We travelled on Friday, less than a three hour journey from Calais, arriving at the circuit just after lunch, went to sign on, got our passes and made our way to the paddock, bumped into a few familiar faces and set ourselves up for the weekend.

First things first was scrutineering, after the very relaxed procedures at Dijon (Gitanes burning and an extremely laid back swagger!) we where quite thoroughly examined for stickers and dates on all of the safety equipment, this culminated in being picked up on an old FiA spec seat, despite being new it would appear that the FiA have introduced 'sell by dates' for seats now. I was obviously annoyed as there was the threat of not being able to race, but we weren't alone. 40 cars had been picked up for various infringements, the long and short of it was that no one could exactly clarify the siituation so they let us all race.

Following this we realised cars where queuing up for free practice, so we got ready and took the opportunity to get out there. Chimay has been hosting races for 75 years now, the current configuration, as it always has been is public roads, unfortunately I've never driven on any of them so I decided a cautious approach would be sensible for the first few laps. I did 20 minutes slowly learning the circuit with all its bus stop chicanes, camber changes, ridges and bumps, built up the confidence to drive flat through the back section of the circuit which is a single carriageway road with armco both side, blind bends and no run off. we came in with a lap time of 2:37 and very wide eyes!

Saturday comprised of a good walk around watching everyone elses lines during practice sessions, studying lap times and cars before our relatively late qualifying session at 17:45. I felt a lot more confident and comfortable this time and managed to hang on the coat tails of a Lotus Cortina for 4 or 5 laps, the result of this was a 2:30 lap and tenth on the grid, we where pretty happy with this, so after a few routine checks we headed back to our 'chateau' for some well earnt rest.

Sunday morning was a little grey with a very real chance of rain, not something that bothers me. I knew if it did rain it would reel in some of the faster cars as they tend to loose some advantage in the wet. we fuelled up, checked the car over and prepared to race. I made a good clean start, and with the exception of being run off the road by bogged down Alfa Romeo settled into my rhythm behind that Lotus Cortina again, for the First 20 minutes I lapped consistently at 2:30, hanging on to the dubiously fast Alvis Grey Lady all the while pulling away from the A40's behind. as the pit window opened, bang, the exhaust broke, for those of you who havent driven a race car with no exhaust, its loud! I pulled into the pits to make my compulsory stop and inspect the damage.

What happened was the collector on the manifold had broken from the tail pipe, this effectively meant the engine was running ok as the manifold was complete but had no silencing whatsoever. The exhaust itself was still hanging on the car ok, just a little low, we had a long hard look and decided to carry on. I took it easy for a few laps, avoiding the vicious kerbs in the chicanes and started getting used to the noise, which seemed akin to sitting on stage next to an amplifier at a Motorhead concert.

35 minutes gone and I saw I'd started to catch another car, to hell with the exhaust, this is a race, lets get past it . . .as I caught up and passed, the skies opened. the track surface at Chimay itself is very changeable over a lap, add to that some oil slicks (dropped by a pair of dualling Alfa Romeos which kept riding the kerbs and cracking their sumps) and a dose of rain and you have something resembling an ice rink. the grey matter said 'slow down' For once it was right, whilst the lap times dropped from 2:30 to 2:45 I was catching and pasing cars, the chicanes where so slippery I was down to first gear and around 20 miles an hour at a few places, but managed to keep it on the raod whilst a good few others didn't.

Ears ringing I crossed the line not having a clue where we where in the field, I thought I'd done well given the conditions, but knew we must have lost a lap having stopped for so long . . . . the result of this was 6th place overall and 3rd in class behind the winning Alfa GTA and a Lotus Cortina. looking at the other cars ahead, we lapped faster than most, so without the long stop our first podium could have been a real possibility. Never the less we headed to the prize giving heads held high, with a clean straight (and loud) car . . . .and a bottle of fine Chimay beer to lubricate the throat. We'll definitely go back for more of that!