Welcome to my first blog here on TheCheckeredFlag.co.uk – I'm looking forward to updating you about my racing and giving a general look at what I'm up to on and off track.
My season in Formula 2 so far has, in my estimation, been less than what I'd hoped for. Although I'm currently fourth in the championship standings and see-sawing each round with Philipp Eng for third, I came in at the start of the year with only one aim which was to be leading the championship by this point.
For whatever reason, the wins just haven't come yet. There have been some high points – I was dominant in Brands testing in both the dry and the wet and should have won the second race at Monza if not for a problem with the clutch.
However, Brno last time out was perhaps our worst event so far. This wasn't helped by finding out three quarters of the way through the weekend that my pinion bearing was old and needed replacing along with the whole gearbox and diff section. The change gripped up what had been a very loose back end and changed the car's balance to what it should have been from day one.
Will Bratt in action at Brands Hatch
More broadly, I'm also going to have another look at the angle of my braking foot against the pedal as I'm not happy with the way the brakes are being applied. It's something subtle but I want to get it checked out. Overall there are four races left and I feel as though mentally I'm in a good place to do the business now.
We've got a few weeks' break in the F2 schedule at the moment so outside the race car I've been driving tractors all week on the family farm to help with the harvest. Top speed is about 27mph, which doesn't sound like much. But when you're fully loaded, bouncing around all over the place, weighing-in at 16 tonnes and take a long time to come to a stop, it keeps your attention!
I've also just finished producing my third guitar demo track. This week will hopefully mark a change in the way my band (we're currently recruiting bass players) records as we're going to hook up an electric drum kit straight into my computer rather than spending ages manually writing out drum tracks. This should speed up the writing process no-end and improve the sound – a lot cheaper than microphoning up a whole live kit too!
Until next time,
Will
