Following my decision not to pay Slipstream for our race in the Radical Enduro race at Donington on 4th August ('07) after their unacceptable cock up in providing us with a fucked and therefore seriously underpowered engine, my driving partner for the race, EVO magazine journalist John Hayman decided to slag me off publicly on a web forum...

Amongst other things Hayman called me a liar! And here's a couple of other things he wrote on the forum about me over the race weekend, he wrote:

• 'He crashed the car'
• 'He couldn't match his customer's best lap times'

I didn't crash the car, a car behind me ran into the back of my car (bending the rear suspension) on the aborted first attempt at starting our race, when I backed off so as not to drive into cars in front of me! The car continued and fished the race albeit with a little more toe in than normal o the right rear.

On the the Friday of the race meeting I spent most of the day instructing a customer (a guy with previous racing experience in a Radical) in our race car. Having sat next to my customer all morning, I drove for around 6 laps in one session in the afternoon and was approximately 4 seconds faster than my client under the same conditions (same two people in the car - me and my client - and same weather, temperature, tyres, etc...).

Come qualifying on the Saturday, as usual Hayman drove first. Let's just put this into perspective... John Hayman is a profesional racing driver (his International C licence is endorsed as such by the MSA), he is paid to test drive cars for EVO and other magazines, and he gets regular free and paid drives in races around the UK and Europe on the back of his journalism. Therefore he races very regularly and is usually a front runner in the races he competes in. I have raced very few times in recent years, in fact the last two race meetings I've competed in both involved John Hayman... a Britsports race in 2005 and this Radical race in 2007... so although I do a lot of instructing and I'm therefore on track quite a lot, you'd reasonably expect Hayman to be quicker than me currently. So let's look at the qualifying session for the Radical race...

As usual, Prima Donna Hayman had to go first... This is a screen shot of the lap analysis of our qualifying session from the official timer's web site (the full PDF of the results is here - go to Radical Enduro/Qualifying/Lap Analysis)...

The times acheived by both drivers in qualifying were way off the pace of the rest of the SR3's in the race owing to the substantially underpowered engine. However, in the sc reen shot the part overlayed in red highlights Hayman's qualifying times. He takes until his 5th lap to even break into the high 12's, starting with a 1:20.841, then a 1:15.790, followed by a 1:14.006, a 1:22.503, then the first high 12, followed by another slow one just under 1:22, then two more 12's, finally doing his best, a 1:12.115, on his eigth lap. In comparison my first flying lap is a 1:13.5, followed by a 1:12.2 then my third lap was a 1:12.027 which was our best qualifying time for the grid. So, I was 'on it' straight away (as usual)!

I may have gone a little faster (who know's?) but on my fourth lap there was a red flag and everyone had to pit. Once the track was cleared I went out again only to realise when I was on the track that my seat belts had come undone! I dived staight back into the pits to get them done up and then did another 6 laps which were all bar one (perhaps due to traffic) in the 1:12's... consistent if nothing else.