Dereks RGB Racing Blog

Rounds 2 and 3 Videos from Brands Hatch

2011-05-18T12:57:00.001+01:00

Race 1 in-car Video footage.

Race 2 in-car Video footage

2011 Rounds 2 and 3 - Brands Hatch

2011-05-18T12:15:00.005+01:00

Rounds 2 and 3 for 2011 were held at Brands Hatch.

Between Mallory and Brands, we raised the rear spoiler and reclined it a little. The aim is to get a little more rear grip but without too much added drag.

A good qualify session, with a lap time of 50.68 giving us 3rd on the grid overall and first in class.

We qualified 0.6sec under the previous class lap record in 3rd place, 0.1 behind Paul and 0.7 behind John, both of which are in the Mid Engined class. My nearest competitor was Al in 5th with a lap time of 51.36.

I had a reasonable start but got blocked behind Tim Pell and Al went around the outside of me at the hairpin. It took me a few laps to get past Al, up the inside at Clearways when he had a little slide, and a few more to get on the back of Tim and Past.

His car has a ZX12 engine with more low down pulling power so it was a challenge to get close but I could brake later and run a faster corner entry.

Up front there was a race long battle between Paul and John.

I was able to pull away from Al and Tim but I had lost too much time on the leading pair so I had to settle for 3rd overall and a class win, 15 seconds behind 2nd, 6 seconds ahead of 4th and 7 seconds ahead of the next car in my class. Along with that we had an extra point for fastest lap, which also happened to be a new lap record of 50.89sec.

In the second race, we had a clear run to another class win. There was a single lap where I was able to keep in front of Paul but he passed on the main straight and I settled into keeping both John and Paul in my sights for most of the race. There was an almost race long battle between John and Paul again, only ended when John retired with bent suspension. Paul went onto win and I came in 2nd overall, 7 seconds behind and 12 seconds ahead of Al, my closest class F competitor. So we left Brands with 2x16points and another lap record :)

So we now lead the 2011 championship with 47 points, Paul is in second with 43 and John in third with 30. Austen, the second placed class F competitor has 28 points also.

2011- Round1 - Mallory

2011-05-05T00:18:00.005+01:00

Our first round for 2011 was an unglamorous visit to Mallory Park.

The car was not substantially different to last year, with the exception of some tweaks to the rear setup and ride hight. The car felt good straight away, with sability through Gerrards and great traction out of the hairpin. In fact after a couple of laps, I was able to get full throttle in 1st out of the hairpin without any wheel spin.
Our qualify time was really good, a nice margin back to the next class F car of Duncan (0.52sec), not far behind the leading 3 mid engined cars and well under the previous lap record with an average speed of 100.89mph)

Our race came around at the end of the day when the rain had decided to make an appearance. I had thought it would dry out but it didnt which left us with a compromised setup which was not good enough for the wet conditions. We had too much roll stiffness which was a problem through the quick and long Gerrards corner which is where most the lap time comes from. From my bad start, I slotted into 6th place, just behind Paul. Matt had a problem with slowing into the Hairpin a few laps into the race leaving me following Paul and Gary.

I did manage to get past Paul for a short time but the car just did not have the grip level that he had and he was soon back past. Looking at his post race video, he had about half the effort that I required to keep the car on the track around Gerrards! (You can just about see the steering angle in the top photo!)

We had enough pace to keep with the two Contours in touch but my bad start meant I was out of touch with Duncan and without the pace to catch him up. In the latter stages of the race, Gary had a spin at the hairpin and Duncan hit the wall on the start finish straight. Thankfully I kept it in the track which meant I finished 3rd overall and first in class for some solid 15 points with which to start the season.

Pre-season testing

2011-05-04T23:52:00.004+01:00

Our pre-season testing outing at Snetterton was to learn the new layout along with a shakedown and a test for some new suspension setups

The circuit is brilliant and as discussed with Jonathan Palmer afterwards, the new corum is a great corner to do brake bias setup. The shakedown test proved worthwhile as it highlighted a crack in a weld on the fuel tank that we had subsequently repaired. We went to test some suspension changes to work on improving traction so that we can start to compete with the mid engined class cars. We proved we could go quite far in that direction without intoducing too much understeer.

