With the learnings from yesterday, and now some familiarity with the Jerez circuit, the plan for the early runs was to push on new tyres whilst the track is at its best. This went well, dropping into the 1:35’s with my first set of new, improving on the second and then taking another 3 tenths off my best time on the 3rd. This put me at 12th of the 17 drivers on the time sheets, which given the difficulty of this track is something which I was pleased with. With all three sets my quickest laps were much more around the peak of the tyre which is a good area of improvement.
After a break, the objective for the rest of the day was long race runs with the focus on delivering consistent lap times on older tyres. The other objective was to push my mental and physical capabilities to the absolute limit. Having set our quickest possible lap times in the morning, this was a far more effective way to utilise the opportunity than going through further tyres, even though many other drivers did.
As a result I completed two full 18 lap race runs, followed by a further run at the end of the day with another 10 timed laps, giving me a huge 76 laps, 350km, for the day. This was easily the most of any of the drivers, and around Jerez was certainly a massive physical challenge.
Mentally, the challenge was also a hugely valuable experience, with the difficulty of many of the corners, along with the dramatic changes in the characteristics of the track itself over the course of the day with at least a 2 second a lap difference from the quickest part of the day to the slowest.
Now I head back to the UK with my family who are now all over here, and I will take a couple of days to recover before focusing hard on my fitness and continuing preparations.
Thanks to Mick, Tom and the team who have been amazing, and with who it has been great to spend nearly the last 2 weeks with on the road, developing me as a driver and also through many life experiences as well.
A huge thank you to my team of supporters behind my racing, and of course my sponsors Lazersafe, High Energy Services, Rosehill Waters, ES2, The Wealth Designers, Edith Cowan University (ECU), Kingsway Community Bank Branch, Rvend Vending Machines, Grand Toyota Wangara, Fullworks Fire Safety, Inspired Insurance Services, Online Logistics Solutions, Signarama Joondalup, Focused Recruitment, F45 Training Hillarys and Trizone Fitness.
As always, I have also received a lot of support from everyone at home, and I would like to thank all that have followed me over the last few days as this support means a great deal.
