Lee’s Back.

After a relaxing three-month holiday away from Molesey recovering from his pregnancy, Lee returned nicely refreshed for this week’s F1 race and promptly slaughtered everyone, not least Julian and Josh, despite crashing three times on his way to victory.

Heat 1 set the tone, Lee immediately recording the quickest heat of the evening, plus his fastest lap, making Julian and Josh look decidedly average. Julian finished 2.6 seconds down, Josh 6.3, leaving both with an uphill struggle to win overall.

Heat 2 was disastrous for Julian, crashes losing him four laps and any chance of a decent result. Josh fared better, chasing Lee hard and finishing 0.8 seconds behind, then 0.5 in Heat 3 and narrowly winning Heat 4, but that was as good as it got. A crash in Heat 5 sunk any lingering hope he had of an overall win, so instead he gave away time in Heat 6 cleaning his tyres for a successful attempt at claiming the night’s fastest lap.

David, meanwhile, had arrived with a box of TruSpeed electronic trickery that would, he hoped, cut out any voltage drop he was suffering at full throttle caused by the six-metre controller extension cable he needs to use at Molesey. Whether it made a significant difference is open to question, but his lap times were a tiny fraction faster than they’d been at previous F1 races, helping him to race quietly just behind the leaders, perfectly placed to grab second overall when Josh gave up racing in Heat 6 to concentrate on winning the fastest lap prize.

Your correspondent lost count of the number of crashes that Julian and Josh had, but it was many more than usual. Pressure perhaps? Who knows, but one thing’s for sure: Lee’s back.