Fast Jim.

With just seven drivers racing this week, one of them Mario fresh from two consecutive fourth-place finishes, it was Mario who was tipped to make his first visit to the podium, but Fast Mario didn’t turn up. Instead we had Fast Jim.

Initially there had been eight drivers, but Alex’s motor pod cracked during practice and, too fed up to race, Alex packed his things and left early.

After missing the previous two meetings and many more during the early part of the year, Ed had arrived keen to make up for lost time and score a good result, so when on the first lap of the first heat David crashed alone and Neil’s ultra-fast track call trigger finger stopped the race, preventing Ed from capitalising on David’s mistake, Ed, never one to hide his opinion, made his annoyance known, much to the amusement of everyone else. When a little later Ed crashed and Neil didn’t hit the track call button, Ed’s outburst of displeasure was even greater, matched in volume only by the laughter elsewhere. Poor Neil. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. As has been said before, the track call button should come with a health warning: “Not to be operated by the faint-hearted.”

At the head of the race Simon had it all his own way, four tenths quicker than anyone else. Behind him David and Chris were very close, but heat 4 was Chris’s downfall, a crash losing him three seconds before he lost another twelve when he crashed three more times while over-driving trying to claw back the time he’d lost in his first crash. Not only had he dropped a long way behind David, but he was now battling Jim for the podium’s bottom step, Jim having a great night and not far off Chris’s pace.

In heat 5 Chris crashed directly in front of Jim, taking them both off, triggering a track call and preventing Jim from gaining ground on Chris. It was a lucky escape for Chris, but Jim had now moved up to third, 0.9 seconds ahead of Chris. The final heat was looking spicy.

With Simon long gone and David out of reach too, Jim was licking his lips at the prospect of his first visit to the podium, but Chris was desperate to find the single second he needed to get ahead of Jim, so started fast. Much too fast.

With a lap of their final heat run, and with Chris only a couple of car lengths ahead of Jim, Chris crashed again, but once more he got lucky. Jim couldn’t avoid Chris’s crashed car, hit it hard and crashed too, triggering another track call to stop the race. At the restart Jim was slow to get going, fell behind Chris and that was that. Chris had turned his 0.9-second deficit into a 1.9-second advantage. The podium place went to Chris and Jim could only rue what might have been. Fast Jim had been fast, but not quite fast enough. Racing sucks sometimes.