Having raced at the blustery Northamptonshire circuit several times before, I have been looking forward to Silverstone for some time. I felt confident that I knew its lines and areas of grip very well. It’s also my local circuit, which in theory gives the driver home turf advantage - he can stay in the comfort of his home rather than a hotel for example. My one concern was that the Silverstone National is a true power circuit - a series of fairly straight forward right-handers (and one solitary left-hander) linked by very long straights. As I’ve highlighted before on this blog, my engine is in dire need of a refresh having done nearly 7,000 track miles - work which won’t be done until the end of the season. Silverstone is not the event at which you want an engine down on power…!

Track position at a power circuit such as Silverstone when the grid is made of identical cars is all about tow. Tow, or drafting, is a term you may have heard in F1 or cycling. Put simply, it is the effect whereby the car in front punches a hole in the air it passes through creating a lee behind it as the air swirls off the bodywork. A car following closely in the lee of this aero effect does not require the same amount of effort to achieve the same speed as the car in front and will be “pulled along”, therefore, by the car in front. This creates a great passing opportunity into the braking zone. In Caterhams, the effect starts at about 4 car lengths back and increases almost exponentially the closer you get to the car in front - 1 inch off the back bumper being the ideal distance!

So, in order to maximise the tow effect in the all important qualifying session, I decided to cooperate with another driver, Steve Tucker, and give each other a tow down the straights before pulling over to allow the car on a hot lap to slingshot through and set a good qualifying time. Hopefully, this would improve a cars laptime by up to 1/2 second or so - an age on a 1m10s lap…

The inevitable rain started to pour down on lap 5 of qualifying, making the remainder of the session redundant from a timing point of view with the only reason to remain out on track being to explore where the grip lay - the wet line. The wet line is significantly different to the dry, fast line around most circuits, and commonly involves driving around the outside of corners and missing the apexes completely. This is because most wheel spin occurs from the apex through to the exit of any corner and vast amounts of rubber are laid down in this zone which, although increasing your grip levels in the dry, become very slippery in the wet. This effect is especially pronounced at Silverstone which sees some extremely high horsepower cars race on it regularly - laying down rubber like it’s going out of fashion.

At the end of qualifying, despite feeling that the car hadn’t gone as well as it could have on its dry set up, I was pleased to find I’d put the car in 5th place for the first race of the weekend on a grid of 24. This was the closest qualifying so far, though, with the top 13 cars separated by less than a second and the top 20 cars by less than 2 seconds… Time to change the car’s set up, as the weather reports all agreed that the race would be a wet one.

Race 1

Not for the first time in a wet race this season, I slightly overcooked the revs on the start and dropped 3 places by the first corner. The spray was unbelievable and pretty much nothing was visible beyond the nose of the car, as we crept round the normally flat out Copse Corner at what seemed like walking speed. A mistake into Maggots saw me drop another place on the first lap so I had it all to do. Wet races are often a bit processional, with the grip off line being low to non-existent, so to gain places the driver needs to be a bit brave, pick his moment and go for it. I took Magd back on the run up to Maggots and started to pick off the field, helped out by a couple of offs by drivers in front.

In the closing stages of the race I was battling Dean Wilkin for position and we swapped place a couple of times. At about 2/3 race distance, an unfortunate back runner, Peter Micklewright, was coming down the start/finish straight when his front wishbone snapped. His car was pitched into the pit wall at about 100mph and he finally came to rest against the wall facing the wrong way up the straight… After being initially shown the Safety Car board, the Clerk of the Course decided that, given the wet conditions, it was too dangerous for the race to continue. The positioning of the crash would have meant getting the marshall’s JCBs out on track to recover Peter’s car which would have been dangerous, even under the Safety Car.

So a slightly anti-climactic end to the race handed me a P7 and a good starting position for the second race the following day.

Race 2

Torrential showers throughout the morning left me guessing how to set the car up until the last possible moment. Although the track was drying quickly in the sun and wind, huge black clouds threatened another dump of rain at any minute. I took a massive gamble and went for a full dry set up which I almost regretted leaving the assembly area as it started to spot with rain. Fortunately the gamble paid off and the rain held for the whole race. Several other drivers had opted for the conservative damp set up option and they suffered as a consequence.

Unusually, my start was not the flyer I’d hoped for and I dropped a couple of places. After that, things begin to break down a bit - it’s not easy to describe the 20 minutes of racing that followed in detail, as words really won’t do it justice - it’s probably best to let the video do the talking below.

It was easily the most intense, exciting and dramatic race I’ve been involved in. I dropped as low as 12th place and as high as 3rd. Lap after lap cars swapped position and charged into corners, notably the tricky Brooklands, up to 5 or 6 abreast. Any mistakes were mercilessly punished by following cars. The slightest lapse of concentration would see cars miss their braking points and run wide, losing 3 or 4 places in the bargain. Slowly; very slowly; the pack began to thin out and the battle I had with Dean Wilkin and Mark Blackburn for the second half of the race I could only describe as epic…

At the line, I held off a spirited come back from Rob Vissers to finish 3rd - my third podium finish of the year so far. I was exhausted. Caterham described the race as the “most exciting race we’ve seen for about 12 years!”

A fantastic weekend’s racing, then, for me. I earned 30 out of a maximum 40 points and jumped up to 9th overall in the championship, just behind Magd and in front of Mark Figes. And all that with a car down on power! Hopefully I can keep this revival going into the next two rounds at Donington at the end of August. 3rd place in the championship is just about within reach - it would take a recovery as epic as the race at Silverstone, but stranger things have happened…!

Phil