Brands Hatch June 10th - Qualify Report

Well for once this year the forecast was looking really good for a race weekend. Whilst the F1 boys were baking at Silverstone we were contemplating the effect of 40+deg of track temperature at Brands.
Tony, James and I arrived at Brands some time after 8pm the night before, I unloaded the car whilst Tony and James put up the tent. It was to be our first camping adventure at a race circuit. Just as the light was going, we all went for a very revealing walk around the circuit. There are some curbs which are much more severe than they look from within the car and others where the painted curbs overlap onto just bog standard tarmac. In the later case that’s a simple extension of the circuit which I would never have used if I had not seen it in person.

Signon was at an early 7:30am in preparation for a 7:45 scrutineering session and then almost straight away out to the assembly area for a 9am race. I guessed with a joint A, B and C class qualify that there would be problems with space on the track but there was the added fun of trying to guess what tyre pressure to start with and whether a 15min session would put the tyres over the top.

So out in the first pack in qualify and people were messing about with speeding up and then dropping back to get some space when we would have been much better off just all going for it and making space with subtle changes in pack rather than completely messing up each others laps all the time. The first 5 or so laps were completely written off with other cars well of the pace and running inconsistent lines which makes it really hard to get past. After that the car was not feeling to good, initially I put it down to the temperature but then it felt inconsistent which did not help the confidence to really push. As the time went on the steering was get progressively stiffer which was very worrying.

On one run through the chicane I got it a little out of shape, in fact this lap ended up being my quickest. On the next lap I did roughly the same but entered the corner even quicker because of a better run out of Graham Hill bend. So more of a slide to catch and increasingly stiff steering meant that I went off, well that’s my excuse anyway. Interesting trip over the grass though! After that I decided to call it a day for the qualify session and pulled into the pits. In the pits it was obvious that the bearing that supports the steering column had run out of grease and started to seize up. Fairly simple to fix, with excellent support from Neil C-B for his supply of grease, cheers mate. Looking back at the on-board video the track in front of me when I chose to pull in was looking much clearer. Oh well first time for a mechanical problem during qualify and I had at least set times for both races.

I was in fact hoping to run at the front of the grid for the weekend, I think my expectations have grown a little since the last time!

5th on the grid for race 1 and a dismal 12th on the grid for the second race. Should be interesting.

Post qualify I also realized that the car was still setup at the front for the wet race we did at Thruxton. Dampers rather soft then for a dry hot race! Now that would make a bit of difference wouldn’t it.