All ready for Round 1 at Donington

Hello and welcome to the second instalment of my racing diary… bit of a quick update this week, as I should have a more detailed entry for you all next week.

Well, it's almost time for Round 1… this coming weekend sees the MINI Challenge series head to Donington.  The hype has been building on social media and the closer it gets the more fired up I’m becoming… it's always the same for me on the week leading up to a race weekend, the excitement and nerves start to grow the closer it gets to race date.
 
I would say this year I’m more excited than ever… a lot has changed this season for me and I’m just eager to get started and settle in with IN:MINI; the new team.
 
With the Gen3 class and JCW cars sharing a grid and the Cooper class now having their own separate races there will be plenty action for spectators, so it should be a very interesting meeting.

Unfortunately we haven’t done any testing other than a 40 minute shakedown to make sure the car was running 100% after its winter refresh.  In an ideal world, we would have loved to have been out getting more track time in preparation, although with work constraints, time (or lack of it) has made it impossible.

Whilst I’ve been working and preparing as best I can for this weekend, the guys at IN:MINI have been really busy with the Panda Racing JCW.
 
After the media day, the car was stripped back and sent off to the bodyshop to have last year's warpaint removed and any damage tidied up.  Once received back it was all hands on deck giving the car another full mechanical check along with the freshly painted exterior being rewrapped and graphic’d up. 

Have to say a huge thanks to everyone at the IN:MINI team for their collective effort in getting the JCW back together; nice and fresh and ready for action… Plus organising all the other finer details to make us ‘track ready’ for Donington… Russell, Jim, Gavin and Louise, many, many thanks.

The car was wrapped again this year by Simon Rackham of Sign It, Simon has been wrapping the Panda race cars for three years now, with a real attention to detail and a keen eye for an attractive design I couldn’t be happier with his work… big thanks for another awesome looking design. 

As mentioned, I will have another update next week with a roundup of the weekend's racing… With this entry, I should have some exciting team news to reveal along with some images of the car which we’ll be taking at Donington… BEFORE I take it on the track; so at least you should see the design before any paint is traded.

If anyone is managing to get along to Donington this weekend, please don’t forget to swing by and say ‘hello’… would be great to meet some more love:mini readers.
 
For more information on Panda Racing and Hamish please visit
www.PandaRacing.com / www.HamishBrandon.com, ‘like’ the Facebook pages www.Facebook.com/PandaRacing and www.Facebook.com/HamishBrandonRacing or follow @PandaRacingTeam / @HamishB on Twitter.