week before our first race at Cadwell was really hectic which meant we didn't arrive at the circuit until after 11pm. A big thank you to John who did almost all of the prep work and loading of the car etc. It was an real pleasure to arrive at a circuit without needing to wrap up with multiple layers and with the forecast as good as the proceeding week, we could make use of the good cooling that the new car has.
After a short sleep we awoke to a lovely clear Saturday morning, rolled the car out and headed to scrutineering and the lined up to the qualify session. It seemed ages since I had raced around Cadwell and although I had driven around Cadwell last autumn when test driving the Spire GTR, I still felt as though it would take me a good few laps to get back into the grove for this complicated circuit.
In the build up to the cadwell event, we introduced a new power source for the video camera, a switched 5v feed for the Neuros solid state recorder and a switched 12v feed for the camera, both feeding from a separate 12v battery which we are also using as weight ballast. We had also added a new ‘push to 12v’ button on the dash to tell the DL1 where the lap marker was in the hope that this would provide us with in car lap timing on the palm dash.
The qualify session was to be the first test for both of these developments. The car setup was left unchanged with the exception of the tyre pressures. Looking at tyre wear, it would seem that I am pushing harder on the front passenger side tyre than with my previous car so I have changed from our original diagonal pressure setup where the un-used front is 0.5psi up and the more heavily used outside rear tyre is 0.5psi lower when cold than the other 2 diagonal tyres. For the qualify session, I just dropped them all down with the exception of the inside front.
The first lap out of the holding area was very much a familiarization lap for me and as I came back around to the mountain section, I tried to drive this tight and technical section as I did in the Class C car last year. I slowed for the left hander and then balanced the car on the throttle, accelerating between the left and the right at the bottom of the hill. The problem arose when the car just leaped forward and became quite skittish. By the time I had reacted and jumped on the brakes, I had missed the right turn to head up the mountain and found myself on the slip road for the exit of the circuit! I casually let the car roll backwards and rejoined the circuit whilst most of the spectators watched my every move! Opps, mind you the skid marks which persisted throughout the day looked quite dramatic!
Once I had recovered back to the track, I had quite a few cars to pass which gave me a chance to get my breath back and re-learn the circuit at the elevated pace of the Class A car. I had one other wake up call during qualifying when no 32 did not spot me coming through and I backed out as he spun in front of me !
As I got more confident with the movement of the car through the faster sections and calmed down my inputs in the more complex areas, the times came down. On the penultimate lap I got below the lap record and then on the final lap of the session I knocked another half second from the time to end with a 1:33.4 which is 1.3 seconds under the lap record. Did I mention before that this car has good pace! Oh and we started the qualify session with a Full tank!
We settled back in the pits and awaited the timing sheet before I fully believed the times that the telemetry was displaying.
After a light lunch and trying to stay out of the sun too much, we headed down to the holding area for our early afternoon race. The umbrellas were up, this time to keep cool rather than fend off the rain and the down to the starting line which is the other side of the circuit to the pits/entry.
I tried a new number of revs for the start and it seemed to work really well, getting a good pull off the line and maintaining the lead into the first corner. Looking back on the video, it would seem that I did not use full revs in the run from the line, not quite sure why that is! I was a little defensive and cautious on the first lap whilst the tyres came up to pressure which mean that Steve was fairly close but the car felt very good and the lower tyre pressures did not adversely effect the balance.
I then pushed a little harder and the gap increased to 1.2, 1.9, 2.4 5.49 and then 7.7 seconds. I had been down in the 1.34's but backed off for a couple of laps to cool the brakes and tyres a little, dropping into the 1:37s for two laps and then pushed a little harder to get back into the 1:34's with a 1:34.39 on lap 8 to get the new lap record. I had once last push in the final lap but only managed a 1:34.42, oh well!
It was great to see Neil out in the second new Ful crum and although he did not make the qualify session due to binding brakes, he did complete the race, whilst Tim managed an excellent 2nd place start with a 1:37.01, some 1.6 seconds ahead of the next placed C class car. It was also great to see Henry back at the races and straight up there with 5th in class. Tim followed through on his qualify times with an excellent 2nd on the road at the end of the race, Steve in the 2nd placed Class A car coming in next, followed by John, Al and then Paul after a problem with his gear change early in the race lost him a couple of places.
