The weekend saw the start of the Classic Sports Car Club racing season at a sunny, but typically windy Snetterton circuit in Norfolk and with it, the first race of the DAM Racing Porsche 944.

Suspension gremlins had meant a change of dampers so in the early morning qualifying session, the car didn't feel as stable around the corners as it had in our earlier test, but pressed on and knocked a few seconds of our test times to qualify 29th on a huge 38-car grid, positive that we could go faster without the traffic that such a huge entry guarantees.

With the suspension tweaked, but the ABS no longer coping with the extra work being demanded of it, Brett set out to start the race, immediately finding himself in a battle with a an Alfasud and a 911 which was consistently faster on the straights and slower on the corners.

At the half way stage, Brett was called in for the driver change and I jumped in, but twisted belts meant a longer stop than we'd practiced and a little time lost before we were given the ok by the marshall to head out onto track, and back into battle with an array of Porsches, MR2s and a particularly smoky Fiat coupe.

At the end of the 40 minutes, we brought the car home 24th overall, 10th in class. Not a fantastic result, but we'd got there with no mechanical issues, and most importantly, no contact! With more time in the car, our lap times were also dropping - my best lap being some 8 seconds off our initial testing pace. The car had looked awesome on track too, so should have got the company plenty of attention.

More photos from the day are in the race gallery.