Things had started out OK - although I had picked up the Y10 from Evolution Engineering the day before, cylinder head all nicely repaired, I had decided it would be foolish to take her out again untried, more so here as the event was a double-header. To break the car would cost me points for two races. But the Y10 did have a brand new set of slicks which it was decided would be much more useful that the worn control tyres already on the Sud.

So Saturday afternoon was spent changing the wheels over to the Sud, all seemed fine, the wheels fitted nicely on the hubs, no problems with hub diameter being larger than wheel centre as happened last year, and the wheels even appeared to fit inside the arches. Down off the jacks and ready to load on the trailer, and the first problem made itself obvious - the car wouldn't move! The replacement wheels must have thinner section than the Revolution wheels that came with the Sud, so the wheel bolts were travelling through the hub too far, preventing the front wheels from turning. A quick hunt around and various Y10s were persuaded to donate 8 bolts, about 3 mm shorter than the Alfa bolts - these worked a treat, more than plenty thread to hold the wheels on, but not so much as to go through the hubs.

So Sunday morning started on cue, leaving at 8am. It had rained all night but I was still confident that the day would bring sunny dry racing, but not so confident as to leave the wets (the control tyres) at home! I was making good time along the M25, my ETA at Lydden was 10-10:15, plenty of time to unload, sign on, get through scrutineering and be prepared for practice at 12:30. But as we reached Junction 8, the signs were warning that the M25 was closed at Junction 6. Not ideal, but its early on Sunday morning, we could cut along the A25 and pick up the M26, not a problem.

Never have I been so wrong - well not since I denounced the first Eddie Stobart lorry I ever saw as obviously being from a single lorry fleet because he'd written his name so BIG! With hindsight we should have left the M25 at Junction 7, but with hindsight we'd all be millionaires from those big bets we'd have made. Approaching Junction 6 the gantry signs signalled the closure of the outside two lanes so we duly moved over to lane 2 (of 4). But no-one else did so - everyone else just carried on down the outside two lanes, quite a few just came up the inside on the hard shoulder! Its at times like this where it is very easy to get frustrated with the "polite" people in the queue who are only too happy to let these queue-jumpers back in. Anyway, I digress. Minutes in this queue started to drag, we were stuck in first gear, hardly moving most of the time. people were getting out of cars to go to the toilet by the side of the motorway and then having to walk no more than 2 or 3 cars along to get back into their car. Over 1.5 hours after we came to a halt, and now already late for signing on, we reached the motorway exit.

If we thought that was the end of our problems, were we mistaken! For starters, the reason we were all backed up so bad was that the roundabout at the bottom of the slip road not only had traffic lights controlling entry onto it - but also had then controlling exit in the direction of the A25. Brilliant!

So another 30 minutes went by, just to get from the top of the slip road to the roundabout, of course everyone was going the same way so the road leading down to the M25 was just as gridlocked, many people turning round across the central reservation. When we reached the next roundabout (1 mile, another eternal wait) we could see that not only was everyone using the A25, but there were also road works on it! We decided to head south towards East Grinstead, cut across towards Tunbridge Wells and get back on route there. A slog through endless town traffic followed, finally on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells we looked to break free, but then found we couldn't access the M26 without continuing through the centre of Tonbridge. We turned round, went back to the A21 turning and found too late we could only go north!

It gets better - no sooner were we on the A21, now resigned to a trip back up to the M25, than we hit more road works, the dual carriageway being down to one lane - more queueing. And when finally we broke free of those queues we found we could not turn east at the M25/M26 junction as we had hoped so ended up travelling up to Junction 3 and then back down to Lydden via the M20. It was gone 12:45 when we reached the M20, practice had already happened. A phone call earlier to my pal Peter Dietsch had elicited Tony Soper's mobile number, so I had already warned him that we were running "a bit late". Time for another call - we were all for carrying on up the M25 and going home the north way, having so far spent nearly 5 hours going nowhere. Tony smoothed things over with the organiser - big thanks to TS and the BRSCC's Claire Williams for sorting something out.

Finally we arrived at 2pm, to much merriment from the Le Mans Auto-Italia crowd who were preparing for the first race in 45 minutes. I ran down to race control to sign on, while Julian unloaded the Alfasud and drove it down to scrutineering, Claire Williams came over to inform me that the Lydden organisers insisted I did 3 laps of solo practice after the race that was coming to an end shortly - fine by me. But the scrutineer found a problem, he didn't like the jubilee clip that held the fuel line to the tank - amazing how different scrutineers have different views of things, haven't touched this since buying the car many races ago. Not to worry, he gave us permission to do the practice so I was straight out on track on my own. I was too flustered to worry about speed, lines or anything like that, to the best of my knowledge the laps were not being timed anyway. The brakes felt wooden as hell, braking for Devil's Elbow, the car was all over the place while the slicks warmed up. But I did notice that the Sud was more willing to take the hill up to the hairpin in 3rd, something last year's Sud Sprint couldn't manage. Could have boiled an egg in the time it took to get to the hairpin at the top of the hill, but at least she could pull it.

Straight back to the scrutineer who passed the car once we had taped over the offending clip - must change it before the next race at Mallory even though they have already passed it last month. And so to the first race.

