As this was the first race of 2010, and over the winter I had done a few items mainly on the suspension setup, by replacing the bushes, I thought it would be a good time to test the car, as there was a test day on the friday before the race.
I booked myself on the afternoon session (I would get 3 20-30 minute sessions on track), I got to the circuit on time, I signed on all ok, but when I removed the car it sounded louder than normal, but with a noise test first, I did not think too much about it.
The first session was good, and the car felt a lot more planted than what I remember from last year, but bad news struck when I was about to head out for the second session, the car was blowing from the exhaust middle joint, it looked like the exhaust was broke (it was a cheap ebay item), so I jacked up the car, and confirmed that my exhaust had split completely in half around the joint, I decided that it was better to try and fix the car, and loose my track time (if i took the track time I may not be able to race tomorrow)
I searched all the paddock for anybody with a welder, I found people with welders, but missing gas, welders that needed special people to operate (and they were not there), so eventually I brought 2 legend teams together and got the exhaust welded up.
I qualified in a good spot, and made up over 8 seconds compared to last year, but still was just outside of a sub minute lap of the brands circuit.
The first race I had the camera mounted on the front bumper, so you can see the whole race there, I managed to get ahead of John Brabbin and kept him behind me for over half of the race, but he eventually passed me at druids.
The second race, I was following Sean and John, John had a big moment coming down from the paddock hill bend, and I nearly got past him, but he recovered, I felt that I kept with them better than last year, and was improving.