Following the test, we backed off the suspension setup a little to give more front bite and consistency as well as our first ever corner weight session with the Fury!

As we spent most of the winter repairing bodywork when we expected to be able to replace with new parts, the developments we had planned will now be released during the season,

From Dereks RGB Racing Blog

The default setup was ready for Mallory, followed by a slight tweak to the aero for Brands and Snetterton. We hope to have a second, more substantial, change to the aero and resulting suspension setup following that. Whether that can coincide with new rear bodywork and the weight reduction that will give us is yet unclear.

With suspension that can travel it's full range, anti-roll bars that do not foul anything, replaced rod end bearings and a decent setup that works in conjunction wih the aero setup, we now have a fury that has some good pace. If only we can get the excess weight out!

2011-04-25T23:52:00.001+01:00

2011Update 1

A quick update before some full reports on our start to the 2011 RGB season.

Car for this year is a development of the fisher fury we started with last year. During 2010 we were able to develop the car from the rear of the grid to one capable of ending the year with 2 class wins and a new Oulton Park lap record.

This year, with a simplified class structure of those with the engine at the front (class F) and those that are mid or rear engined (class R), we will be racing the front engined cars, mostly with similar 1ltr engines. Our engine is a 2005 Honda cbr1000rr, well tried and tested with good torque but about 10 to 15hp down on the new bread of 1ltr engines that are being used by the majority of the field.

Our focus for the year is to continue to develop the pace of the car, specifically by focusing on weight reduction and improved aero and see how close we can get to the pace of the leading class R cars.

Mallory - Final round for 2009

2010-02-01T00:07:00.003Z

Not very much to report for Mallory.

We had a good qualify session despite the wet conditions. The revised front splitter worked well, the car being more stable than the last time we came here and requiring much less effort to extract performance..

I had a good start and a good run into the first corner then disaster.

No drive and lots of smoke!

I pulled over and coasted to pit entrance to find the clutch basket had exploded. I spent the next 15mins watching the rest of the race from the pits with both John and Paul getting past a slowing Steve to go on and finish in that order. Steve came in at the end with his brakes binding and smoke pouring out but because he finished and I did not, he gets the 2009 Class A championship.

Congratulations to John for the race win and the Class B championship.

Silverstone and Snetterton Rounds

2009-10-01T22:08:00.007+01:00

Silverstone

At Silverstone we had the addition of a small new front splitter and the bikesports race had been opened up to include RGB which gave us a good opportunity to do some setup testing. I used the Bikesports qualify session to get used to the track and check the balance of the car ready for the RGB qualify which netted us Pole. For the Bikesports race itself, we added some rake to the car to give better front end grip and I played around with the front ARB a little to get a good balance ready for the RGB race. I also had a little bit of fun running with the leading bikesports drivers and then backed off to save the car and so that I did not get in the way of their race.

For the RGB race itself, starting from pole, I managed an average get away from the line, keeping in front of Paul who was second on the grid but dropped behind the ever fast starting Steve as he came up the inside. Steve entered the first turn a little too hot and I was able to get a better exit and past him before turn 2.

I thought I was a little hot entering second turn myself, only to see Paul coming flying past the entry to the corner behind me. Further back in the pack there was a coming together of a number of cars which brought out the red flags. On the re-start it was obvious the this had included David in the BDN S2 which was a big disappointment as he had been showing good pace. The restart was better and I had a clean run for the first lap in the lead. As I came around for the end of the second lap, I could see that Paul had pulled off before he had past the start/finish line for the first time. After a handful of laps I could see a decent lap back to Steve in 2nd place, put in a quick spurt to try for a lap record and then settled into looking after the car, keeping it smooth and seeing if the new additions to the car were making much difference.

The rest of the race was uneventful, returning yet another race win with fastest lap and a new lap record.

-----------------------------------------

Snetterton

For Snetterton we had a newly designed front splitter.

