Conor Daly – The Heat Race

Brands Hatch, England (October 18, 2008) – Today started off with Josef’s heat race. Both of us had never done standing starts before so we were a bit nervous. Luckily I got to watch Josef first to see if I could learn anything. Josef didn’t get that great of a start and fell to fourth which was unfortunate. He ended up fourth and I was next out.

I didn’t have that bad of a start but the guy in third place had a great start just getting by me before the first corner. I was in third with the first two guys right in front of me. I had just started pulling a small gap on the guys behind me when coming out of Turn Three I sensed something was wrong with the throttle.

As soon as I went to shift to third gear the throttle stuck open but it went into third gear after a bit of over rev. So I was flat out into Kidney and Clearways thinking that that the throttle could well be stuck wide open. I went into Clearways and braked where I normally did and the throttle was indeed stuck wide open. I tried getting the car stopped but it wasn’t working and I was heading for the gravel.

I somehow thought of switching off the engine before I got too far into the gravel. I switched the engine on and off multiple times to keep the car going so I could get back to the pits safely. Luckily I got the car back to the pits. The team worked as hard as they could but I wasn’t able to get back out on track until there were just two laps to go. When we got back to the pits we found out that there was a bent valve in the engine from the engine revving too high when the throttle stuck open in the pits while the crew was working on it.

Through all this I am being very positive about everything. The car is very good and I am confident it will give me a chance to challenge for the win tomorrow. It will give me a chance to have a lot of fun in the semi final and final passing cars! I will be able to learn a lot about racecraft tomorrow and I can’t wait!