As ever in motorsport, you have to take the rough with the smooth and Sarah Franklin had to take the rough during a difficult time at Silverstone on the weekend of the 16th & 17th August.

Sarah had just two 30 minute sessions on the Friday to reacquaint herself with the long 2.2 mile Silverstone International Circuit and also to get used to a car with new control tyres and different brakes to those she has been running in the Ginetta Club Championship.

‘It was like driving a completely different car,’ Sarah said, ‘I was really struggling to get any heat in the tyres and was feeling like I was constantly going to fall off the circuit!’

The forecast for the weekend wasn’t good so Sarah invested in a set of wet tyres which obviously then meant that it didn’t rain once during the Ginetta sessions!!!!

With only 15 minutes to qualify and with just 5.1 seconds separating the whole field, Sarah qualified in an extremely disappointing 26th place. The good news of the day was that Sarah’s car won the ‘Best Presented’ Ginetta of the weekend!

Race 1 got off to a hectic start, with a spinner on the first corner causing chaos! Sarah managed to pick her way through and avoid the carnage and push on until the inevitable safety car came out. By this time, Sarah was up into 21st with Steve Williams in front of her. Sarah tried to stay with Williams during the re-start but he got a better run out of the last corner and managed to get into Copse ahead of her. Sarah then pushed on, avoiding other people’s incidents, to bring the car home in 16th position.

Race 2 saw Sarah ready to really push. She got a good start and was several places up by the right hand turn at Becketts on lap 1 when she was tapped at the rear. Whilst this wasn’t a huge nudge, it was sufficient and in such a way that her rear hub was broken meaning she had to retire the car.

‘I was looking forward to a good race and am gutted that this is the way it has ended – and so early on in the race. I really need to get to grips with the new tyres and brakes and this is something I’ll have to work on before the next race.’

Sarah hopes to be out again in the Texaco Havoline Ginetta Championship at the Donington round in October.