Lydden, Castle Combe and lead up to Brands Hatch - phew!

Blog Update

I have had a few comments about the delay in updating this blog so I thought before we head to the next round at Brands this weekend, I should make the effort.

To stop this from being a massive post going, through every item of the last two races I will keep it short and expand a little later. The good news is that both for the Lydden races and for the last round at Castle Combe, I am able to post the videos so they can form most of the commentary!

Lydden
I have drafted a more detailed version of this but quick summary is as follows:
Flew in from South Africa overnight, was collected at the airport and driven to the circuit where my car was waiting for me all ready to go! The glamour of motorsport ☺ Many thanks for Andrea for the chauffeuring, Andy Bates (AB Performance) for transporting my car to and from the circuit and to John for the preparation on the car before and at the circuit. Qualifying went quite well, I came away without the feel that I had the circuit completely sorted but it was good enough to get me onto the second row for both races and considering the jet lag was not too bad.
As I drove down to the assembly area later in the day however for the first race the engine did not want to keep running below 6k so I sat on the grid, in gear, hoping not to overheat. The first lap was quite good, I was quicker than those in front but did not try anything too risky. As we started lap 2, I got a good run on John Curtmore and headed on the outside into the chessingtons drift. It was a little dusty out there but I held the slide until the engine stalled on me, locked my rear wheels and sent me straight towards the tyre wall. Exit speed from the circuit was somewhere between 80 and 90mph I think and there was not a lot of deceleration on the grass! From there on I had a nice view of the Class C race battle whilst wondering what damage there was to the car. It was good to see the close racing throughout the grid and brilliant to see Mike Atkinson take his first ever class C race win. After the race we set about repairing the car with lots of fibreglass and resin and diagnosed the engine problem/reason for the crash down to a split pipe used to balance the carbs. All repaired on the Sunday morning and ready to race for the afternoon. Many thanks for John for the fibreglass repair kit, Andy for the engine diagnosis and John and Paul for their assistance in car repairs. Great team.
The Sunday race was a hot one and I needed to catch up on the learning curve as everyone else had completed a race distance more than me. I had a good start and a great battle throughout the race with Mike Atkinson, John Cutmore and Mike Field. Mike Atkinson drove a great race and was on for a great race win, repeating his win from the first race on Saturday until he spun towards the end of the race, letting John, Mike and I through. John and Mike subsequently being disqualified in post race scrutineering due to reverse gearbox failures, leaving Mike Field with the win and me with second place. The car was quite OK after the accident, the only noticeable difference being a slight reluctance to turn in which we latter diagnosed to be a tracking issue, not too surprising really as the entire left side of the car hit the tyre wall! The main reason however that I was not able to attack as much as normal in the race was that the front brake pads that I had planned to replace before hand but didn’t were just completely at the end of their usefulness. They got hard and very hot early in the race and the braking reduction was quick severe. Time for a change and the need for somewhere to bed them in.

So despite the accident and the lost points from that race, I came away from the weekend with a second place and quite a liking for this small Kentish circuit.

Between the Lydden weekend and Castle Combe, we reset the geometry and competed some more repairs to the bodywork as well as replacing the front brake pads. Took the car down to snetterton to check out the handling and brakes and all was running very well (brakes back to being awesome again!) until the last session where the car started to misfire.

Castle Combe
In the last few weeks we have replaced almost everything you can imagine to trace this misfire, heading to Castle combe with the expectation that we have solved it, only to find that during a very wet qualifying that it still persisted. Mind you I qualified 4th in class despite a 7k rpm limit! Between the qualifying and race sessions, we pulled out the fuel pump, fuel pipes and pressure sensor and replaced with a new pump just in case. The trouble is you need to get the car under good load to find the issue. Well the short story is that it did not fix the problem and as I tried to pull away from the lights at the start of the race, the car died on me and by the time I had it moving, most of the pack had passed, from there it was just a matter of hassling the back few drivers as I could run much faster through the corners but gave away metres and metres on every straight. Quite some fun for a few laps and then as the race progressed and I was on my own at the back, I just concentrated on having fun on the circuit, not slowing down for the corners and sliding around for the spectators! Fun and the circuit is brilliant but I can not help but think I was in for a potential win if the car was all OK, where as I just came back with 3 points instead.

So as we lead up to the race at Brands this weekend I think we have finally worked out the issue resides around the fitment of the carbs into the new AB Performance airbox. It would seem that ever since we first installed this new airbox, the carbs have been sitting at a slight angle and maybe post accident or maybe just because the carb rubber mounts are starting to get looser, they are starting to let some air bleed in under high load and therefore creating the misfire. Hopefully we have this fixed by some alterations to the mounting and edges of the box but we have also modified the original Honda airbox to take air directly from the NACA duct and will run that if we have to.
I am signed up to compete in the Allcomers qualify and race this Saturday and I will use that as our test and then hopefully we will be all set for a great battle in the RGB race on the Sunday. Hopefully!