The data logging showed that we were not getting an increase in front downforce from the splitter design at Silverstone. It would seem that the improved front end grip at Silverstone was resulting from the rake increase we dialed in. This makes sense as its only the first corner at Silverstone that is at any decent speed and I needed to pitch the car in whilst the weight was on the front and the increased rake enabled the weight to stay there long enough for me to get to the apex and hit the power. All of the other corners are either slow or entered under braking and therefore hiding any lift from the front body design.

Again we used the Bikesports race to do some setup with the new front splitter, mainly to test a reduction in rake. We had a good battle until the 3rd place Bikesports driver was taking a few too many risks for me to want to stay close. I then dropped back and pulled in early so we were ready for the RGB Race.

In the race itself, which was televised, I had a good start, lead into the first corner and concentrated on a good first lap to pull out a lead. By the end of the back straight, Paul had passed Steve for second place and from then on all I could see if Paul behind. The gap back to Paul gradually increased from around 2 seconds on lap 3 to nearly 5 by lap 10. We then came up to lap Phil who was dropping oil.

As I came down towards Russels behind a Neil Palmer, we both slid on the oil, with Neil missed the chicane and went over the grass.

I lifted to let Neil re-join the track ahead of me to reduce the risk of being hit, letting Paul reduce the gap down to less than 2 seconds. The last lap was uneventful and I crossed the line for another win, fastest lap and lap record.

The new BDN S3 has been very impressive since its Launch in June.

We go into the last race of the season with an unexpected chance to get the Class A championship. So far with this new car we have completed 7 races with 100% reliability, 6 race wins (1 spin caused by me!) and 4 new lap records! As long as we stay ahead of Steve at Mallory, we can get the Class A championship despite the non finish at Brands and not entering the 2nd Brands race or the two races at Cadwell.

Following Mallory next weekend the car will morph into a new configuration for 2010, more of that later.

Mallory

2009-08-17T22:54:00.008+01:00

Rounds 9 and 10 were a double header at Mallory Park
Mallory is the location of my first ever outright win and the prospect of some close racing between us and Paul.
Qualifying was very close with Paul getting pole with the first 100mph for RGB and we qualified 2nd for both races. All of the top three (including John in the Class B Spire) were significantly quicker than before so it was hard to predict the order before the times came out. The year before last, I was able to go around the outside into turn 1 in both starts so I was not too concerned about starting on the outside in the 2nd slot.

In the first race, I got a really good start and led into the first corner. It took a few steps up in starting revs through the first few races in this new car and we seem to have found the right spot, helped by the softer rear setup of this new car. From that start, I was able to pull out a slight lead, the car still quite lively but better settled than in the qualify session. I held the lead, although Paul was doing a very good job of closing down the gap, until we encountered traffic. Its always a significant factor at Mallory and part of racing of course and Paul snuck through into the lead as we came up behind two back markers. More traffic a lap later as seen on this photo helped to add a greater distance between us as well. As I pushed to close this gap, I locked the rear wheels up going into the hairpin and did my first spin during an RGB race for 3 years. Facing the wrong way around a blind corner is never a nice feeling and the video shows me waving frantically to attract the attention of the other drivers. All of them managed to miss me with the exception of Colin who just clipped the front corner. I waited until all of the cars had passed, spun the car back around and the cross the line. Thankfully it was on the last lap and I had lapped most of the field so I still cross the line in 3rd place in class, with fastest lap and a new lap record.
Here is the video for Race 1:

Mallory Race 2
John, Ian and Brian did a good job in the short time between the two races to repair the nose from the race 1 damage. The crash zone worked well and was not difficult to repair. We had the same starting position and challenger but with some knowledge of the comparative performance. Our car is definitely low on overall downforce as could be seen in the exit speed of the long Gerrards corner and the run through the fast chicane. From the Hairpin down to the start finish and the entry to Gerrards, we were quicker. Due to the repairs, we were not able to change the car much but I did alter the anti-roll bar on the out lap. I did another good start, entered the first corner in the lead again and decided to push hard early on. My first lap, from the stand stil, was considerably quicker than the same lap in the first race and the second lap around I was already under the previous lap record. This gave me a nice gap back to Paul and the car change had made a subtle but worthwhile improvement. I was able to maintain the lead through to the end of the race although I backed off for the last couple of laps following a spin from Paul at the chicane in very similar fashion to my earlier spin and the resulting loss of my closest competitor. This gave us our 4th race win in the new car and overall a good tally of points from the weekend.
Here is the video for Race 2

So a catch up for the season so far.

