Donington Video Footage

Here are the first few laps of our race. The video was taken from the exit of Redgate.
I have compressed the laps down to have a constant stream of cars passing but the wide screen format did not come through very well.

Donington Telemetry Analysis

A little analysis based on the DL1 telemetry from Donington.

Allcomers qualify session in Orange overlaid onto Robs fastest lap from last year.
Here is some analysis of my first outing in the BDN at Donington and comparing it to Robs run from last year. The second from bottom trace is the speed and the bottom trace is the time slip. You can see a gradually increasing time slip showing the gain received from slightly higher apex speeds and then a drop in the advantage due to being too cautious through the old hairpin. Any gain is complete changed around from Coppice onwards, leading onto and down the back straight. We had a considerable headwind on that back straight as as can be see in the values window, the peak speed on that lap from Rob was 134mph and mine was just 126mph.

Allcomers qualify back straight speed comparison
Here is a comparison of a run down the back straight in the Allcomers qualify, when I was pushing the hardest, up against the telemetry from Robs run last year. You can see that the wind at this stage had dropped a little and meant I was only 3 mph slower but I was able to brake a little later and carry some more speed through the corner. Once again I actually brake a little more gently than Rob does but bleed off the brakes earlier and use more of the run to the apex as a slowing down section. By the time we reach the end of the track allocated to this sector the wind has had an effect again and I am slightly down on the speed on the run down to Redgate on the following lap. This is similar to the analysis I did last year when comparing my laps to those of Paul.

RGB Qualify compared to Allcomers Qualify
Now if we do a complete lap comparison between my fastest lap from the allcomers qualify (first time out in the BDN at Donington) and the only real time that weekend when I was able to push which was the RGB qualify session. The lap time differences here are 1:16.14in black against 1:15.16 overlaid in orange.
starting from the left of the track and focusing on the RGB qualify (faster) lap in orange you can see a better run through turn 1 (redgate) although a blip in the acceleration down to the right hander at the start of the craner curves, a very slightly better entry to the old hairpin but a slower exit to give a very similar first 3rd of the circuit. From here on and highlighted by the vertical marker in the speed/time slip graph is the run up the hill to McLeans where I carry a lot more speed in and just sacrifice a touch on the exit. Redgate and onto the back straight is very similar and then on this lap the wind has much less effect down the back straight, giving me a considerable time advantage along with the extra 5mph (not that 131mph is actually that fast to be honest). I then brake later, carry more speed upto and through the right hander of the chicane without effecting the left hand part.

Allcomers race compared to RGB qualify
The comparison here is just to show how easy I was on the front brakes during the allcomers race when we had to swap to using the smaller disc as a replacement for the cracked brake found after qualify. Here you can see the RGB qualify pole lap in black and my fastest lap of the allcomers in orange. Instead of nice sharp ends to the acceleration zones where I hit the brakes, trying not to linger in a mid way state, you can see nice rounded off lines where I lift the throttle and coast to let the drag bleed off speed rather than requiring the brakes to take the load.

Head wind effect comparison on back straight
One final comparison to show the effect the wind was having, on and off, through the race day. The Black and Orange lines on this back straight section are representative of Robs runs last year, and the purple overlaid line is my fastest sector from our visit there this week. It actually happened in the RGB qualify and was not on my pole lap but with a sector time of 18:07, it was only just 18:10 from my pole lap. Robs top speed between 134 and 135, mine just 129!

RGB Donington

In summary I came away from Donington a little flat with my first non finish of the year and therefore my first non win of the year as well. Maybe more than that though is that I don't feel I was able due to other circumstances, to really push the car to the max and get a representative lap time.

Qualify for Allcomers
I signed up for the Allcomers race to get some much needed addition track time, which meant a very early morning scrutineer session and first out on the track in the morning. My first outing at Donington in the class A car was just about reacquainting myself with the track and getting the most out of the addition power. I have fond memories from last year and love the flowing nature of the track. The car felt a little nervous as I tried to work out where to push and where to concentrate on corner speeds. At the end of the session I did not feel as I had found much grip and was a little disappointed with the 1:16.17 lap time although it was good enough for pole. The general topic of conversation in the pits after the session was that there was very little grip out there, most of the drivers in RGB being about a second or so off their expected times.

Qualify for RGB
The second session on track for us was the RGB qualify session which went much better and I started to get into a rhythm. Before the session Rob (who ran this car last year) suggested I should us more curb through a couple of the corners to improve the times and that worked well. I still had to feather the throttle quite a bit through the craner curves but I was able to get a much better run through Mansfield and run a nice balance between understeer and oversteer through the corner leading on to the main back straight. A touch later on the throttle (or just a softer application of throttle) and I would have to life so that the nose did not run wide at the exist curbing, a little earlier and the car would go into oversteer as the power came in before the rear settled from the apex curbing. I had a string of 1:15's from lap 4 onwards and recorded my pole time of 1:15.23 on lap 6 just before somebody laid down oil around Redgate (turn1). My times after that were slower by just over a second but I was concentrating on improving my run into the chicane and the exit of the old hairpin.
Maybe due to my increased use of the curbs on completion of the session I came in with slightly skewed steering which meant we needed to take the nose off an realign the front suspension.


