Joe Dalgarno’s debut in the Tegiwa Type R Trophy Championship at Croft

We are proud to be supporting race driver and MG Trophy Champion Joe Dalgarno again, and this year Joe is competing in the 750 Motor Club’s Honda Series in the Type R Trophy class.

The championship opened at Croft race track on the 15th April.    Read on for the full race report provided by Joe…

Friday Testing

Coming into the weekend I knew that testing was going to be crucial to my weekend as the car is still new to me and I had never been to Croft before. The day was split up into 4 half hour sessions. The best way to sum up the first session would be to say it was a mess! I was only able to get in 6 laps with most of them being out laps, this was due to the number of red flags there were. On the contrary, the second session was very positive as I almost got the full half hour of running and managed to start to get my lap times down.

Over the lunch break the rain came down, this was a setback as all of Saturday was meant to be dry however, I didn’t mind this to much as it gave me my first wet running in the car. I was feeling very comfortable in the wet, that was until I hit a kerb that I had been using all morning and it snapped my front left top mount, this left me stranded in a bog in the middle of the circuit. To add insult to injury the marshals didn’t recover the car in the correct way which meant that the load straps that they used to lift the car bent both front wings as well as rubbing through the new wrap!  Luckily, I was able to source a new front top mount however, it didn’t come until 7pm.

Qualifying

Quali was still damp and due to the lack of running I was still lacking a bit of confidence in the car. It was a drying track, so my last lap was good enough to put me P15 out of 32 which I wasn’t too happy with but at the same time wasn’t disappointed with.

Race 1:  I got a strong launch but got boxed in due to a slower starting car ahead, this caused me to drop back a couple of positions. Over the next few laps, I was able to gain a few positions. At just over the mid-point of the race I got dive bombed from the car behind, this sent me round and onto the grass and saw me drop to P22 (the driver that hit me ended up getting 2 points on his race license for this). After realising that the car was still ok I pushed on and managed to get up to P21 on the last lap.

Race 2:  Due to all the troubles we had over the weekend the main goal for this race was to keep it clean and bring the car home in one piece. Starting P21, again I got a good launch but again got boxed in was saw me drop a couple of positions. At this point I was following the car in front as he was massively out of position, so I let him make the moves and then followed him through until we were P19 and P20. Then, on the last lap and last corner I made my
move, he defended, and I got the cut back, so we had a drag race to the finish line where I just got in front and I came across the line in P19.

Summary

Overall, a very disappointing weekend, I think I was doomed from the start when we didn’t get much testing in. We also have a fair bit of work to do to the car before the next race as over the weekend the car made some interesting noises at times. I am looking forward to the next race at Brands Hatch on the 20th of May as it a track that I am very comfortable with and fast at so will hopefully be battling with the sharp end of the grid.

For more information about Witham Motorsport – click here to visit our website