2009-08-17T09:43:00.015+01:00

Round 1 at Snetterton. - 2nd place

Pole in qualifying for the double header. , In the first race on the Saturday all was going very well until, after leading the throughout the race, the upper wishbone on the offside rear collapsed upon entry to the last corner of the last lap. I dragged the car over the line to get 2nd place. A weak weld on a prototype wishbone had failed and was quickly and easily swapped for a spare that afternoon.

Round 2 at Snetterton. 1st race win of 2009

The following day was to start with the S2 back on pole from the preceding days qualify. A gentle start for the race to check all was correct with the repaired rear suspension and then an increase in pace resulted in my first win of the season. Unfortunately the Palm had crashed during the race, leaving me without lap times so I did not quite push hard enough for a new lap record.

It now transpires that Robin has swapped out our Donington round due to all of the problems with the track alterations and replaced it with another round at Snetterton. Maybe we can go for the lap record with the new car.

Round 3 at Brands Hatch
Round 3 was to be the last outing for the S2 before David took ownership and we concentrated on the new 2009 S3. Pole in qualifying, some half a second under the lap record was a perfect start for the double header weekend. However, pole at Brands is never the advantage you might normally think. For one, the 2nd place grid slot is right next to you and secondly, you are at the bottom of the hill which means you not only need to accelerate up a hill but the car tends to slide sideways towards the pit wall. As I pulled up to the start line, the marshals were kindly waving slippery track flags right in front of me to highlight the large quantities of oil left from the previous Formula Vee crash.

As I pulled away from the lights and controlled the inevitable wheel spin on the remainder of the oil, Steve behind and John beside pulled alongside. As Steve tried to go around John, he moved over further than the available space and knocked the front of my car sideways into the Armco barrier. A rather nasty crash against the Armco bent the front suspension and the resulting front wheel alignment steered the car towards the 2nd barrier for a second impact. The rest of the race I watched from the end of the pitlane, with a mangled car against the wall beside me, to see Steve win and a very close and exciting class C / B battle in the mid field. Of course we were all very disappointed with the situation, complicated by the car being sold to its new owner, David, who was going to be collecting the car after Round 3 the following day!

Round 3 at Brands Hatch on the Sunday was eventful with Paul winning his first Class A race in the new Contour. No pictures I am afraid as we had already headed home to start the repairs.
Some considerable effort ensued by John, Tony Dad and myself to the get the car almost back together. Steve Harris from Concept Designs did a fantastic job to supply replacements wishbones and then the following weekend we were all joined by David for the final finishing touches before he took the car away.

Round 4 and 5 at Cadwell Park we attended in support of David in his first outing in the S2. I just wanted to make sure it all stayed together but it was very strange being at a race meeting without racing. The new S3 not quite being finished, we sat out these two races but enjoyed the RGB show. David did very well to get up to speed with the S2 over the weekend at such a challenging track. Some unfortunately teething problems for Paul meant that he was denied 2 further victories and Steve went on to amass some significant points in the class A championship standings.

The S3 first test was a day at Snetterton. Well what can I say, the car worked all day without a hitch, was lovely to drive and quick. We had a few items to test and a basic setup to find. I did a couple of gentle runs at the start to check there were not basic leaks or parts rubbing and even that that pace it felt stable. As we turned up the pace the car responded well, if anything being a little light on the front end.

Dad took some great photos which showed that the rear body work was being compressed considerably by the airflow, so the understeer in high speed was due to the efficiency of the rear bodywork. We spent the rear of the day making from modifications to balance the downforce and get a good grip without loosing lap times.
Brian and Ian really have built a very good car. Even more impressive than the speed is the up front reliability. Here you can see Ian doing some pressures and spanner checks.
The major change for me was the introduction of a wind deflector in front of me, during the earlier part of the day my head was being pushed around quite considerably by the wind to the point that if it got pushed sideways half way down the straight, I had to wait until I was braking before the strength in my neck was great enough to counteract the wind and straighten up my head! Fun going down the straight looking sideways at 140mph! In the afternoon we tried some alternative nose sections to gain some aero balance as well as some improved supports for the rear bodywork to cope with the downward pressure at full speed.

