The Madness of the 'Ring

Us motorsports types speak with reverence and hushed tones about the Nurburgring.

Jackie Stewart christened it The Green Hell and for good reason it would seem. When I told friends (who race) that my first ever laps of the 'Ring would be in an RCN race event, they all said I was crazy. One even said he would never race there - too dangerous.

So as well as a very long and unknown circuit in an unknown car, I also had to deal with a track temperature of around 4 degrees and very changeable weather. And we also had the GP circuit as well!

The RCN events are for teams of 2 drivers - After an out lap the first driver sets a timing lap followed by 3 'fast as you can' laps. Then the driver pits for fuel and a driver change.

I was driver 2 and my teammate for the day set a lap time of 15:39 on a very wet circuit. As the circuit dried he improved his times by around 30 seconds a lap and by the time it came for the changeovers, many teams opted to switch to slicks as the re was a dry line just about everywhere. However, given that I'd never driven the track and the low temp, we decided to go with intermediate tyres for my stint.

The out lap was fine and there was a distinct dry line. I then started my first 'racing' lap of the ring and I arrived on the main straight nearly 4 minutes ahead of my target 15:39 - so it was into 5th and a slow drive back onto the GP circuit where I crossed the line at 15:36. A good start!

And then it started to rain again - not too much but enough to show me how unforgiving the 'Ring can be with numerous cars crashing as the conditions changed. It's such a long lap that some bits were still dry, whilst other were soaking - and it changed on every one of my 3 'sprint' laps as the rain clouds passed through. But I'm glad to say that I kept it on the circuit posting a best of 13:05 on my last lap - the biggest issue was the change in grip levels when the tarmac changed, which it frequently does. It doesn't sound quick, and it wasn't, but given the conditions and the added length of the GP circuit, I was happy.

When I started racing I had a number of circuits that I wanted to do: Monaco, Spa, Silverstone, Nurburgring and Suzuka - So I just need to get to Japan now!

Monaco - Quelle Domage!

If there's one thing i've learned in my 10 years of racing, it's that you shouldn't make predictions.

This year's team for the 14th Monaco Kart Cup consisted of Darron Anley , Martin Farmer, Declan McDonnell and DJ - LCA Racing owner, Chris Hyman was unable to get out of a commitment to race in British GT. (where he didn't even get to race as his team mate was involved in a race ending incident :-()

This years karts were the same as last years, but with a change of tyres and brake pads. Overall, this increased the lap by just over 2 seconds from last years times. But Martin only lost 6/10th from his last years pace, whilst I lost a second - Which annoyed me, but I have to remember that i've done very little racing this year and see it as the improvement that it was. Plus Martin is a very talented driver!

Practice was fairly straight forward with Martin and I fairly quickly getting back into the Monaco grove, and Darron and Declan getting to grips with their first laps.

As expected Martin looked to be quickest and he posted our best qualifying time to put us 21st on the grid. The times were so close that another 0.5 would have put us 10th.

So Martin started the first race and didn't make it to the end of the first lap - he avoided a mid field crash, but the kart just cut out and he couldn't restart it - we managed to get it going again but had lost around 8 laps by that point. Still, we battled through and got back to 23rd by the end of the heat, 10 laps off of the leader. In avoiding the start of race shunt we had picked up a tiny bend to the rear axle, so we got that fixed before race 2.

Declan started race 2 and he was now on the pace and we were up to 15th when Darron took over. After about 10 minutes he got involved in a nasty accident that badly bent the rear axle and a front track rod. This cost us just over 30 minutes in the repair tent and another 32 laps. From then on it was a case of finish the heat and plan for Sunday's race. We were now 37th - 42 laps down on the leader.

Our goal for Sunday's race was to break into the top 30 but a mid race rain shower soon killed that plan. By the time they had fitted wet tyres to all of the karts, the circuit was almost dry - so in total we got 65 minutes racing in heat 3 and finished 32nd overall - a total of 43 laps down.

My pre race goal of a top ten finish was a distant memory and I was very disappointed. But as I said, predictions & plans in racing are not the smartest move…….

But plans are already underway for next years event - I will get top ten eventually!

Britcar 24 Hour - Oct 1/2/3

The Britcar 24 hour race has been one of the highlights of my racing year for a while now - it wasn't run in 2009 due to lack of committed teams, but this year saw its' return to the Silverstone GP circuit with 60+ entries. In 2007 & 2008 we competed in class 5, but with the new class structure in place, this year we were in class 4, along with cars like the Seat SuperCopa (300+bhp), BMW 130i, Ginetta G40, Civic Tyoe R, Integra DC5 - we were the lowest powered petrol car on the grid, and in the dry qualifying sessions, we were over 10 seconds off the pace - but with the weather forecast to turn decidedly wet for the race, we were fairly sure we would be more competitive.

This years driver line up was our strongest yet. Darron Anley , the car's owner, has had a successful season in the Radical Club championship, taking his first overall pole at Donington the week before the 24 hour. Joining Darron and I were British GT pairing of Chris Hyman & Dan Brown who normally pedal a Ferrari 430 Scuderia.

As expected, the race started dry with Dan staying out of trouble and handing over to Darron just before the rain started. And from that point on Darron made really good progress and he was up to second in class when we ran out of fuel on the pit straight. This lost us 30 minutes of track time while the car was recovered and put us last in class. From that point on, we all had pretty good sessions and the car ran without issue, but the 12 laps we had lost were just too much. We ended up 4th in class (again!) just 2 laps down on the car in 3rd. The pluses were that during the wettest sessions, we were as much as 10 seconds a lap quicker than the fast class 4 cars and we even managed to dice with some of the Astons and Porsches.


The Britcar 24 hour has now been elevated to be part of the MSA British Endurance Championship, and with the new class structure, we cannot really compete in our underpowered car (unless it rains!), so next year, it's highly likely that we will be in something a bit quicker.

For those of you with time to spare, the race will be covered in a 2 hour programme that will be aired on 10th November ESPN 11.30am and MotorsTV 13th November 7pm.