Once the off side front was realigned, we checked the tightness of the same parts on the near side and John noticed something had been rubbing on the upright. The culprit was the brake disc which had a huge crack that must of occurred as the disc cooled. We spent lunch time swapping over to a spare which is designed for the rear and therefore a smaller diameter but it would get the car back up and running.


Allcomers Race
We just made it out for the allcomers race. A few last minute nuts to tighten and the nose to reattached whilst I strapped myself in. I joined at the back of the cars in the assembly area and then made my way through as we lined up on the grid. During the race, I was not able to push hard in case I over stressed the stand-in front disc so the lap times were not spectacular. A 1:15.74 on lap 4 was a far as I wanted to push so I thought I would have some fun, especially through Redgate as you can see from this photo!



Despite having to take it easy and some sliding along the way, I was able to win the allcomers race :) I was able to spend some time concentrating on maximising the apex speeds even whilst coasting up to most of the corners to reduce the load on the front brakes.



RGB Race
I lined up on the grid in the knowledge that the spare brake disc was man enough to deliver lap times to win in the RGB race even if it was to be unwise to push to the amount needed to brake the lap record. I got a good start and looking back at some of the photos that Dad too that show Tims crash down the craner curves I was able to pull a good lead int he first few laps.


By lap 4, I gad a 9 second lead but going down the straight the car started to dart sideways violently. At first I thought it was steering again but it was trigger by throttle or brake application not steering. I continued on lap 5 at a reduced pace but it was increasingly hard to keep it in the straight line and I did not want to get in the way of the rest of the field as they caught me up. I pitted and after some investigation we found the rear suspension had failed and I was out of the race. First non finish and a win goes to Steve. I guess that 2 point result will be one of my drops in the final points tally! I just had enough time after retiring to see the last lap of the race with Steve and Doug coming over the line in 1st and 2nd, Paul winning class B with an excellent 3rd overall with the second fastest lap of any of the finishers. Al came over the line next to score his first ever RGB race win for Class C and the ever improving Colin finishing a very impressive 2nd in Class C. At this point I feel compelled to say that Colin had viewed my Donington race video from last year which undoubtedly gave him almost all of his new found speed. Well a tenth maybe!

You can see the photos from the award of this race on the all new discussion forum - http://rgb-racing.org.uk

Here you can see the failed part.
Near Side rear lower wishbone failure



Brian was right when he said we needed to do some crack testing! Thats a task for the 5 weeks gap between this round and the next at Silverstone, along with getting a replacement for the front disc and fitting the spare suspension wishbone.

Cadwell Park - July 2008

Before we went up to Cadwell, we had reset the rake in the car back to just under 5mm higher at the rear than at the front to cure the understeer experienced at Brands.

The weather forecast for the weekend was not looking good, so we set the car up for wet settings just in case it was raining hard as predicted. We could then just get the car out of the trailer and head onto the circuit but as it turned out we had much better weather over the weekend but it always looked menacing.

For the qualify session with the rain clouds looming, we went out with the car in wet suspension mode, which means soft damper settings and the front anti roll bar detached. As the track was almost dry when we went down to the assembly area, we chose to use the normal dry tyres. It was an interesting test session, we have never run the car in the setup before, although I was hoping that the softer setup would suite the bumps and undulations of Cadwell.

The qualify session went quite well, without the major drama we had in the qualify session for the first outing at Cadwell a few month ago. The setup gave some interesting results. The increased rake had made the runs through Charlies 1 and 2 very positive and allowed me to get onto the power early without making the car too nervous through the high speed turn1. The softer dampers had given better traction through the very fast Chris curves at the back of the circuit, to the point where I found it very hard to get the rear of the car mobile with the throttle so I could keep a smooth arc on the run up to the gooseneck. This may have been compounded by the extra grip from the rear tyres now running on 7” width rims. The real negative side to the setup was the much slower response from the front suspension in settling down after the many bumps on the circuit. In particular, one area that caught me out a few laps into the qualify session, was the braking into the run up to the complex of corners at the bottom of the mountain. As I came off the throttle at near maximum revs in fourth gear and got on the brakes, the front of the car bobbed up and down like a Porsche 911. That made it quite hard to brake the desired amount and I must of ended up locking almost every wheel at some point in the attempt to slow down for the first left hander. After that short shock I was able to be smoother off the throttle with a more gradual application of the brakes and eliminate the problem.

