Racing is never dull. For evidence, see the exploits of car number 21 in the Radical SR1 Cup last weekend at Oulton Park.

The weekend started with huge strides being made in practice, which you can read about here, before a disastrous wet qualifying outing, an exhilarating sixth-place finish in race one (having been as high as fourth going into the last corner) and then a 'did not finish' in race two. Some DNF it was, too, but more on that later.

The Cheshire circuit was round two of the SR1 Cup, which I'm contesting this year as my first taste of competitive motor sport. The morning’s 20-minute qualifying session was the first experience for most of the grid (including myself) of driving the car in the wet.

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There was a lot to cram into the 20 minutes: working out just how much grip there was in the car in the wet, where said grip was on the circuit, if there was any standing water, where the wet-weather braking and turn-in points were, racing lines… and that’s before we'd set about trying to set two fast laps to decide grid positions for races one and two.

In the end, there was far more grip out there than I believed, and a far too cautious approach - coupled with the learning period being reduced by a safety car period mid-session - resulted in 10th place on the grid for both races. The timing sheets gave even more away: most drivers were improving their times by two to three seconds a lap, so those who pushed harder earlier were rewarded with the faster times towards the end of the session.

A few hours later, when we headed out on the formation lap for race one, the circuit was practically dry again. There had been no more rain, and the combination of humid conditions and plenty of track action in the meantime allowed the Oulton Park surface to return to something approaching its Friday best. Game on.

The grid places on the start line at Oulton Park are closely packed together, unlike the greater distance between cars at Silverstone a fortnight earlier. This should have provided ample opportunity for overtaking on the start line, providing the start is not made a mess of. This is something I promptly did, reacting slowly to the lights and dumping the clutch too quickly.

Nevertheless, a couple of places were made up on the first lap, and a few laps later I became locked in a tight tussle for sixth with Peter Tyler and Lewis Gee. It was my first experience for some real wheel-to-wheel racing on a tight track after a somewhat lonely time on the wide open spaces of the full Silverstone Grand Prix circuit.