The quiet coastal village of Anglesey in North West Wales hosted round 3 of the Ma5da MX-5 Championship. Plymouth’s David Evans, competing in Enigma livery, had a good day of testing on Friday and seemed to get some good lap times ahead of Saturday’s qualifying.
During qualifying David struggled to get drive out of left hand corners but despite this he managed a very respectable time of 1.50.5 which saw him line up in 5th place on the grid for Race 1 and 6th place for Race 2. These were David’s best qualifying results of the season so far.
Race 1: Following a successful qualifying session David didn’t make the best of starts and slipped down to 9th place before the first corner. He managed to find some clear track, got his head down and following a couple of brave moves around the outside of turns 8 and 9 Evans was able to climb back up to 7th by the end of lap 1. Battles with Mathew Lambert and Ed Gay took their toll on the car’s tyres and by lap 5 David was struggling understeer — where the car doesn’t respond very well to steering input — and slipped back to 8th position. The car in front of David also seemed to be having tyre problems and David tried his best to get back past him in an exciting final 2 laps but sadly the Plymouth driver had to settle for 8th out of a field of 22 cars.
On the final lap David noticed that his engine was abnormally hot and was worried he might have some engine damage. The cause of the over-heating was a faulty fan belt which was repaired before race 2 — but was there and lasting damage?
Race 2: In a gamble to overcome the lack of drive out of left hand corners David tried a radical set-up change and swapped the front left with the rear right tyre.
Starting race 2 in 6th position on the grid alongside his team-mate Carl Powell, David knew he needed a good start. With the overheating worries still fresh in his mind, Evans had his fingers crossed that the engine was ok.
The lights went to green and Evans made a blinding start, moving up to 4th place by the first corner. Going onto the long back straight Alex Preston was able to use the slipstream for a pass around the outside demoting David to 5th.
After lap 6 the tyres were going off and the changes made to them hadn’t helped. Ed Gay closed the gap on David and the two drivers swapped places three or four times each lap until the end of the race, with Gay just pipping David to 6th place by just 1.3 seconds.
The 7th place finish was a good result for David considering the issues he had with his engine during the race. Photographs from the Anglesey races have been added to Enigma’s Flickr page.
You can see David Evans (car #20) and all of the Ma5da Championship races on Motors TV (Sky Ch. 413) throughout the season.
The next round the Championship heads to the historic mountain track of Cadwell Park on the 2nd and 3rd of June.
Today marks the arrival in Plymouth of the first Enigma taxi as part of Enigma’s publicity campaign concerning solicitors negligence.
Enigma Solicitors' Blog 