After the race tent blew over in the middle of the night, I now have a little work to do to patch up the bonnet. During the race some gaffer tape worked wonders but I can't seem to find the right shade of blue!
I think I can get away with some paint impregnated fibre glass resin and maybe one sheet of fibre glass on the inside.
This latest impact into the fibre glass does highlight a couple of points.
- Firstly, that the quality of the fibre glass on the Fury is not too high. It actually looks like the only strength this part of the bonnet has comes from the gel coat on the top!
- Secondly, I received some advise from a number of racers, when I started, around not being too worried about the aesthetics of the car as it is likely to get bashed a bit in the course of racing. I think they might be right!
New Headrest:
John was kind enough to make me up a new headrest / support which is much closer to my normal head position now that I have the seat further forward. 
Some revealing pictures from Snetterton showed a rather large gap between my head and the pad which did not look too good if there was to be a large impact. So now installed, just a few mm behind my head when I have a helmet on and even painted blue!
Fuel Filter:
For the latter third of the Cadwell 2nd race, I had a recurrence of an old issue with the engine. Back in pre-season testing both at Snetterton and then at Brands, the engine would try to stall itself when coming off a prolonged full throttle application and it normally coincided with me changing down gears for a tight bend. Only then to find out that it would not get into gear as the engine had stopped. Great fun as you can image and diagnosed as being a failing fuel pump.
When I replaced the fuel pump I put in a glass (easy to see the dirt levels) in-line fuel filter just before the fuel pump. So back to Cadwell 2nd race and the same started happening again. Not as bad as before but enough to mean that there was rather too much rear wheel braking for my liking and Paul commented on seeing a trail of tyre smoke from the rear inside wheel as I braked for the mountain section.
So I had a good look around after the race and found the fuel filter to be very very dirty. In fact when I opened it up to replace the filter element I was rather surprised at how much dirt there was in there. I am not sure if it had all come up from the tank due to running down quite low on fuel (was at 4ltrs remaining after the 30min race) or whether it got stirred up due to the spin across the bumpy grass earlier in the race :)
Anyway duly replaced and all cleaned up . I was planning on including a picture to show just how much dirty was captured by the filter but the photo is a little blurred. My excuse (and I have been practicing this with racing excuses as there seems to be a real art to do it properly) is that the filter is in a glass container and the auto focus on my camera must have been confused!
I am hoping to do an evening trackday test before going to Thruxton to check it is all ok but I have some more replacement filters if it appears that there is more dirt in the tank. Then I will probably just drop the tank out and clean it completely or buy a plastic tank bag whilst I am at it.
Talking of Thruxton, I called the 750mc yesterday and booked in for Thruxton which is just one week Saturday. Can't wait!
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