Donington was the venue for the penultimate meeting of the 2017 Junior Saloon car championship (JSCC) and Lydia Walmsley headed to the Leicestershire circuit in determined mood,
hoping to have a positive meeting after having a lot of bad luck for the past few rounds, usually through absolutely no fault of her own. Her car had heavy side damage after Pembrey and required lots of work by her small family team to get it back to perfect condition. That’s exactly what they managed though and it arrived at the track for Friday testing looking as pristine as it had before the incident.
Her usual driver coach, Joe Tanner was on hand for the test sessions and things were looking very positive as she set the third fastest JSCC time of the day. Now the hope was that this would transfer through to Saturday.
First practice and Lydia was frustrated as she set the fifteenth fastest time. She was a long way off her Friday pace and no one was really sure why. Lydia studied her laps to try and get things back to how they were on Friday. She was faster in qualifying but this still gave her fifteenth on the grid for race one on Sunday. She was now determined to race through the field and make up as many places as she could in the races.
She made a great start as the lights went out for the first race and immediately made up places on the first lap. She ended up in a very tough battle with Gordie Mutch and Ben Kaspercak, the three drivers changing places several times a lap. Lydia was disappointed to finish 12th. It was an improvement on her starting position but she felt she could have been higher she just came off worst in the battles at just the wrong time.
She was in even more determined mood for race two, again making up places straight away. She was well inside the top ten in the early stages and looking strong but she then made an incredibly rare mistake on a downshift, dropping her down the order slightly and she found herself just ahead of Charlotte Birch who had also been coming through the field. The two of them then made up places together and Lydia was up to ninth when a red flag came out due to a car rolling at Coppice. The race was close to the end so the decision was taken that this would be the end of the race.
Unfortunately for Lydia, when a red flag comes out, the result is taken from one lap before so instead of her hard fought ninth, her final result was eleventh. It was still a good result but not where she would have finished without the red flag.
Lydia had mixed feelings on her weekend;
“My results don’t show how much true racing there was throughout race day. However, I am extremely disappointed with my qualifying and results although I am pleased that we came away without too much damage, unlike my previous meetings!! I’m looking forward to pushing onwards at Brands Hatch and getting back to where I should be! I’m hoping to finish the season with a strong result. It would be great to be able to get a good result to thank my team and supporters for all their help during the season.” By Marc Waller
