It’s not just difficult to know where in the field I am: it’s impossible to be sure because, while live timing in the garage shows the field with the theoretical weighting applied, the finishing order will be adjusted again after the event.
So once out on circuit, I just put my toe in and go about having a nice time driving the door handles off a Swift while not getting in anybody else’s way.
And I have not had many better times driving a car. The Swift moves around a bit under braking, it turns keenly, I can feel it pitching a wheel into the air on the way into corners and it revs rather happily on the way out.
Karting excepted, I sometimes find that I most enjoy racing after the event, once the perilous bits are finished with. But not here, not now. I’m having a ball. We’re not doing too badly, either, my teammates and I.
Deep into the final hour, the adjusted order has us running top five or thereabouts, and we have a Civic on circuit to keep up our lap speeds and keep the opposition behind.
Alas this is perhaps our undoing: the Swift doesn’t spend quite enough time on circuit to avoid the adjudicators knocking us down a few spots, to seventh overall, rather than the podium finish we might have just squeezed.
But nobody likes a hard-luck story when there are vanishingly few luckier ways to spend a weekend.
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