We went back to Oulton Park looking to build on the pace we had shown earlier in the season.
Instead, I probably got the biggest lesson so far in suspension, balance and understanding grip.
Before qualifying we made a setup change to the rear of the car, taking some compression out to try and improve the balance on new tyres. I was really excited about it because I like the feeling of a car being up on its toes a little more, moving around underneath you rather than feeling flat and locked down. I was fast on old tyres but not so much on new ones, so I knew that there was potential.
As soon as I went out in qualifying, I could feel the difference.
The rear of the car was much looser than before, so I spent the first laps building confidence and trying to understand how much movement the car was going to give me. Then a red flag stopped the session, and we lost over six minutes.
I came back in slightly frustrated because I hadn’t had enough laps to fully understand what the car wanted, but at the same time I wasn’t massively concerned either. The car felt nervous, but still manageable.
What none of us knew at that point was that the front anti-roll bar had started working loose.
As Race One went on, the balance became increasingly unpredictable, especially at the rear. The car started snapping rather than flowing through corners, particularly in the faster sections.
I was confused because the behaviour didn’t fully match the setup change, we had made.
So instead of attacking the car harder, I started reducing how much commitment I was putting into it.
Less energy on corner entry.
Less aggression over the crests.
Trying to stop the car becoming unsettled because the rear was so snappy and unpredictable.
At the time, I didn’t really understand what I was doing.
Looking back now, I realise I had already started trying to manage the conflict inside the car.
After Race One we had several issues to work through, and because the balance was already making life difficult, we made the decision to swap to a better set of tyres with permission from the organisers.
The start in Race Two was immediately much better.
For a moment I thought we had fixed the problem.
Then I started pushing properly.
The further into the lap I got, the more the car felt like it was sitting on a knife edge.
The rear wasn’t settling naturally anymore.
Every high-speed corner felt like the car was undecided whether it wanted to hold the grip or let go completely.
It had lost its stability, and I was constantly adding more energy through correction after correction.
That’s not my way of driving at all.
Normally the suspension absorbs those forces progressively and gives them back to you in a way that feels predictable.
Here, it felt like I was managing those forces myself corner by corner instead.
Now it felt like the car was throwing the energy back at me faster than I could organise it.
The more the balance moved around, the more I started compensating for it myself.
I was catching movements instead of flowing with them.
That’s exhausting as a driver because eventually you stop working with the car and start fighting it instead.
At the back of the circuit, the slip angle built just slightly too far, and I knew I wasn’t going to catch it.
Around we went.
Thankfully we missed the barriers, although the nose was dislodged and we had to pit before continuing.
Even then though, my head wasn’t really on the spin itself.
I wanted to understand why the car had behaved the way it had all day.
Had the setup change really made that much difference?
Back in the workshop we stripped the car down and eventually found the front anti-roll bar completely disconnected.
Suddenly the whole day made sense.
Talking through everything with Mark afterwards really changed the way I think about grip.
Before Oulton, I probably thought of grip mostly as tyre contact and confidence.
Now I understand it much more as energy management.
When the suspension is working properly, the forces moving through the car feel organised. The chassis loads up, settles and releases progressively, allowing you to work with the movement instead of against it.
When that balance disappears, the driver starts trying to manually control forces that the suspension should really be helping to manage.
That’s when driving becomes tiring, inconsistent and slow.
Looking over the suspension afterwards and checking components for damage and distortion really brought the whole thing home to me.
The loads moving through the car are enormous.
You don’t fully appreciate that when the balance feels right because everything flows together naturally.
But when the balance disappears, suddenly you can feel every single fight happening underneath you.
