Silverstone 22nd August 2009

A lovely morning again, but no time to sit and relax as I had a few jobs to do before scruitineering. I needed to set the toe and camber and also get a new rear tyre as it was well past its best, aswell as the usual sign on and new drivers briefing. After getting this all done and and very brief scruitineering session I was ready for practice. We were grouped in with Bikesports (due to their low numbers), which I initially thought would cause problems, but infact it was no problem at all, which I think was down to the nature of the circuit (wide and fast). Practice wasn’t good, I took the first few laps easy to check the chassis didn’t snap and to ensure I got the 3 laps in to qualify, but as I started to pick the pace up yellow flags started to appear and a different points until Phil Alcocks Pulsar spat a conrod out the side of the engine and sprayed oil all over the entry to copse. I saw the red and yellow flag and thought I’ll “stay out of …..” and then started squirming all over the track. I had visions I joining Phil at the Armco, but managed to run wide over astro turf back onto the run off tarmac and gain control. So at the end of the session I didn’t feel that I had had one good lap, but then again it was the same for everyone. I qualified 5^th in class C on the 7^th row alongside Bob with the other 4 class C cars directly ahead, so I was pleased with that and hoped for a good race.

A quick check over the car showed no problems with Andy’s repair, although the steering wheel was very very slightly out, probably one spline on the rack, but as it was going in a straight line I thought I’d leave it until I got home.

There was a bikesports race that a few RGB’ers had entered, but I didn’t bother as I had tested the day before. So this gave me a chance to actually go and watch some racing!!!!

I got a reasonable start and managed to get a head of Henry, and as usual Bob had a flyer. We were alongside each other around copse but he managed to pull away from me as headed up to maggots, he seemed to be going a lot quicker than before! Unfortunately at Beckets Duncan spun and collided with David. lots of cars dived everywhere and I went up the inside, but in doing so Richard T boned me in the drivers side and pushed me along at 90 degrees to the track. We both managed to carry on but as we went up club straight I was aware of flapping body work and the steering was definitely not straight. By the time we had got to Brooklands the race had been red flagged, unfortunetly while David was facing the wrong way, Andy C couldn’t avoid him and had a head on!! Both drivers were OK, but the cars were looking very battered and there was coolant all over the track.

We all lined up on the grid again, and during the lengthy stoppage I had a quick look at te chassis (well as best as I could with a helmet on and the bonnet down, and a marshal helped me to tape the now flapping front corner of the rear tub. The flappy bit of panel was right next to the extinguisher pul, so the marshal (and I) wanted to make sure it wouldn’t flap and set it off!!

I had a slightly better start in the restart, but Bob still powered past me coming up to maggots. Bobs car was flying, his airbox has made a huge difference to its speed, and I suspect his balls are getting bigger. It was great going around luffield side by side but I had to back off as Pauls contour conked out at my exit point, although I suspect Bob would have still powered away from me from there up to copse anyway. Was close up with bob as we came into beckets for a 2^nd time, but he got a great exit as I slipped on the coolant on track and shot past Colin and and Al as we headed up to Brooklands. I think Bob was so surprised he forgot to brake and ran wide and Al, Colin and I passed him, but just as I was coming past his rear wheel just touched the gravel it caused him shoot across the circuit hitting me fairly hard in the drivers side. I kept hold of it but was convinced the car had had it. As I came up the pit straight the steering seemed to be even less straight, but the car seemed to be still going with no nasty noises so I thought best to continue. There was some nasty grinding coming from the body work as I braked and entered beckets but I wasn’t far behind Al and Colin and a trophy!!! The rest of the race was uneventful for me, I couldn’t quite close the gap enough to play with Al and Colin (I still obviously have a bit to learn to be able to play with these guys properly), I’d catch them as they were scrapping, but then make a mistake trying to over drive and get in their pockets. After what happened at Brands earlier in the year I decided my best plan of attach would be to drive as fast I could without making a mistake and taking myself out of the race, and hope that Al and Colin would have one of their small and frequent coming togethers and shoot past them. Unfortunately for me this never happened and I finished 4^th and 8^th overall. Al and Colin had a great race which I had a brilliant view of, and hope that I can eventually get up with these boys and be able to race in a such a clean and entertaining way!