Round 6 and 7 were over in Anglesey - Two race win in the brands new car!, the exact opposite side of the country to us but it’s a brilliant circuit and we all enjoyed just the most glorious weekend away last year with the weather and racing. It was a real balm for the sad week that proceeded it last year and lots of friends asked whether it would be comfortable returning this year. I can honestly say that I have only good memories of Anglesey, of course helped by winning both rounds last year and dedicating them to Mum.

Now with a new car this year, we were not expecting to be in a winning position straight away so we booked in for the days testing on the Friday and made a long weekend of it. The testing went well with a few aero modifications to test and yet again excellent reliability. The qualifying was wet and our first outing with the new car in the rain! I qualified 5th on the grid for both races but feeling quite confident as the car was good to drive in the wet with good traction, I just needed some more seat time. I think I could have put it on pole with some better laps near the end of the session as it dried out more and if I had the confidence through more time in the car. The first race was very wet again the car had good traction, enabling me to overtake a couple of places on the first lap. I added a turn of front anti-roll so that I could lead on the front end a little more, modified the brake bias and went after Steve for second place, overtaking at the end of the straight into Rocket In. The middle part of the race I was chasing down Tim in the Class C Striker who was really moving. Admittedly the power advantage of a Class A car is reduced quite substantially by the wet conditions but it took some going to catch Tim who has showing the rest of the Class C driver the way all year. I caught Tim and as neither of us are actually racing each other, being in different classes, he did not make if difficult for me to pass. From there I backed off a little to manage the risk and really enjoyed the car moving around in the slippery conditions. When I came around for the final time I could hardly believe we had just won the first race outing for the new car. There were some big smiled in the pit lane as Brian and Ian (responsible for building and designing the car) and John (my race engineer) joined me in accepting the winner laurel. Race 7 on the Sunday morning was dry so a few subtle changes in the cockpit and a good test of the dry weather speed of the new car.
Again the car felt very good, with good straight line speed and even though the data logging would show that I have a couple of corners to improve on to equal the pace of the old car, we were quick enough to come through the field. From 5th on the grid we came through to the lead and broke the lap record I set last year in the progress. Two wins in the first two outings and still no mechanical issues for a brand new car!

Rounds 8 was return to Brands Hatch for a single round. Race win - 3 out of 3 for the new car!

I just managed pole, with an excellent 2nd place on the grid by John in the class B Spire. The car was not perfect with lower downforce than Paul or John but I was able to pull some lead out during the early part of the race whilst everyone else was in the pack and trying to navigate around the oil left by the preceding race.

As the race progressed others in the pack found that the oil which covered quite a lot of the racing line was not a hindrance to a good lap time. At the front I was not able to see what others were doing and to play it safe, I stayed off the oil and ran a rather unconventional line. As we neared the end of the race, Paul who was in 2nd place, was able to close down the gap as we navigated around the back markers. At the end we crossed the line under a second apart for the new cars 3rd race win out of 3 starts!

Snetterton Race Videos

2009-03-26T16:16:00.002Z

Here are the race videos from our first and second rounds for 2009.

Saturday Race1 - Aborted 1st lap due to red flag when Aaron spun and was collected by Bob

Saturday Race1 - Restarted race and my early battle with Steve

Saturday Race1 - Part2, lapping a few cars and a rather eventful end to the race when my rear suspension failed on the last corner of the last lap. Dragged the car over the line on three wheels to get 2nd place.

Sunday Race 2 - Highlights of the rather more successful Sunday race. From Pole to race victory with fastest lap along the way. The car was working better as I had the correct tyre pressures.

Autosport

2009-03-21T22:51:00.001Z

Page 120 of this weeks Autosport covers the fun of last weekend at Snetterton

Testing Tomorrow

2009-03-12T23:38:00.002Z

A very quick post to bring you up to speed on the developments this week, off for a days testing at Snetterton tomorrow.

