Britcar 24 hour @ Silverstone GP

For the second year, I was to take part in the Britcar 24 hour race at Silverstone. We had decided to strenghten the driver linup and had recruited FIA GT3 racer, Chris Hyman, to join us. Unfortuneatly, Chris was involved in a major shunt at Brno the weekend prior to the 24 hour race, and he was advised by his doctor not to race. All was not lost, as Paul Armitage managed to get hot shoe Portugeese youngster, Jorge Calado to join us.

I was looking forward to the race but on the Tuesdy night I started to get a sore throat, which by the time I got to the hotel next to the circuit on Thrsday night, had turned into full blown man flu :-(

The regulations for the race insist that each driver does at least 3 laps in both the day and night qualifying session, and as I was feeling rotten, that's all I did, 8 seconds off the pace set by Jorge (2:18.something).

I felt a bit better on Saturday morning, but had to go for kip in the early afternoon and I was woken by a helicopter overhead just after 16:30, which was the race start time. There had been a crash at the start which resulted in Andy Neate being hospitalised with pretty serious injuries. I'm glad to say that he seems to be on the mend, and our thoughts are with him and his family.

The safety car came in after about 45 mins and the race was underway. Darron Anley started the race for us and he was going really well posting a best of 2:15.65, which was 3 seconds quicker than he'd gone last year! We were about 30 seconds up on the other class 5 cars when he pitted to hand over to Paul after just over 2 hours.

Our hopes were dashed about 45 minutes into Paul's stint when he pitted with an oil leak. This took about an hour to resolve, with a repair to the sump, and he was back out, but only for one lap - That was to be the end of Paul's stint with a best of 2:22.743. The alternator appeared not to be charging and we spent the next 90 minutes stripping and cleaning loads of oil from the bushes and coils. Darron even
managed to get one of his friends to bring his own DC2 as a potential donor car! However, more diagnosois found a blown fuse, and it was now my turn. I'd taken a couple of neurofen about an hour before getting in the car so I felt a bit better.

My stint was shortened by the fact that the car wasn't refuled when I took over, but I had a decent run with a best of 2:16.161, which was 2.5 seconds quicker than I'd managed in the dark last year, and a full 1.1 seconds quicker than the fastest lap I managed in the day light.

Adrenalin is a funny thing and I got out the car feeling the best I'd been in days.....

Jorge then took over. I'd had a chat with him about how difficut it is drving at night with cars that have closing speeds of 60+ MPH but it's very hard to explain to anyone just how much concentration and discipline is needed. It's bad enough when you can see, but at night....Jorge's times refected that he was finding it tough, as we did last year, but then he appeared in the pits with a problem with the front right wheel. It looked like a bearing failure, but on sripping the hub down, we found that one of the suspension bushes had collapsed.

The donor car car now came into play, and we removed the front tie bar from it and got it on the race car - Another 50 minutes in the pits. Jorge then continued his stint with a best of 2:19.613

With the issues, we were now out of contention, but even without the previous problems , we would have struggled......

Paul did the next session, pretty much without incident with a best of 2:20.363 and then it was me to take over for the dawn stint. The first 10 laps or so were still dark but right away, the car was hittng a rev limit of around 7.5k. This sounds normal, but not for an Integra Type R, which should rev to 8.5k. Still, I had to drive what I had and still managed to get into the 16s again, which was disapointing as I had reckconed a low 2:15 or even a high 2:14 was possible.

Back in the car at midday it wouldn't rev above 6.6k. This meant that the car was hitting the limiter in top gear half way down the hanger straight, and where during the night I was hitting 235kph at the brake point for stowe corner, it was now 193kph! This really cost us in lap time and my best in this session was a 2:20.330 - 4.2 seconds off of the time I did at night!

This was all compounded by the car prducing huge ammounts of exhaust smoke, from about 6AM. The car had been using oil all race, but it really got bad, with the car having to stop every hour or so to top it up. We think that the reduction in revs was caused by whatever was causing the oil burning - probaly a broken piston ring. We used 29 litres in 24 hours! So we finished 32nd overall and 4th in class.




The car was quicker this year because we got some camber added to the rear wheels, which really helped to stabilise the car in the faster corners. However, under braking I usually find the point were the fronts lock, but with the rear camber, the rears locked first and this is really dificult to catch. I had 2 moments when trying to really push, and this is one of the issues we need to fix for next year.


Overall, given that the car hasn't run since last year, it went OK, but we've proved to ourselves that we have the pace to win so for next year we need to:

Fit poly suspension bushes all round.
Have the engine rebuilt and run in correctly.
Fix the wiring.
Fit a brake bias adjuster.

And try to get all of us to drive a race car more than once year!