In Parc ferme I had a quick look at the car, the body work was pretty battered and there was no obvious front suspension damage on the impacted side. The rear wheel had a large mark on it and had obviously take a fair whack when Bob hit me so I assumed something had moved at the rear causing the steering wheel to be at an angle.

So all in all a very eventful meet, I was happy with the result and know that I have got to pick up the pace very slightly to get to a stage where I can be in for a real chance of a top 3 result on a regular basis. The car looks a bit battered and will need some investigation and repair work for the next meet. I can’t make Snetts as my son is having his tonsils removed, so I have 6 weeks to prepare for Mallory! Roll on October!

Silverstone Testing 21/08/09

After waking from my best ever nights sleep in the roof tent (10pm-7am), well probably best sleep in weeks, i stuck my head out of the tent to see a lovely clear morning!!!

I'd never done Silverstone before, so i wanted to make the most of testing to try and learn the circuit and hopefully get a reasonable grid position. My aim this weekend was to have a decent grid AND finish position, i don't seem to be able to to combine the two!

First session out and i was susrprised by the track! I was expecting a flat out, boring circuit, but infact, although its very wide and has 2 fast straights and copse corner, the rest of it is fairly tight. So much so that i ended up in the kitty litter after 10 minutes and reg flagging the first session, what a prat!!! I went back out and slowly built up speed and recored a 1.06.48, which i was happy with, and hoped i be able to reduce.

The trip to the kitty litter seemed to have off centred the steering wheel slightly, i didn't have time to sort it out before the next session but a quick checkover didn't how anything obvious, i just assumed the steering rack had moved very slightly on its mounts. The 2nd session was greasy due to some light showers, and the session was close 5 mins early due to 5 formula Vee's spinning off at various corners around the track. I have the same view as Tim on these, i can't see the attraction, they are based on my most hated car, the old VW beetle, they are noisey and stink and usually pump some kind of fluid onto the track!

With the help of John Cutmore, I checked the (well John checked) the tracking, and yes it was out. All the suspension looked fine and the rack was tight so again asumed all was fine. John made the adjustement. Then the heavens opened so i din't bother with the 3rd session as i would have been soaked and learnt nothing. 4th session Again it was slightly wet and i couldn't improve on the first sessions time but the car felt fine. The 5th session came and it was dry so i was hoping for an ipmroved time. But as the session progressed the car just stopped wanting to go round left handers (beckets mainly) and was understeering badly. I wondered if it was just me trying to hard, or flying into beckets to fast, but by the end of the session the car would go round it at all wothout loads of understeer. A quick check under th bonnet revealed the problem, the chassis rail where the lower wishbones attached had snappped and was being held to gteher by a thread of metal! I felt very lucky it didn't actaully collapse on me, 1 more lap and it may have!!

A dragged the car over to Andy Bates who had a quick look and said it was a common point of failure on the fury chassis, but he would be able to braise it up and add some gussets to strengthen it up. So the next 3 hours was spent helping/hindering Andy get the chassis all repaired. I also discovered an engine bolt in the under tray which must have vibrated out of somewhere! Andys knowledge of the blade engine is so geeky that by just looking at the bolt he knew where it had probably come from, surprise surprise he was right, one of the starter motor bolts! Also i notived how bad the nearside front tyre was, i would need a new one before the race!

By the time the chassis was all done and the suspension all back together i couldn't face doing the alignment and needed some beer and food! My trusty side kicks Dan and Steve had had to get the BBQ I invited to them all sorted, and by the time i got back to the tent the food was ready, result!

Silverstone National Prep (or lack of it)

After a hectic few weeks i eventually got round to looking at the car on the tuesday before silverstone! Not ideal, and something i had promised i wouldn't do, but I just didn't have time before hand! After Mallory Both rear arches were damaged, but other than that, apart from anything i found while checking the car, there wasn't much else to do other than the spanner and visual check anyway.

My plan is to fit a full new set of bodywork over the winter as the body is looking very very shabby. A respray would help, but i can't bring myself to respray over the top of the lumps and bumps. I'm also sick of cutting myself on sharp bits when i wash it! So considering there are only 2 more races i decided just to cut off the damaged wheel arch spats and whack a bit of fibre glass over the cracked bits to hold it together.

A spanner check and visual inspection uncovered no problems, so the car was loaded onto the trailer ready for an early start on Thursday.