B&C Express were fantastic and delivered a new sprocket and chain the day after it was ordered so that was installed on Tuesday evening.

Old and new sprocket comparison

Sprocket off

Sprocket On

Drive Shaft On

Air filter cleaned and refitted.

The car is not all completed and packed up ready for the short trip to Snetterton tomorrow morning. Saturday we have qualifying and an afternoon 30min race. Sunday we have a 15min sprint race in the morning.

2009-03-06T23:18:00.002Z

With just one week before we do our first test and only 8 days before our first race, its just down to the small things in our prep list, thankfully.

This week, John and I, attached the Shaw patented towing eye and cut out a suitable slot in the front bodywork. The slot is a little larger than the attachment, to ease the fitting of the bonnet and at worse will just a little more cooling for the front wheel. It actually looks quite neat in Red and does not protrude beyond the front splitter which is nice.

Its attached to the front chassis support for the floor and wedged between the two bars so the entire car could probably be hung from it without a problem! Its also nice and low down on the car which will aid the marshals if they need to drag the car out of a gravel trap as it will stop the car from digging the nose in.

Apart from a good spanner check, the only other task at the front of the car was to bleed through all of the old brake fluid and replace with nice clean Castrol Response 4. We did that for both circuits and reset the brake bias. We have already replaced the front pads as the old ones were almost complete down to metal, interestingly the brake bias was wound all the way to the front. I must have been moving this forward throughout the two long birkett sessions, compensating for the reducing front pads, although I have not recollection of this being the case. Interesting how your concentration is focused on the variety of cars and huge variances of speed in a race like that.

At the rear of the car, the K&N filter has been cleaned and refitted, the repacked exhaust and CAT has been fitted (pending a couple of spacer to help clear the rear from the undertray that I need to fit). All of the interior panels have been refitted, some even repainted, belts installed and seat refitted. If I decide against giving the dash a quick spray then all I need to do is refit a few screws and its all complete.

Items for the coming week are down to tracking and sorting out the chain. The chain at minimum needs to be swapped for a new one which should be with us by mid week but that's a quick job. We may also have a replacement rear sprocket through before the test session on Friday so we may have a go at fitting that. Trouble is it requires removing the driveshaft from the diff which is a new activity for us so we may opt not to undertake that in the time we have! You can see from the photo that the sprocket is showing signs of wear as you would expect from Ali being attacked by the chain for a race season.

The start of the season is really close and its all getting exciting. Oh and my new helmet and HANS device has arrived so it feels a little like Christmas.

2 weeks to go!

2009-03-01T20:36:00.004Z

Inspired by seeing Pauls new car fire up for the first time this weekend, I thought it was about time to get my old car running again and ready for our first race in just 2 weeks time.
Since the last update, I have had the CAT fitted, changed the Oil, Oil filter and fuel filters, replaced the front brake pads and checked the exhaust packing.
This weekend, I put some fuel into the car and checked for any leak around the filters that I replaced and after fitting the final fastener, I refitted the repainted interior panels. The belts and seat are back into the car. I am waiting for some exhaust packing to arrive and then I can refit the exhaust system to the car. Other than that, outstanding items include fitting the front towing eye once its finished being painted, a slit needs to be cut into the front bodywork for the towing eye and the I need to check the tracking.

In the meantime we have purchased a newer motorhome like the one pictured here. We decided to go with something large enough for Dad, John and I to comfortably spend time in, a garage at the rear and facilities to enable us to use to for holidays as well as the racing.

We can rebuild

2009-02-12T12:06:00.002Z

Just a really quick update to say that the car is back in the garage and we can now start to put everything back together again. The replacement paper elements for the Fuel filters have arrived so we can refit those and then attach all of the bulkhead panels.
That will be everything completed from the front of the car back to the main engine compartment bulkhead. We can then refit the rear body work to get the correct measurements for the exhaust alteration. That can then go to Steve for him to work his magic.

