Rounds 6 and 7 - Anglesey

The two weeks leading up to the Anglesey round were very much focused on family activities rather than preparing or even thinking about racing and in fact I had planned to skip racing for a bit to be with the family due to my Mums serious condition.

As it turned out the Anglesey race weekend turned out to be a good opportunity to get away from everything, helping the grief process for both Dad and I by doing something very different with some great support from friends and family. We had canceled testing so we turned up, after the very long haul across the country, on the Friday night and walked the circuit, trying to glean as much information as possible from those who had testing on the Friday. Thanks Paul, Neil, Tim and John.

The qualify session on the Saturday morning was my one opportunity to learn the circuit and set two times that would determine the starting grid for the two races. I then would have the opportunity to refine my knowledge of the circuit through the 30min race on the Saturday afternoon and the 20min race on the Sunday afternoon.

We hatched a plan to follow Paul out for qualifying and follow for a few laps to get a head start on the circuit twists and turns. It worked well and it was very helpful of Paul to oblige. Let me say now that they have improved on the already fun circuit at Anglesey and created a fantastic circuit, I loved driving around it and pushing the car to find the time improvements. I also had the palm working for the first time and Tim had placed his sector timing track file onto my DL1 memory stick so I had lap and sector times to look at, helping me learn where to make improvements. Very useful, thanks for you help and development on this Tim. By lap 6 I had a 1:14 time that would have put me on pole and by the end of the session I had completed 2 laps in the 1:13’s to give me a good margin back to 2^nd on the grid.

Here is some in car footage of those first few laps behind paul.

On the telemetry traces attached, the black trace is 1min 14 lap number 6, the Orange is my first 1:13 lap and then the Purple my second 1:13 lap. As you can see from the variance, I was still learning and experimenting throughout the session. The marker point on the telemetry trace is for example at the kink on the back straight before braking into the Rocket complex. On the first two highlighted laps I was lifting before the kink and then braking. By the end of the session I was confident enough to keep on the throttle until past the kink and then do one assertive brake application, slowing from nearly 130 to 40mph for the switchback.

Here is some in car footage of the pole lap.

The 30min race on the Saturday was great fun, hot and hard work but great fun! I had a bad start, partly due to being on the dirty side of the track despite being on pole and partly due to my incompetence. I started with the wrong revs, changed up too early, Steve got in front and I even used the wrong gears through the first handful of corners!

By the second lap I got my head in order and caught Steve, the third lap Steve ran a little wide on the exit of the banked turn 2 and I got a go run and then tow down the back straight and overtook under braking into the Rocket complex. I then put my foot down, still having to correct quite a bit of rear end movement from the still cold tyres and reduced my lap times into the 1:14s, by lap 4 I was into the 1:13’s, low 1:13’s by lap 6 and then cracked into the 1:12’s by lap 9. By then I had also caught up quite a few of the class C cars so the lap times fluctuate a little as I make my way through traffic but I did manage to lower the lap time down to a 1:12.28 by lap 18 and set what is now the RGB Class A lap record.

The telemetry image here is comparing the pole time from qualify in black to my fastest lap in the race and it clearly shows I had been able to make some decent improvements after 30 or so minutes around the new Anglesey circuit. Did I mention I like this new layout?

This race win and new lap record, I dedicate to my Mum.

Between races, the spanner check highlighted a stiffness in the suspension on the off side front which we at the time thought was due to a problem with the damper but as we did not have any spares, we just took the suspension components apart and reassembled. This seemed to fix the problem and after resetting the right height we fueled up and prepared for the second race of the weekend.

The race on the Sunday was a 20 min version and this time I got a much better start, maintaining my lead position and ran quite a conservative race to ensure I collected the points. The track did not seemed to give quite the same grip levels as Saturday although Al did manage a very impressive time in his Class C car, quite a bit quicker than anybody else managed in that class the day before.

You can see from this telemetry trace, taking that of the one above and just adding in the purple trace to show my fastest lap (1:12.7) from the Sunday race that I could not carry the same speed through the fast church corner. It seemed to be a knifes edge between understeer and oversteer for this corner on the Sunday and as this is a 90mph + corner it gets quite interesting! Although the lap time was not quite enough to lower the lap record from Saturday, I did manage to improve my first and last sectors so there room for improvement next time we return.

The second race win of the weekend I dedicate to my Dad on his birthday.