Spa!

About a week ago I got a call from Dave Beecroft of Xero Competition asking me if i'd limke to race a VdeV car at Spa! I couldn't say no!

Thursday was a whirlwind of just making flights and wrong motorway exits, and but I still managed to get to Spa in time for the drivers briefing at 16:00. After that it we had an hour of testing on a wet, but drying circuit. My team mate for this event , Joe Tuckey went out first and found the car to be nicely balanced. Because of the sheer length of the lap (7.2km), 30 minutes goes by really quickly and I was surprised to see the checkered flag. I too had found the car well balanced, but felt that the wet tyres were going off , which was shown to be the case when I got back to the pits. The front left in particular was worn right down and the tread blocks were a mess. Still, no damage done and all looked good for Friday.

Friday's weather was fantastic with not a cloud to be seen. We had decided that Joe should do a minimum of laps in qualifying which would allow me to post some sort of time. We also decided to use old tyres and save the new ones for the race. Joe did his 3 laps and reported that the car was "a bit oversteery" - A phrase I found to be the understatement of the week - It was awful, with the tail just not willing to stay in line under any sort of power on corner exists. One of the guys in our sister car, Toby Newton, followed me near the end of the session and he said I was leaving huge black lines on the corner exits as I struggled to get the power down. On the last lap the car wouldn't down shift on the way into the bus stop chicane so I nursed it into the pit lane stuck in 6th gear. The car has a flat shift paddle change that uses quite a lot of electronics, so the guys changed a potentiometer that monitors the gear selector position and hence tells the ECU what gear you are in.

So we qualified 13th with 1 2:36.4 - not great, but Dave B assured me that on new tyres, we would be fine. He was right (about the tyres).

Joe started the race, and the car was clearly much more stable, and Joe quickly got up to 7th right behind the sister car posting a best of mid 2:32. But the it all went wrong. Joe appeared in the pit lane with the car again stuck in 6th gear. The guys got the car back into neutral and sent Joe back out, but he was straight back in next lap and then spent around 30 mins tying to get it fixed. He managed another 10 laps or so and came back in again with the same issue. The guys had got hold of one of the 'laptop guys' who then spent some time tweaking the ECU settings, and the it was my turn.

I managed 19 laps with a best of a 2:31.4 before the same issue reoccurred and it was over - A frustrating yet enjoyable experience, and in a world of ifs, buts and maybes we could have finished in the top 6 quite comfortably with the pace we were running, but it wasn't to be.

Cars like this are addictive and Im now trying to figure out how i get to race one again - more begging letters it seems :-)