Update

Right, i have been a bit rubbish keeping up my blog and just can't catch up, so the reports from Brands and Mallory will probably never happen! The Videos are below, But just as a recap, Brands was going great, and got upto 2nd in class near the start, but after attempting the impossible passing manoeuver i ended up in the gravel at paddock hill and recorded my first DNF :-( !. I also entered bikesports at Brands, where i had a good tussle with Adrian and Bob in the first race until Adrian had to retire, and managed another spin at paddock in race 2, but this time carried on! By the end of the weekend the car was jumping out of 3rd gear. This is a common problem with the blades and required a gearbox rebuild, so during the few weeks bewteen Brands and Mallory i undertook my first rebuild of an engine (well gearbox). With lots of help from Andy Bates, both over the phone and sending him my gearbox internals to have the worn bits replaced i got the car up and running a few days before Mallory.

I had only been to mallory on a Trackday once before, and that was about 5 years ago, and in an old E30 325, so i wasn't expecting much. The car overheated in qualifying, but this turned out to be because i had over filled with oil, so after droping some out i was fin for the race. I had another spin in race 1, which was rather annoying, but had a lot better race in race 2, but more importantly the car worked even after i had been messing with it!!!

Mallory park 3rd August 2009

Brands Hatch 20/06/09

Video:-

Anglesey 6/7th June

I was looking forward to this weekend! Anglesey coastal is a great circuit in a fantastic location, I had booked testing on the Friday, practice and race 1 on Saturday and race 2 on Sunday. And sandwiched inbetween the RGB BBQ!

The plan was to travel up Thursday on my own, then Dan, Dad and William woud come up Friday afternoon. Unfortunetly William couldn’t come as he had a birthday party he really didn’t want to miss, so this would be my first race without his support and company, which I was pretty gutted about. I love the racing and everything associated with it, and the boys weekend with my son is a big part of it for me. Anyhow, as it turned out it was a very good job he didn’t come!!!

I arrived at about midnight on Thursday, the paddock area for RGB was small, but I was expecting there still to be plenty of room as it was Thursday night, I was wrong!! The area was rammed, which was made worse by the fact that the big “non essential parking” area was fenced off due to what looked like reseeding of the grass. After much faffing about I managed to squeeze on the end of an access road between the Rob and Andy Grant and the 750 Formula area, unloaded the car and popped the tent up.

As usual I got next to no sleep due to the excitement and the joys of camping, so at 6am I was in the shower block dodging the manky shower curtain. I had filled the car and 2 jerry cans on the way over on Thursday night and the car was all checked and ready to go so I set about setting up my new (to me) 6x3 gazebo. This thing ways a ton, and is pretty tricky to erect on your own, especially in the tight pace I had squeezed into, but as the weekend progressed it would prove to be a life saver!! I then went to sign on with a few of the other RGB’ers, and was very disappointed to find that we only had 4 x 25min sessions all day, 2 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon! The morning session only had 17 cars in it, but the afternoon had 39!!! Oh well, I’d better make the most of the morning sessions!

About 20mins before heading out I started the car up and let it tick over to warm up while I got changed, but when I returned the dash was showing warning lights for water and oil temp!!!! The engine didn’t feel warm at all, but water temperature was showing over 110, oil about 150 degs and oil pressure through the floor! Dave Wale had just turned up so I grabbed him and Andy Bates to see if he knew of anything it could be, we checked the water and used an infra red thermometer to check temperature of the block. There was no way the engine was as hot as it was saying, but I was due out in 10 minutes and would be driving blind, not knowing what the engine was up to! Then Andy had an idea, was the digidash displaying in Fahrenheit and bar? It isn’t possible to change this on the digidash itself, so I loaded up the digidash software on my PC and had a look at the setting,. I have 2 versions of the digidash analysis tool, the older version (which David always used) didn’t allow to change this, but when I opened up the newer version I had downloaded, the option was there! I tried to revert it back to to degs C and PSI, but for some reason it would only allow me to change the pressure. We had been called for session 1, so I decided I’d better make use of the session, and sort the dash out when I got in.

I relearnt my way round the circuit, but my mind wasn’t on it after all the rushing around before, added to the fact my dash was lit up like a Christmas tree warning me of high temperatures and low pressures and no gear read out which was causing me to think and worry about the engine rather than the driving. This coupled to the fact he rear end of the car was all over the place and Session one was a bit of a disaster, with a big spin at Church.

