Nerves of Steel for our Mighty Mini driver Caroline at Brands Hatch

Rounds 5 & 6 of the Mighty Mini Championship were part of the Mini Racing Festival at Brands Hatch, Kent. It was an unexpectedly hot weekend after the drab summer so far.
Brands Hatch has never been one of Caroline favourite circuits after rolling the car there a few years ago so the aim for the weekend was another couple of top 10 finishes and no damage to the car. Caroline was a little surprised in qualifying as the numbers held over the pit wall kept varying from 17^th to 6^th. Eventually at the end of the session she was 9^th (later promoted to 8^th following a penalty to another driver being under weight) the times were so close that one second covered 3^rd to 21^st place!
The lights went out and the Mightys pulled away completing the first lap in pretty much the same order they qualified in, as the nerves settled and everyone got into their own rhythm little fighting packs of cars emerged.  After a few laps Caroline managed to overtake novice driver Alistair Richards and set about trying to catch Maria Brown.
The field was bunched back up by the emergence of the safety car following an incident at Paddock where Michael Grover lost control of the car and was unfortunately collected by Craig Pendlebury resulting in them both ending up in the gravel and having to be retrieved. When the safety car came in it left a little over 4 minutes to race. Maria had missed the restart so there was a gap to the front pack, Caroline made her only mistake of the race by messing up a gear change and missing the opportunity to overtake Maria.  At the sprint to the flag Caroline finished in 6^th place.
The top 8 minis were reversed for the second race giving meaning Caroline started from the second row in third place. Maria Brown made an excellent start from alongside Caroline going around the outside at Paddock and taking the initial lead. At the same time Peter Bonas lost control of his mini taking to the grass and taking Caroline Gilbert with him,  the pair of them sliding sideways down Paddock Hill. By the time the car was straight again Caroline had dropped to virtually back of the pack in about 22^nd place. She quickly started picking her way through the cars, overtaking around the outside of bend, diving up the inside and sometimes driving through the middle of a pair of cars!
Around halfway through the race she had caught back up to the fight for 8^th place, as she went to go around the outside one of the cars in the fighting pack Peter dived up the inside, he wasn’t able to control his car hit Steve Rideout who in turn hit Caroline spinning her round to face the wrong way again! She lost a few places but quickly got going. Over the next few laps she closed back in on the cars infront re-overtaking some of them again to finish in a hard fought 10^th place.
Going into the Brands Hatch meeting Caroline was sitting third overall in the Championship so following the weekends racing her head was removed from her engine  to be checked. As expected it was fully compliant to the regs.
The next rounds are at Castle Combe 18/19^th July.