RP-X™-Equipped Mark Dicken Continues Type R Trophy Podium Streak

“The last race weekend saw us at a scorching, red-hot Oulton Park. The Friday test day gave us four sessions to get myself used to the Civic around the fast-flowing roller coaster circuit.

“A lot of the other teams had been here two to three times testing before, and this showed in qualifying. I put a good lap down, but nine others did an even better one! So, I ended up qualifying 10^th – not where we wanted to start, but it was clear on the test day we were lacking a bit of pace to some of the others. But with 30 cars out there, it wasn’t all bad.

“In race one, I got too much wheelspin off the start and was down to 13^th on approach to turn one. With elbows out and a good line and a few running wide, I came out of turn one in 9^th – a typical Type R Trophy first corner! Over the first lap, I was tucked in behind Ash Moor and managed a late braking move into the last corner up the inside – the EBC Brakes showing their performance as usual. By this time, the top seven were already a good few seconds up the road, I worked as hard as I could over the race to close the gap but I ran out of laps and was about 0.5 seconds off 7^th at the finish.

“For race two I started 3^rd on the grid. I knew if I could get a good start and if others started scrapping, we could salvage a good result from the weekend. From the lights I maintained 3^rd and slid up the inside onto turn one for 2^nd, with Connor Murphy in the lead. I chased him down over the first half a lap and spent a good sector side-by-side with him, until I overtook him for the lead.

“Over the next few laps, I had a train of around 8-10 cars in the pack behind, all bumper-to-bumper. I was struggling to turn the car into the right-handers with the steering wheel out by around 45 degrees – I knew the front tracking had taken a knock and was out. I was basically having to either get the back end around more to back it into corners or stopp it on the apex to turn. This was hampering my corner speed and overall lap times and creating a massive bottleneck.

“I somehow managed to hold the lead all race right until the last lap where going down Cascades, I got a little tap and got sideways and lost a lot of drive going down the long straight after this. I had three cars side-by-side in my mirrors and I couldn’t defend them all and Jake got me and went onto win half a lap later. I was gutted! So close to my first Type R Trophy win but also over the moon as despite being off the pace, we still came away with a podium and some good points.

“I would like to say a massive thanks to EBC Brakes Racing – the RP-X pads once again helping me massively on the brakes, especially in the second race where we couldn’t get the car turned in as usual. I was having to drive defensive and brake really late so no one could get up the inside. Despite the high temperatures and Oulton Park being known to cook brakes, the EBC brakes never once faded or overheated and enabled me to brake good and consistent across the whole race.”

Thanks to Mark Jordan for the image.