Smart thinking was going on here, three of the competitors playing their joker. Neil Smith and Emma Karwacki made up the Class E entry so both played their joker, and in Class A Ian Stapleton took advantage of a similar situation with a beckoning second place to play his joker. I lined up at the back of the grid, not really a big problem with just 3 Class A cars that would usually be behind me, now being in front. Class B was unusually well subscribed, with 7 of us today out of a total grid of 14 cars. Chris Brogden had unfortunately run a big-end in practice so the Strada was a no-show. For such a tight circuit, the start was very clean if very crowded and for the first lap I managed to stay on the tail of the guys in front but watched Emma's Alfasud coming backwards through the pack towards me. After she beat me last time out at Castle Combe, I needed revenge. I had managed to get past Phil Thompson's Panda before Devil's Elbow on the first lap and was homing in on Emma's Sud but Lydden is a difficult circuit in which to get past someone in a similar car. Handily for me she ran wide at Devil's Elbow on lap 2 and I was able to drive up the inside carrying more speed up the hill and get past. I like Lydden, it is a major power circuit but it is also obvious that I don't lose much time on the corners to virtually anyone. Sliding the car through the appropriately named Chessons Drift, in a 4 wheel drift, I don't think anyone took more than a car's length out of the Sud until they could put the power down, at which they were gone.

Early in the race I saw the black and orange flag out, and with shades of Croix I had to think as to whether I was number 96 before realising that it was the unfortunate Phil Thompson's Panda which was smoking a little more than the stewards were happy with. My race was essentially lonely from here - at this circuit I had the better of Emma and was steadily leaving her behind - Jackie Osbourne's Alfa 156 seemed tantalisingly close in front, but counting 'elephants' (for those of you who have watched Gregory's Girl) showed that the gap was many seconds longer than it looked, and slowly but surely was growing. A good thing about Lydden is, that not only can the spectators see all the circuit from many vantage points, but so can the drivers often see what's goping on elsewhere. Certainly gives you advance warning of being caught by the front runners when you can see them closing on the other side of the track - and inevitably they did catch me and go past. I made a couple of interesting observations while being lapped - Mark Pollard's Minari was 2 seconds quicker than me from the bottom of the hill out of Devil's Elbow to the top! TWO SECONDS! On such a short strip of track - so being 5 seconds or so off the pace for a lap isn't so bad, certainly understandable. Shame the Y10 wasn't here - but there's always next time. My other surprise was that even Tony Soper's Alfa 164 can lift a rear wheel under cornering, always thought that affliction was just for small cars.

The race ended with me finishing 6th in class (7 starters, but only the 6 finishers) and 12th overall with just Emma finishing behind me. At least there were some points in the bag. The slicks were working well - Emma asked me what I had done to the Sud since the last race but all I have done is fit the slicks. To be fair, hers are probably long past their best now. I had noticed that the tyres were hitting the bodywork a little but aside from a couple of scuff marks on the sidewalls, they seemed fine. Nice and warm, but fine.

I'm sure according to the race schedule that there would be 4 races between our first and second race, but something must have changed. I was walking round the paddock trying to wind down and relax when I was informed that we were due back out after the next race, and not only that, we were in for a 30 minute race! Normally we do a number of laps, depending on the length of the circuit, and average race durations are usually between 12 and 16 minutes or so. So 30 minutes was going to prove to be a bit of a marathon. I just about had time to pick up the results for the first race and was pleased to see that my best lap had been a second faster than when racing the Sud Sprint here last year. Progress.

Race 2, I lined up on the grid in a more normal place with the other Class B cars, the only real difference from race one was that the Class A cars (only 2 as Tony Soper had driveshaft problems and pulled out from race 2) were behind me and I was alongside the Panda which had been sufficiently repaired to come out again. Another clean start, I out dragged the Panda into Pilgrims and even caught Emma on the first lap going into Devil's Elbow. A whole pack of cars seemed so close in front, but of course they were further ahead than they looked and I was never going to get near them. Early in the race I started to hear loud howling noises, sounded at first like the tyres were screeching round the corners, but eventually I realised it was more likely that they were hitting the plastic wheel arch covers. It was even happening under braking. My aim for this race was to try and lap Emma, I wa staking a couple of seconds a lap from her so over 30 minutes it seemed a possibility. I got lapped myself by Graham Scott in the Stratos (back to his usual non-hesitant self!) fairly early on and realised that I would probably end up 3 or 4 laps down on him over 30 minutes. Slowly the other guys came through, the 2 Minaris would also lap me 3 times, althougn the second time round I noticed that Giovanni's Fiat 128 had disappeared into retirement. With about 10 minutes to go, the noise from the tyres was getting worse and worse, I had lapped the Panda and would alp him again before the end of the race, but otherwise nothing was to be gained by pressing on unabated. I backed off, I was worried that one of the tyres might get damaged or punctured and after the day I had endured, finishing and collecting points was more important than driving flat out all day long. Finally the race finished, I was shattered. I had noticed the Stratos in the exit of the pit lane a couple of laps from the end and first thought Graham had retired, but then I saw him back out on track which confused me - seems he had to change a tyre near the end of the race which dropped Graham from first (and three laps ahead of me) to tenth place, just behind me. The results showed I finished 3 laps down on eventual winner Andy Thompson. Class A had been won by Ian Stapleton's Alfetta GTV - shamed he played his joker in race 1.

Despite the Y10 being back in my garage, I'll be racing the Sud again at the next meeting at Mallory Park. Although not to blame for the catalogue of woes which has befallen the engine, I have made the decision to junk the analogue Uno based ignition system and go down the Motec digital route. Lee Penn from Motec sorted me out a nice big shopping list including new larger (but only 4) injectors, 2 fuel pumps and a swirl pot, and odds and ends including electronic boost control. Aside from the possibility of more accurate management, maintenance should be easier as half the paddock have a similar system in their cars, so someone, somewhere will probably be able to help if something goes wrong. Motec was also chosen because of the available add-ons which I may be able to afford in the future.

Read the official race report.

Visit the Le Mans Motorsport site for details of the Le Mans Auto-Italia championship and standings so far.

Check out the current points standing