Hampton Downs - NIFF Round 4

Thank you for opening my newsletter for Round 4 of the NIFF Championship. We fought hard with no practice for this round, pushing to extend our two-point championship lead. We knew we had a big job ahead - there was no test day before racing, and this was also our main championship rival Toby's home track.

Qualifying

We had our strategy in mind as we went out the gate, trying to find our setup mid-session. We ran a few laps without searching for a tow, then came into pit lane and changed the setup on the fly. We were off pole by around 0.5 seconds, but I still believed we could claw it back - and the change took effect immediately. We found the lap time we needed to take pole position by five hundredths of a second.

Race 1

There was a little more left in the car for this race - between sessions we tuned that last 1% into it. We led the field to the grid and got a solid jump off the line, making it a two-car race early as Toby and I pulled a gap. The fight went all the way to the line, where I crossed the stripe first by 0.02 seconds to take the win.

Race 2

This time it was even closer. A similar race played out - we broke away early and fought it out to the end. The race went right to the flag; I led most laps and crossed the line first to win by 0.007 seconds. Someone messaged me to say they'd calculated that, at 200km/h, that's a margin of 38 millimetres.

“It's not a normal thing in a race car to tuck like you're in a go-kart, but this time I knew it would be close. Did it make a difference? Probably not. Did we win? Just.”

Race 3

We led the field to the dummy grid again, got off the line well, but the race got dicey and we dropped back a few spots. I clawed back to the front before the safety car came out and the race was red-flagged. I led the restart but lost the lead on the last lap, with nothing left in the tyre to fight Toby over the line. I knew 2nd in this race was enough to win the meeting, though - and you've always got to be happy with that.

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