Outstanding items are:

Fit new chain (awaiting delivery but its a quick job anyway.)
Replace oil filter and fill with Oil.
Repack exhaust can
Refit camera
Fit new exhaust end inc Cat
Fire her up!
Check geometry.
Race
Sell

The Start of 2009

2009-01-26T17:08:00.007Z

So the 2009 racing season is nearly upon us.......

This is a strange time for club racers. The new season is matching towards us but with a few months still to go, some are frantic in the garage with new builds whilst others are trying to piece together their cars from the winter rebuilds and any major maintenance (Like Adrian, see image!). Its also cold and the short days meaning its often time in the garage wrapped up and with fan heaters on!

For us its a little different this year. We have a new car being build and an existing car in the garage. Its seems unlikely we will have the new S3 in time for the first race of the season at Snetterton, or if we do it will be before we are able to do any meaningful testing.

Because of that, we have decided to keep the existing S2 which we ran last year quite successfully. We will run that for the first few races whist we get the new car through some shakedowns and some basic setup work.

That means that we need to get the new car ready, whilst Brian works on the new car. Mostly this means we are looking at general start of season preparation.

For 2009, we have a couple of regulation changes that we need to make modifications to the current car to meet.

The new regs include the need for a front low level toe eye so that the marshals don't have to use the roll cage to pull a car out of the gravel trap. Honestly I think this is a sensible choice, especially with a mid engined car with a low front as it will help to stop the car from burying itself into the gravel trap. John has busy making up an attachment after making up a template the completely changing the design after viewing the way in which its been implemented on the S3.
The second change to the regs is all together less sensible. In fact its absolutely stupid and just adds cost without any benefits. From 2009 onwards we now have to run a Cat converter on the race cars. Even engines back to the 90's with carbs, running in class C, have to have them attached! So we are working out how to fit one on. Of course the cat contents could well disintegrate very quickly with the overfuelled exhaust gasses and have no advantage to the environment at all. On that point, the fuel and emissions of racing are so insignificant compared with that of the traveling to and from the race meetings as to be laughable. Lets just tell people they are not allowed to use their cars, motorhomes to travel on recreation. That means you cant drive to the park, to the sea side, car boot sale, golf club, gym, football etc etc.

The other items on the list are just the normal maintenance activities for the start of the season. At the weekend we progressed the following:

Brake pads - fronts replaced and waiting for brake fluid replacement
Wishbones inspected and front near side swapped with spare
We found a few suspension spherical bearings that are a bit stiff so they have been replaced.
I removed the rear bulkhead panels so I that we can get to and replace the fuel filters. With the panel off we can also clean up the engine bay a bit more and check all of the exhaust bolts etc.
Oil drained so I can do the filter and fresh oil. Cracked testing all completed and all results were clear.

We had a minor set back last week when I did a precautionary check of the spark plugs and one did not come out cleanly. Thankfully Andy Bates came to the rescue once again and was able to clean up the thread so once we collect it from his tomorrow we can finish off any remaining items. When the order from DT comes back we can refit the fuel filters and plug it all back together again.

Birkett Relay Race

2008-11-03T11:12:00.002Z

Our end of season was the Birkett 6 hour relay race on the Silverstone International Circuit. Here is the video from my second 30min stint, split into 3x 10 min session on YouTube.

Videos and Pictures from Oulton Park

2008-09-28T10:09:00.006+01:00

Race 1 -
This video shows the first two laps where just missed Martin as he stalls on the line and make my way through from 5th to take the lead at turn 1 for lap 2. It then shows the penultimate, on which I set the fastest lap of the race, and final laps for the victory.

Race 2 -
4th to 1st in the first corner and then a simple run to the checkered flag.

Rear Suspension

2008-09-27T13:54:00.002+01:00

Back from some time traveling in Australia to find out that John has been speaking to Brian at BDN Sportscars to source a replacement rear lower wishbone which is bent after the round at Oulton Park
I will add a photo shortly but the rear bar of the lower wishbone on the near side rear is very noticeably bent upwards. I must admit I did not notice it at the race but then I think it happened in the wet qualify and I did not push to the limit in either of the two races at a circuit I am no expert at. Could that be why I did not notice what must be a rear wheel with very little camber and some toe out instead of the norm toe in?
Could this off during the wet qualify session have caused the bent suspension?

