Following the Brands Hatch race, all was well with the car. Just as well – I was playing catch-up with grinding heads after my nice new grinder tool holder fell apart, and it took the makers 4 weeks to get it back to me. That and magazine work and an emergency engine build for a customer. I made enough time to give me a full morning on the car before having to load it up. Nothing bad came to light. As the race was the last day of a 4 day 'jolly' that included taking two friends

Unusually for us, we were second to last race so signing on, scrutineering and qualifying were all late morning and early afternoon. A leisurely start to the day then. We had stayed at my Mum's place for three nights – and she is just under an hour away from the track. The sun was beating down as it had done for almost the whole previous week. It was set to be the hottest day on Sunday – expecting 32 degrees C. As it turned out – the weather men were not wrong for a change! A good test for the cooling system then.

Breezed through scrutineering as usual. All scrutineers seem to warm to the Minis – bringing back fond memories of yester-year I suppose. Though there have been several very young trainees in attendance this year – and they appear equally smitten. Can only be a good thing. A very leisurely pre-race prep ensued. Though I tend to do as much as I can at home before leaving. All that is normally required is to set the tyre pressures – in my case letting them down as I blow them all up over their required amount at home on the compressor – saves the sweaty, exhausting practise of blowing them up with a foot pump. Eh Steve? Though I have to say – my nagging at him seems to be getting through as he had actually blown his up at home on the compressor too this time around! The main problems seemed to be getting around to watching the F1 race and England's game against Germany in between qualifying and racing...

Qualifying time came around so Steve and I chugged off around the paddock to the collecting area to discover the turn out for this event was as abysmal as speculated. What we do not know is if this is down to bad timing – what with football, tennis and F1 all on at the same time – or if it is the steady decline in entries we have seen over the past year or so. 12 qualifiers was all there was. Even if they all made the race it was likely to be a spread out and lonely affair because of the nature of the track. Very open and fast, very much favouring the big BHP-endowed cars. So that's everybody except us Minis then. Great.

Qualifying went sort of OK. I haven't been to Thruxton for a long time, and with the immediate landscape around the circuit being somewhat sparse, recalling turn in points etc. was a bit of a game. Steve just gets on with it and is comfortable with the car being all over the place – that's how he drives it and is quick doing so. I got held up a lot by what is becoming my second Nemesis – Yellow Avenger man. Tried the usual tricks of backing off to make room etc. but all to no avail. I kept coming across him in the bad places – of which there are many at Thruxton. Still – Steve hadn't roared off in to the distance so I was hoping for a decent time. Qualify sheets showed a different story – I was some 2.6 secs off Steve's best time. Hmph. He qualified 8th, me 11th. Still, if I made a good start I may be able to tag on to the back of him – which is what I have been trying to do for yonks now and never succeeded!

So – quick check over back in the paddock. Despite rude ambient temperatures (32 degees C) the coolant sat at a rock steady 82 deg C (the thermostat rating), oil at 120 deg C and oil pressure at 50 psi. Nothing had fallen off or bled out. The only worry was the front left tyre. Thruxton is pretty savage on tyres. My 'new' buffed tyres seemed to have been surviving well, but after qualifying the front right was rubbed right down so there was no centre groove left showing. Now what do I do? Leave it on and hope there was enough rubber left to last the race? Fit a new buffed tyre to the front? Fit the new buffed tyre on the left rear and the left rear on to the left front? This latter decision based on the fact the new 'green' tyre would be wasted before it had a chance to cure properly after 20 minutes arcing on this surface. Hmmm. I decided to run with the first option as I wanted to minimise tyre damage/wear for the coming races. I let a couple of extra pounds pressure out of the fronts to hopefully ease the centre ridge rising so much, using more of the tyre either side of the centre once they were hot. That done, we were ready to rock.

Time stretched on interminably – a combination of England struggling to work out just what it was they were supposed to be doing out on that large rectangular piece of grass, and Hamilton and Button trying to chase down a determined Vettel... another England v Germany match, oh – and a rude amount of serious sunshine with little shade to hide in.

Suited and booted once more, away to the collecting area to find we were already another car down – so only 11 starters. I thought to myself 'Could be a very lonely 20 minutes race this...'. Previous race mopped up we strapped ourselves in and set off on the warm up lap. It seems to be now generally considered that race cars not running slicks do not need a full warm up lap, then another green flag warm up lap. So we go out, one lap,form up on the grid then lights on/off and away. A reasonable strat by all meant a big gaggle of cars hitting the complex all at the same time. I managed to hang in there and come out the other side with 3 cars between me and Steve – my two Nemisis' (Nemisii?) the Mk 2 Lotus Cortina and Yellow Avenger plus a DTV Vauxhall Firenza. Cortina-man made hi car as wide as possible for a couple of laps – fending me off all over the place, allowing Steve and the other two to start pulling away. So I got brave, new where I was faster than the Cortina and planned to make a pass there and push him out to the edge of the circuit where he should give way... hopefully.... I made the move, pushed outwards as planned and low and behold – he capitulated! COOL! So now I could set off after the other three. And, stone me, I had catching them VERY fast. I seemed to be able to negotiate the nasty section between the complex and the flat out kinks much quicker. Then, just as I was within striking distance, I suffered a problem. Steve and I were both on 3.91FDs – a bit low for Thruxton. Should have been on a  3.76 FD. This meant that by the time I was approaching the last 'kink' before the long run up to the chicane I was already flat out with little performance left to play with. If the car got out of shape, I had no throttle feathering to checked the attitude of the car. This meant having to lift slightly approaching this kink, turn in, settle the car then nail it again. I had just done this, floated past the marshalls post (one of those 'aim at the marshalls post and you'll drift by it' deals), skipped over the bump on the exit – and the gearbox jumped out of gear! Already pulling 7,400rpm with my foot/throttle pedal fair embedded in the floor pan, the eventual rpm reached by the engine internals must have been horrific. I lifted, snatched the gear lever back in to top and nailed it again. All seemed to be well f or  around 100 yards, then the engine lost power and a misfire started... Snicked it out of gear and coasted through the chicane and in to the pit lane. Bummer. I wasn't at all impressed, so we loaded up and headed home without too much chat. Amazingly the 260 mile trip only took 3-3/4 hours – didn't slow down once for any traffic at all!

I whipped the motor out Monday night and had a good look at the gear linkage to see if there was a definite cause of the gear jumping out. And I think I have found it. Where I have now bolted the remote unit directly to the top of the tunnel just behind the original gear lever hole, I used to have a bracket welded on there. When I ground it off, I appear to have thinned the metal down – with the action of rocking the remote unit backwards and forwards, and side to side, the tunnel metal has cracked, allowing the remote unit to move about quite easily. I think when I hit that bump, the engine jumped one way and the remote the other, plucking it out of gear. So I will be making a substantial aluminium sheet 'saddle' to bolt the remote unit to and then fix it firmly to the tunnel sides. Ads fort he engine – the reason it ran OK for 100 yards was because the rear main bearing shells had spun in the housing, blocking off the oil feed to no.4 big end bearing. This eventually over-heated and got flattened. The piston clipped the head, but only just enough to remove the carbon on it rather than collapse the piston crown. No bent valves. No head damage. Hopefully this will mean just sorting the crank (a grind  at least) and re-furbing the con rod and fitting new rod bolts – though they both got hot enough to discolour, I think they will be mechanically OK.