Britcar 24 hour - Silverstone GP Circuit

About 2 months ago I got a 'phone call from a guy I raced against in FPA, called Darron Anley. His plan was to find a old Honda Integra R and enter it in the Britcar 24 hour. Seemed like a good idea and I was in:-) A number of emails/phone calls over the coming weeks and suddenly, the race was just round the corner.

I travelled to Silverstone with Alan Bonner arriving early on Thursday morning, and headed straight to our pit garage, 8C. I spotted Darron chatting to someone so I sat down to wait for him to finish, which he did and promptly disappeared. He was back a couple of minutes later with one of the other drivers, Paul Armitage, and it was only when I approached him that he realised it was me - seems the longer hair confused him:-).

Things moved pretty quickly after that with the car being collected from Mardi Gras after having a new engine fitted and shorter 4th &5th gear ratios installed. The other driver, Ian Kirkpatrick had been testing the week before when it blew up in a big way.

Given that the engine had to be run in, we took it in turns to do 5 or so laps each at a maximum of 6k revs. This was good for me coz I'd never driven at Silverstone, or sat in the car (or any FWD race car). Ian did the first few followed by me and Darron with Paul going last. My best time was very slow compared to Darron and Paul but as they both knew the car/circuit, it was no big deal.

Friday's qualifying was to be split over one hour in the morning and two hours in darkness with all drivers having to do 3 laps minimum in each session. We decided that we should keep the same driving order with Ian and I being limited to 7k revs and the Darron and Paul running at 8k. All seemed to be going OK with Paul, as expected, posting our fastest time of 2:17.832 but when Paul came in, he reported that 5th gear had gone bang on his last lap. Given that it had only done 30 or so laps since being changed, we were a bit concerned. So The car went straight back to MG where they found that 5th gear was completely stripped. They managed to clean out the box and fit a new gear but 5th again sounded very noisy when we started the night qualifying. We all did the mandatory 3 laps each and decided, that first thing on Saturday morning, we'd have the gear box out and checked. MG didn't have any staff available on Saturday morning, but they let us use their workshop, and what a shock we got - in 20 laps of running we had lost half of the teeth on 5th gear! So, our only choice was to fit the standard 4th & 5th gears and hope for the best. We knew this would cost us lap time, but it seemed that for some reason, we couldn't fit the shorter gears. In addition to this, we decided to change the final drive gear as it had been slightly damaged by all the broken teeth. However our pace would again be impacted as the only one available was again going to make all the gears a bit longer. But we had no choice and started work on the box. The race was due to start at 16:30 and at 16:00 we had only just got the gear box re-attached.

So we missed the start and the first 3 laps, but finally we were in the race with Paul doing the first session. All seemed to be going OK and as planned, Paul came in for his fuel stop and driver change after just under 2 hours. As expected our pace had been impacted by the gearing change with a fastest lap of 2:20.077. Two seconds a lap doesn't sound too much but over the 24 hours, it's a lot of time. It was during the driver change pit stop that we discovered that the left hand side of the car and windscreen were covered in oil, and the reason soon became apparent. In our haste to get the car finished, someone had forgotten to tighten the oil filler cap and it had come off. Luckily, we had a top up tank/pump in the car, so Paul was able to keep feeding the engine with fresh oil. We fitted a new cap, tightly, and sent Ian out for his stint.

Ian's drive was fairly uneventful until the car suddenly appeared in the pits with Ian saying he needed to pit for fuel and the signaling we'd agreed with the pit wall hadn't worked. So we sent him back out to pit for fuel and then the driver change. Ian's best was a 2:25.639.

I was only 5 laps into my night time stint, when at the end of the pit straight, whilst braking for copse corner, the brake pedal went to the floor, and I don't know how I managed to not hit the wall. I nursed the car back to the pits where we found that the front left bake pipe had fractured, which explained a lot :-0 After about 50 minutes I was back out and I had just about got the hang of the circuit in the dark with my best being a surprising 2:19.334.

Darron then took over and we had another couple of unscheduled stops, the first when the car felt very loose - we could find nothing amiss with the car and put it down to another car leaking fluids onto the circuit. And then a few laps latter when a missed braking point led to 2 badly flat spotted tyres. But he still managed to lower our fastest lap to 2:18.762

Then it was back to Paul who would see in the sunrise, or so we thought. As dawn approached the fog came down and the race was suspended for over 2 hours. But he got underway again and in the cold morning air, lots of fast laps were being set, with Paul joining them with a 2:18.723

Ian started his second stint just before 10AM and kept out of trouble posting a best of 2:20.941

My second race stint was great, coz I could now see the circuit, and I was used to the car. I managed to continue to be the only one of us not to spin and I found a good rhythm that saw me beat our fastest lap on no fewer than 16 occasions with a best of 2:17.275.


Remember I said that I traveled down with Alan Bonner? Well his car's engine had expired after 90 minutes, but he stayed around and as soon as I got out of the car at around 14:20, it was into the shower and then head back home.

Meanwhile, Darron took it steadily in the last 2 hour session to bring the car home in 29th place overall and 3rd in class.

And we beat the Top Gear guys :-)

A fantastic result for a real last minute operation. As far as I saw, we were the only team where the drivers did the refueling and got involved in the mechanics of the pit stops. We had help in the shape of Bill (Paul's next door neighbour), Adrian, who works for Darron, and Bill's mate Nick and without them we'd have been stuffed. Also a big thanks to young Neil who came to watch and ended up doing most of the pitwall duty. Thanks guys!

Plans are already being made for next years race, where we hope to improve on this years result.