Snetterton is a very long way away. Really, a very long way away. It’s in Norfolk, which when you’re in the High Peak makes it 200 miles each way. That doesn’t sound a great distance, but consider the roads in Norfolk and you’re looking at nearly 4 hours by car, let alone the van which better resembles a sloth when it comes to speed.

Me and Ian had never been to Snetterton before so it was all going to be a bit different. My pre race testing was watching YouTube videos from last year so clearly I was well prepared. Unfortunately Ian was ill on the Friday before so he was unable to make it, so I roped another friend, Keith, into coming to give me a hand. He wasn’t a motor sport fan so this was either going to be great and he’d become one, or a weekend of moaning and groaning, but it was a weekend away somewhere new which is why he came along, although I suspect after the van ride there he probably wished he never bothered!

On arriving we were greeted by rather a nice paddock. At the poor end where we were it was grassy with decent quality access roads. We parked up and unleashed The MR2 from the van with it’s newly fitted Janspeed exhaust. That thing is loud, and was described by Andrew Knight as ‘sounds like a Ferrari’. Not sure what he had been smoking, but it does sound good.

The first part of the evening adventures was the bar. How long should it take for bar food to arrive? 20 minutes? 30 minutes if they are busy? 40 minutes if they are being hideously slow? I think we got to 1 hour 10 minutes before complaining when suddenly ‘they are just been plated up’. 1 hour 10minutes for three lasagnes? What were they doing, importing them from Italy?

The next part was tyre changing. Both left tyres were getting beyond the bald point and really needed changing. I just about got to the Silverstone Tyres truck before they closed for the evening to have my new rubbery circles fitted. Not having Ian’s tools to hand I was missing the all important trolley jack, so it was scissor jack action this evening. In the dark. In the wet.

So anyway, Sunday morning. I send Ian who is feeling a bit better a text saying if I bin and bend the car today it’s not my fault. Basically, it’s raining, and raining very hard. Fortunately it dried up mid morning and apart from a few spots of rain before race 2 it would be a fine day.

The scrutineering noise test was an interesting affair. They wanted 4,500 rpm which is lower than most places and it recorded 103 dB with a 105 dB limit. That’s… close, and probably a bit loud. But we’ve passed and it’s something to worry about another day.

Qualifying next. Or learning the track as I’ll call it. Having never seen Snetterton before I was a Sunday driver trying to find my way around. Some corners were fairly easy to figure out where others, like turn 1 I was struggling with. The best corners by far though were the Bomb Hole and Corum. You enter the Bomb Hole with massive understeer on the assumption the camber pulls you round, hoping that the Earth’s physics aren’t having an off day. Physics don’t really apply to Corum though which is a mental corner. It’s one of those you aren’t quite sure if it’s possible to take flat. Needless to say I wasn’t flat at this point. After qualifying I felt like I knew the track and wanted to do qualifying now, but instead I’d be starting towards the bottom third of the grid.

Coming in from the pits a marshal pulled me to one side. Gulp! Turns out my exhaust was hanging off, but not scraping along the floor so I avoided getting the black and orange circle flag. Having a poke under the car it had come off one of the hangers. It’s a long and arduous explanation as to why, but it was to do with it moving in the centre mount from lots of shaking on kerbs which caused it to fall off one of the mounts at the back. The solution thanks to Mo was to jubilee clip the bugger back on. It wasn’t going to move again!

Race 1, or a clutch endurance test for a better name. The first start saw chaos in turn one and some very evasive driving which was then red flagged. The second start saw more chaos in turn one (by the same person who shall remain anonymous) which was again red flagged. Lining up on the grid, now with a gap in front of me where Andrew Knight should be (he elected to start towards the back for some reason) I looked to my right to see Jeff McCall’s car heavily damaged in the door. We started fairly equal and passed Andrew three wide (tight squeeze!) but he went right and clouted the spinning Sarah Wherry while I went left. A lucky escape that. With a wrecked door the scrutineers pulled him off the grid so I was fairly lonely sat there. I heard on the Tannoy that this would be the final attempt at the start and the race would be cut down in length by a few minutes. Fingers crossed for a clean getaway which we got, followed by a fairly decent race. I was starting to get more confident in the car now and defending and overtaking was less nerve racking.

Remember that exhaust bodging that would never ever move again? Well it did. So Mo got his jubilee clip set out again which I was very grateful for and fastened it up even tighter. It really wasn’t going to move this time!

With a lot of very damaged cars in the paddock the grid for race two was somewhat smaller than before and the race a lot less frantic but still enjoyable. I’m really starting to enjoy myself more and more now as I’m getting more confident about getting stuck in. I’d also managed to take the Bomb Hole and Corum flat, so I drove home quite chuffed about that as I had been edging towards it all day.