XR2 Race Report - Rounds 13 & 14

So after 7 gruelling months and 12 rounds it came down to the last meeting for the 2010 XR2 season. The weather forecast was for a clear if cold weekend but the sun decided to make an appearance on Saturday.With Marin still running on by now well worn tyres, laptimes were not the main aim but to just check the car was running fine. The 1st session went incident free but carburettor troubles in the 2nd session meant a switch to the spare carb again (probably more dirt in the original carb)

Sunday came and with the XR2 being last on the timetable it was a relaxed start to the day. Qualifying came and for the 1st time this season Martin had very little traffic issues yet strangley achieved his lowest qualifying of the season in 8th place with a 65.239 laptime.

Race 1 arrived on a dry track. Martin got a great start and probabaly the best of the season and into Duffis had managed to pass Alex Shaw and Steven Gray to gain 2 spots straight away. The fight between Martin, Charlie Cope and then Peter Cruickshank who'd had a disasterous qualifying was quite close but then coming out of the hairpin on lap 7 Charlie and Peter tagged when fighting over the smallest peice of tarmac and Martin slipped by on the inside while Peter was sent off into the barrier. In the closing laps Martin was catching Finlay Adams in 4th place but was never close enough to consider a last lap lunge.

Race 2 brought rain with quite a vengance and so all the competitiors were on fully gay suspension settings (fully soft). Once again martin had a poor start and was gobbeld up early on but lap after lap positions were made up thanks to Alex binning it at McIntyre's then Finlay and Charlie having an incident which stopped the awsome show of Finlay's sideways XR2. Martin was sitting in 4th but quickly caught up to Russell Milloy in 3rd place and the racing was very close, Martin did manage to nose ahead with the help of an ST upto the hairpin but Russell was clever enough to counter this and so Martin finished in 4th and just missed out on another podium finish for the season.

A strong finish to the season with a 5th and 4th place finish leaving Martin 7th in the overall championship and 5th in the newcomers. Congrats to Tim Sleigh on both titles in a dominant season and also to Russell for his pace in the last 2 races, the badger force was definetley with him!

As for 2011, Martin may or may not be racing depending on 'finance' reasons.