After a waste of time phone call to EBT instruments about the digidash, I started playing with the settings. When I uploaded the config file for Anglesey I must have used the newer version of the software, and the default temperature and pressure scales must have been set wrong. After trying a few combinations of changing pressure and temperature I found I could change the scales for both, but not at the same time and it had to be done in a certain order. So that’s a lesson learnt for the future, only us ethe old version of software to upload config files, and if it does change, bugger about with it!

Everyone was saying how light the rear of the car was were making changes to the settings, so session 2 I decided to soften the rear off a bit to try and increase the rear end to grip. So I set for session 2, fought with the car and and had 3 spins, either the changes had really buggered things up or I was just an idiot who should hang his gloves up!! I pulled into the pits during the session and dialed the rear suspension in harder (actually slightly harder than I had started in the morning), but by the time I got out again the chequred flag had come out. I was in a bad mood, what a waste of a morning and I was nowhere near the laptime I wanted!

Over lunch I checked the car over and decided to stiffen the front up this time, but was expecting the afternoon session to be too busy to get any meaningful laptimes in, especially as we were in with the locosts, which are considerably slower than the Rgb cars. But too my delight, the changes seemed to work and the car was handling a lot better, and the locosts pulled over to let us past (thanks chaps if you read this)! But I think the biggest improvement was my state of mind, I made sure I was ready in plenty of time and sat in the car and focused for 10 minutes before the start of the session. Another lesson learnt, I must try and get some quiet time in the car before going out to get in the right state of mind.

By the end of the day I was feeling really good on the track, and managed a 1.15.97, I had set my target to get as close to 1.16 so was very very chuffed!

Not long after Dan and Dad arrived, and after going for a frantic search to buy a new gas bottle for the BBQ we settled down for a couple of beers and a proper mans BBQ, i.e. pure meat plus some crisps, no silly lettuce or greens.

After a terrible nights sleep due to he wind and rain, resulting in giving up trying to sleep in the tent at 2.30am and moving to the back seat of the mondeo, i tried to get ready for qualifying. It was raining big time, so after signing on I swapped to the wet tyres and softened off the suspension (so all the set up time yesterday was not useful!). Luckily it stopped raining for qualifying, but the surface was very wet and slippery.

I came in not knowing if I had managed a decent time or not, so when the results were released and I found myself 9th and 10^th I was over the moon!! The grid was all over the place and I found myself a head of some of the seriously fast guys!

It felt very strange being this far up the grid waiting for the lights to go out, I had to try and keep my head and juts try and hold my position as bets as possible, I very much doubted I could finish this high up, let alone overtake anyone. The race started and there were very few incidents (well done RGB boys and girls), but I did lose my head and spun coming out of peel. Up until that point I had a lost a few places to the faster cars and also not defending my line properly (Henry Carr passed me twice up the inside coming into rocket), but was happy until I lost it. For the emainder of the race I tried to catch up my lost positions until suddenly I lost all drive. The clutch was slipping very badly so I slowly came down towards the pits frantically pumping the clutch pedal. As I was about to come in, I had drive again, so I decided to carry on. I finished the race in 16^th and 8^th in class with no more clutch problems. I was disappointed I had chucked it away with the spin, but happy I had finished.

So in the pouring rain (but luckily under my gazebo) we set about changing the clutch, but luckily realized before we had got too far, it was infact the clutch cable. The plastic coating had frayed and was causing the cable to stick. I couldn’t get hold of a new cable so we lubed up the old one and hoped it would last for race 2 on Sunday.

After a cracking RGB BBQ in the bar and plenty of beer I had a great nights sleep in the windy tent. Although I woke up feeling a little worse for wear, the weather looked a lot better, it was windy, but dry! With half an hour before our call it still looked dry so I put the dry tyres back on and clicked the suspension back up to what I had ended with after testing on Friday.

The race went fantastically, see the video below (sorry about the smear on the camera lense caused by leaving it too close to the frying pan):-

There was a nasty crash between Tim, Doug and Rob Grant. Luckily no one was hurt but the race was red flagged for a considerable time to clear it up.

After a great battle with Andy Grant I finished 3^rd in class!!!! My first trophy!! And just to make the day even better I won the tyre draw!!

So all in all a great weekend, even though the weather tried to spoil it!!!