with each other. Jason was running a few car
lengths behind them, unable to gain, and I was a few car lengths behind
him, also unable to gain. The battle behind me (a very good one according
to the spectators) was far enough back that I didn't have to worry about it.

And that was how things finished. Colin followed by Arthur (who got the
fastest lap of the day), then Jason and me. Alistair followed me home with
David Meadus just pipping Dean for sixth.

The icing on the cake (for me, anyway!) was that I'd moved up to fourth in
the championship. Graham had finished fifteenth, meaning that I was one
point ahead overall. Had he finished one place higher up we would have been
equal on points, and Graham would have got the position on the strength of
his Goodwood win.

Sorry Graham!

All in all, not a bad year. Fourth place overall, especially given that I
only scored one point at Curborough and zero at Oulton, will do fine. I've
met a great bunch of people and had a wonderful time. It's cost rather more
than I budgeted for (even without the repair cost for my Oulton incident),
but it's still been a relatively cheap and painless introduction to the sport.

Roll on next year!