Hébécrevon: Keep Calm & Focus

As the closest venue to home, Hébécrevon is the first race this season that I’ve not had to learn from scratch and it’s where I took my maiden victory as fastest lady back in 2015, so you could say that I had high hopes coming into this weekend. It forms a three week trio of back to back races in the Northern part of France too, so I was keen and ready as ever when I drove down to Portsmouth for the overnight ferry.

After one of the most manic weeks of my life when my drive at Pikes Peak had fallen through, I just wanted to sleep.

The ferry docked early meaning that I was woken not long after 5am… I drove straight there, reccy’d the hill for an hour before checking into my AirBnB (my new favourite thing) and sleeping for a few hours. By mid afternoon I was back on the course before meeting up with Team Schatz as the rain hammered down, it was cold and wet so I skipped dinner and headed to bed for for 8pm to rack up 13 hours of well needed sleep.

Saturday was a better day for sure and free practice passed without incident. Even at a course that I know fairly well the first run is always a bit intimidating in the Norma, the car itself is friendly to drive and even through the lower section with narrow railings it shrinks around you, but the speeds you get up to mean that those 60 secs pass in the blink of an eye.

Second practice saw me pass within 0.5 secs of my PB in the Formula Renault, I turned in a bit too early at the last corner and ran wide (I do this every year!) but it was encouraging nonetheless. Sadly on the second practice I experienced some issues with the paddle shift not selecting gears (going up or down) and the run was pretty much a write off. The team worked on the car about sourced the problem to a low oil level in the reservoir for the pneumatic cylinder, so all that was needed was to prove it out the next morning in free practice, simples.

I woke up to the sound of heavy rain on Sunday, the forecast was good but the early rain they’d predicted had lasted longer than expected. Sadly a lie in wasn’t on the cards, I needed to check that we’d nailed the problem and I was also keen to drive the car in the rain, especially without any pressure to set a good time. Everything worked perfectly, and the guys prepped the car for the first montée, by which time the track was 80% dry. Julien Français was back out following a big off at Col St. Pierre, and having already broken the minute barrier was leading the class by a 1.5 sec margin to the next car.

As I left the paddock for the first timed run the paddle shift issue re-manifested itself, and I was left guessing what would happen once I left the start line. Bizarrely everything worked, but it’s incredibly frustrating with this kind of problem when you have no idea whether you’ll hit there limiter or change in time – at 1:07:834 I was well off the pace.

Hébécrevon Course de Côte Norma M20 FCFastest run from Sunday, 1:02:226 ???? Fastest lady, 5th & 12th overall ????????????

More hard work from the mechanics and everything seemed to be working again, knowing it was fully dry I pushed hard to finish on a 1:02:607 placing me 5th in class. Run no.3 saw me attacking harder, the gearshift was a little reluctant off the line but I managed to trim my time down by nearly half a second to hang on to 5th and finish fastest lady once more, 12th fastest overall!

To be back on the podium at this event was a huge boost for me, it’s one of my favourite hills and it also highlighted just how capable the M20 FC is. I’m sure the car had quite a bit in reserve but on a hillclimb you don’t have the luxury to take huge liberties, I had to dig deep to push through my own comfort zone and remember just how much grip the car had found on the Circuit du Bourbonnais back in March.