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.