“That was a race I won’t forget in a hurry!” said Paul when he arrived home from the Grand Prix de Monaco Historique.
2300 Club’s Paul Tattersall arrived in Monaco on the Wednesday before the prestigious Monaco Event and proceeded to set up the pit garage with all essentials ahead of the team arriving from the University of Bolton. Led by Pete Thundercliffe with four of his students Ella, Angelo, Adrian and Mo, the University team has been formed to look after Paul’s car in the events Paul will be competing in around Europe this season. “For some of these students it’s their first time working at an event – but what an incredible experience for them to start with” Paul commented.
That afternoon came the first hurdle, in the form of scrutineering for the Ensign N179 F1. This is always a nerve wracking process for any team as the scrutineers at Monaco go in to every detail. But “The Bolton Team have done a great job. The Scrutineers were very thorough, but it was smooth and trouble free” said Paul..
The streets of Monaco were bathed in warm sunshine on Thursday when Paul had to walk the circuit, like many other drivers in an effort to learn the track. It’s been two years since Paul’s last visit to the principality and didn’t end well with a slow speed shunt into the padded armco barrier. The course refresher was more than welcome.
The Bolton University team were also settling into the paddock with all the excitement and motorsport history going on around them. Can you imagine being 19 years of age, hoping for a career in motorsport and getting to work on an F1 car in Monaco. It’s what dreams are made of ! “These students really do know how lucky they are” said Paul.
Friday was the first day of action. The team’s practice session was to take place at 5pm. Earlier that morning the team had fuelled up and dealt with a gearbox oil feed problem and was ready to go.
“I’m bricking it but I’m sure I’ll be OK once I’m in the car” said Paul.
As it happens the practice session for race F went well. Paul managed to avoid all the incidents of which there were plenty!
In the soaring heat late in the day Paul had to watch the car’s temperatures closely.
Paul said “we had a good practice session – the car went well. A real credit to Peter Thundercliffe and the Bolton Team”.
The plan for qualifying on Saturday was simple. Steady and stay out of trouble. Paul wouldn’t be challenging for pole, but concentrating on getting round unscathed.
The team executed the plan perfectly, a little disappointed to have qualified in last position, but overall very happy.
“The car is still getting very hot but manageable if we don’t have to hold in the pits or on the start line for too long. I’m now just wondering if I can make up places from a standing start.” said Paul.
Race day!
The commentator at the start of the race mentioned ‘This is racing with the big boys!’. No pressure then Paul!
Everything looked good for the race on Sunday afternoon, but in an incident packed race it wasn’t to be trouble free for Paul and the team.
Paul managed to narrowly avoid a crash on the start line. Also missing the spun out ‘Candy’ liveried car of Steven Shanly. At the end of the first lap Paul was 4 places up on his starting position so looking good. However the race was red flagged on the second lap as the marshal’s cleared the wreckage from the accident on starting grid.
It took quite a while for the start line accident to be cleared. But the race finally got underway again and Paul made another good start only for the red flags to appear again very quickly. So it was back to the pits to await another re-start. Whilst sitting in the pits with everything getting very hot Paul started to smell petrol very strongly and the team found a fuel leak which couldn’t be quickly fixed – probably caused by heat expansion in the fuel tank. So much to everyone’s disappointment Paul had to pull out of the race “I hated to give up, but the risk of carrying on was just too high“ said an exasperated Paul.
The race was restarted again from behind the safety car this time for 10 laps remaining but was red flagged again and terminated 5 laps later.
It was no surprise that Micheal Lyons was declared the winner, as he had proved dominant in this class all weekend.
“I lost count of the restarts – I actually made 2 good standing starts and made up grid positions. For some reason in the results I’m not shown as having taken part in the race……. don’t know why ? Overall though I’m delighted with what we achieved together over the weekend and especially the performance of the Bolton team when the pressure was on.” said Paul.
