ROUND TWO, ROCKINGHAM QUALIFYING.

I was going to use both of the qualifying sessions on the Saturday as a further opportunity to increase the knowledge I had of the track, also build up more confidence in the car and learn  more about the fine art of driving a front wheel drive saloon car.

As with the first round of the season at Brands Hatch, there is a structure to qualifying and therefore the process is crucial to the outcome of where you end up and, what happens to the tyres that are supposed to last for the whole weekends racing.

The best of the tyre's performance are in the opening laps when they are at the correct temperature, soft, and therefore producing the most amount of grip. If the tyre temperatures get too hot then the grip is lost and the tyre surface quite literally melts, making the car hard to drive and consequently slow.

During the day there were two qualifying sessions and the first race of the weekend. So a busy day lay ahead. The first session gave me more time to learn the track without overdoing the use of the tyres, which made every lap very important. 

By the end of the session I had completed 8 laps, made a couple of visits into the pit lane, to swap the tyres around on the car to equalize the wear rate.

The end result was 8th on the grid. Not too bad considering 24 hours earlier I had only seen a picture of the track.

The second Qualifying was much the same. Try to learn as much as I could form the car, the track and from the processes of the qualifying period. Although I have raced before, due to the length of time I have been out of competitive motor racing it is always advisable to use these early race meetings in the championship to maximize track time.

This session I, again, completed 8 laps and qualified 8th for the second race. This meant that in both races I was due to start from the outside of the grid, which in fact, at Rockingham, is the cleanest part of the track as it is the racing line into turn 1. So I was looking forward to a good start and maybe making up a couple of places before the first couple of corners.