I managed a 1:33.8 for my pole time, around 4 tenths of a second slower than last time we came to Cadwell. Looking at the telemetry I was a little earlier on the brakes for a few of the corners, although in most of those corners I maintained a little more mid corner speed than before. This may well be due to some uncertainty over the grip levels and the softer setup which compromised the transition into a corner but gave good grip once I was in the corner itself.

The rake setup definitely worked as I managed to improve the first sector (start finish line to the start of the park straight) and the second sector (park straight and the park corner at its end). The telemetry backs up my feeling that I had managed to get a smoother transition onto the brakes into Park corner and have gained some time there. The in car video shows this as being neater than the previous qualify session as well.

Race 1.

It looked like it was going to do as predicted in the weather forecast and actually started to rain heavily just before our first race. In fact it started just as we were to head down to the assembly area and we made the quick change over to run the new wet weather tyres.

As we lined up on the grid, the rain stopped. I made a good start with just a touch too much wheelspin, followed by John who also had a good start and jumped in front of Tim, but by the time I was at the end of the park straight the red flags came out. On the way back around to the grid, I could see a number of cars had come together at the first turn, that included Pauls car up on the grass. As we lined up on the grid we could watch Henry’s, Richard’s and Paul’s cars being collected, each with suspension damage or wheels missing.

The second restart was a little better with slightly lower revs which matched the low grip levels better, this time followed by Tim and the rest of the field who all took the first turn a little more cautiously.

Tim was to have a very good race, being able to create a gap back to the rest of the field in the first few laps and maintain that for the entire 18mins. Meanwhile, John, Al and Steve were to be battling all race, the power of the class A genesis making it impossible for John to pull away even though he was quicker through the corners. Just behind that lead group, Colin and Tim were to be found nose to tail for a number of laps.

I had a fairly uneventful race out front to be honest, the odd slight twitch, one of which Dad did a good job of photographing and as the track dried out the lap times came down. As soon as I saw a 1:34.8, I decided to take it easy and spare the wet tyres. That is 4 tenths of a second off my current lap record.

The rest of the race was plain sailing and we took the chequered flag, a short interview, a laurel and cup and 13 points from race 1.

Race 2 was very similar but thankfully this time without any first lap accidents. Paul had done a great job aided by John and Andy to get his car back to pieces and ready for the second race after borrowing a replacement upright from Al.

Henry unfortunately was not able to get his car back together as his live rear axle had sustained serious damage, Richard was in a similar situation with front suspension damage that was not repairable in the time between race 1 and race 2.

Tim had also been assisted by the many helpful hands in the paddock to repair his rear end damage after a shunt into the barriers at Charlies 1 during the first race.

Race 2 looked again like it was going to be wet but ended up being dry and yet again we were on the wet setup and wet tyres. Oh well at least we know how well that setup works and that the times look good. I had a good start and managed to pull a comfortable margin quickly, you can see from this picture of the start that it is very close grid layout and not the wheelspin from Tim on the 3rd row.

I managed to put in some good first few laps and on laps 4 and 5 I did times in the 1:34s, the second of which showed on my dash as being a 1:34:35, a few hundredth of a second under my lap record. In the end the official results recorded it as being slightly slower, so no new record but good proof that the car is quick even when compromised a little by a soft setup and wet weather tyres. My summary on the new wet tyres is that they work fine in the dry! We have not had a chance to run them in lots of standing water which is what they were intended for but I have now completed two 18min races in almost dry conditions and although they heat up more and you have to be careful not to slide them around too much, they do not seem to give away any noticeable traction compared to the uncut counterparts.

I am really looking forward to Donington Park this coming weekend, a circuit that I had a ball at last year shadowing the Class A cars. My fastest lap last year was just a touch off the Class C lap record at 1:19.33 and Robs Class A Pole laptime was a 1:15.76 with Gordon fastest race lap of 1:14.9.

I particularly like the high speed flowing sections and comparing the telemetry (unfortunately the systems are different so a direct comparison is not easy) and in the Class C car last year I was running the downhill craner curves at 107 mph rising to 110mph and Rob in the BDN was doing 113mph rising to 117mph before braking into the old hairpin.

Pictures from Brands

There were a couple of photographers at Brands who have posted pictures on their sites.

Tracksnaps have quite a few nice photos.
http://www.tracksnaps.net/gallery/080622/Sunday%20Races/AB%20Performance/

Here's one that shows me sliding nicely through the hairpin, you can see my steering angle by the yellow marker on my steering wheels.

Jonathan Bryant also have some nice photos from our Brands race weekend, including some of the Sports and GT series as well RFB on Snappyracers.com.
http://www.snappyracers.com/album/Brands220608/

They have one of me sliding out of the hairpin as well :)
http://www.snappyracers.com/album/Brands220608/slides/IMG_3254.html