Brands Hatch - Race 2

After Saturdays traumas, the car was thoroughly checked over before Sunday afternoons race (or so we thought!).

Mother nature again smiled on us and I took my 7th place on the grid in bright sunshine. My start was OK - nowhere near as good as yesterdays, but I held position. The dramas started near the end of lap one when I got a gentle tap on the entry to Clearways which lost me momentum as I gathered up the resulting slide, and I lost 2 places on the entry to Paddock Hill bend. It got worse a lap later when the front top panel came loose ( both clips on the bodywork right in front of me popped open). I took me another 2 laps to work out that it wasn't getting any worse, so I could now concentrate on catching the train of 4 cars that were a couple of seconds up the track.

Over the next 4-5 laps I managed to pass 3 of them and caught up with Declan McDonnell who was in 5th place. Try as I might he defended hard (but fair) and as I saw the last lap board the plan was made. I had almost got past him at the end of the cooper straight, as the preceding corner, Graham Hill bend, has always been my best at Brands. So, on the way up to Druids hairpin I fainted to the inside and sure enough, he covered it, which compromised his exit. This gave me the advantage on the way down to GHB, but I pushed a wee bit to hard and lost the back of the car as I got on the gas just before the apex. I managed to keep on full power but bounced over the kerb and with that loss of momentum, Jenny Anderson, who had qualified 4th, got back past me. So 7th at the finish, which was OK - I'd rather lose a place trying to gain one than to just sit there and not challenge.

I'm still not aggressive enough on the first couple of laps - too many years doing endurance racing! - Something I need to work on!

Gethin seems to be OK following his huge crash - He was in heat 1 which had been red flagged, but somehow, he didn't see the flags and smashed into a couple of stationary cars on the grid - When a red flag is shown drivers must stop racing and proceed at a slow pace to the starting grid. His car, and a couple of others sustained 'write off' levels of damage, but fortunately, no injuries.

So, the next 2 races are at Cadwell Park, a circuit I have never been to, so I'm not placing any expectations on myself. I'm sure a good few of my competitors will be testing on the Friday before the race weekend, so if I can make the top 10, it'll be a good result.

Championship wise, it looks like Martin Farmer is the current favourite - He's another ex-karter and is consistently fast. I'm leading the masters Class, but that's not why I'm there - I want to get closer to the front, but without a test day or two, that's going to be a tough challenge. But a fun one!

Speechless

With the car having had some 'fixes' applied to deal with the understeer issue, I arrived at Brands Hatch in a buoyant mood. Because of there being 40 entries, our qualification session was to be split into 2 sessions of 20 drivers with session B being the one for me.

The car felt a fair bit different compared with the Castle Coombe races, and I really enjoyed the 15 min session. Once all the times were correlated, I had managed 6th on the grid.

I got a great start passing 2 cars into Paddock Hill putting me in 4th, but on the way up to Druids, my engine hit the rev limiter and 2 cars shot past. I stayed in 6th place along the pit straight, but on the way into Paddock, again my car hit the rev limiter, and while tying to figure out what was going on, I went off into the gravel:-( I thought that was the race over, but under a red flag, they got me out and I was allowed to start from pit lane. )

So I joined that race last, and the problems continued. The engine should red line between 7.2 and 7.5k, but the limiter was kicking in around 6.3k. So, not much I could do but try to pass as many as I could. I was pleasantly surprised to manage a 10th place finish, but that feeling didn't last long.

On getting back to the pits, I told Alan (the guy who runs GAC Motorsport) the issue which he thought sounded strange. So we took the rear body work off and the problem was plain to see. The rotary dial on the limiter module was set just below 6.4k. Now, at first I figured that whilst checking/fixing something, it had been accidentally altered, but on further inspection, it's not possible to do this as the dial is very stiff. So the only conclusion is that someone had deliberately tampered with my car. What a crap thing to do - I hope I never find out who did it. Compared to qualifying I was around 0.5 seconds slower. which given the lack of power (V's make most of their power at the top of the rev range) was good.

But on refection, I wonder why it was done and is it worth continuing when this kind of thing can happen.

On a more serious note, there was a huge accident during the heat race (for those who didn't qualify well enough to go straight to the final) and Gethin Jones was hospitalised - My thoughts are with him.

Fomula V - Castle Combe

My second meeting in Formula V was at the very bumpy Castle Combe circuit in Wiltshire. I raced there once before in 2003 and didn't do very well :-(

Qualifying was a pain - I was having trouble selecting 3rd on the downchange which culminated in an off at the final bend (Camp Corner) but I managed to keep it out of the barriers and eventually qualified 9th, which was better than I expeceted. I say that because I was really having trouble at the 2 faster corners, Tower and Camp, coz the car just wouldn't turn in and I was losing time through both of these.

So with nothing to lose, we decided to take some rear tyre pressure away to see if that helped, but it didn't, it was worse!




I made an OK start but got boxed to the inside of the first corner, Quarry, and lost about 5 places. I manged to pick off a couple of folk fairly quickly and then had a dice with Paul Taylor and Ian Buxton - I managed to get past them both, but only just, crossing the line 0.4 seconds up on Paul with 8th my final placing.

One of the other cars run by GAC had a fix (for the understeer issue) put in place for the race and managed to improve his lap times by nearly 1.5 seconds and finish 6th, so hopefully, I'll have the same done by the time we get to Brands in 2 weeks.

Before the season, a top 10 would have been very acceptable, but after Snetterton, I know I can do better.....