The replacement wishbones have arrived and changing over is a reasonably short activity and we have plenty of time before the final round of the 2008 championship.

Oulton Park Double Header - Championship decider or will it go to Mallroy?

2008-09-09T14:43:00.004+01:00

Quick summary from Oulton Park as I am traveling.

Turned up to the most rain I have seen all year, the paddock area was flooded and lots of reports of treacherous conditions during the Friday practice. Saturday morning dawned with the pause in the rain, although the surrounding area seemed to get rain all day.

The qualify session was wet although it was not actually raining and the car felt good although not very predictable at the rear. Well actually it was ok but the throttle sensitivity means its hard to invoke a slight slide in the wet or to control a slide to a small angle, it it either sideways or not which means its hard to feel the changes in grip level. All was going well until about half way through the session when I slided more under braking and turn in to Druids than I had expected and had a fun session of traveling on the grass and over the gravel trap. In fact I though it was ok once I held the slide over the grass but it was quite a wake up to realise I needed to accelerate, whilst off the track, to be able to clear the gravel and rejoin. From then onwards I did to push hard enough which mean I did not make use of the increased grip that was evident by the other improved times int he last couple of laps. This left me 5th in the first race (and behind Steve) and 4thin the second race. My worst qualify for over a year I think.

The first race went well for me, I just about missed Martin who stalled on the grid, got to 4th on the run down the cascades, 2nd after the straight and chased Steve for the rest of the lap. Steve was experiencing some brake issues and therefore lifted early for the entry to the first corner of lap 2, which I slipped past and pulled out a good lead. That is where it finished and although Oulton is a great track, it was a very quiet race for me.

The second race, at the end of the day, looked like it could be effected by the rain and therefore we decided to run the wet weather types to cope with any sudden down-poor. As it was the race was completely dry. I had a great start and drove around the outside of the 3 class C cars in 1st, 2nd and 3rd place which gave me the lead after the first corner. From there I took it easy and concentrated on the race win for the championship points.

So 2 race wins and fastest laps have given me 26 points from the weekend. Paul in class B and my closed rival for the overall Championship had a 2nd and 1st in a reduced points round and John in class C did not convert the weekend into 2 wins so the points are looking good.

Interesting results with brakes as well.

At silverstone, the newly supplied brake discs from Hispec failed after just 1 qualify session.
The much smaller spare for the rear, when fitted as a replacement at the front, lasted a full race.
The spare disc, supplied originally from Hispec to BDN Sportscars, ran for the qualify and 2 races at Oulton faultlessly.

Interesting dilemma for Hispec, original manufactured discs work fine, smaller spare by them worked fine, newly manufactures replacements (and there were 2 remember) both failed first time out! What to do then Hispec?

Derek

Silverstone: DONE, Oulton Park: BRING IT ON!

2008-09-04T12:32:00.007+01:00

Silverstone Summary
As I mentioned in the rather brief summary of Silverstone, it was quite a successful day but also frustrating.
We went out in qualifying with the new discs, straight from HiSpec. I took it easy for the first couple of laps, let the brakes get hot and then cool and then put my foot down. Something like 7 of the laps in qualifying would have put me on pole in last years race and we were substantially under the lap record although I don't think I was driving brilliantly. Rather too many missed apex's and messy exits.
Once we came in from the session, we did a normal check over the car and were astounded to find the near side from discs to be cracked in two after just one session!. We checked the other side and found hairline cracks emanating from every mounting hole. Wow what Qualify Control.

We reverted the car back to running the original front disc on the near side and the spare from the rear (quite a bit smaller) on the off side, as per Donington and prep'd the car for the race.

In the race, I wanted to be nice and easy on the brakes so that firstly I did not overheat the small front discs and secondly did not have any issues with the potential imbalance of running two different specification of disc. My start was not amazing and I arrive into turn 1 with Steve ahead on my left and Doug beside me on the right. I held station, tentatively hit the brakes and slotted in behind Steve. Turn 2, both of us missed the apex. In my case I was trying to use engine braking up to the apex to save the brakes and this just helped the rear around a little more than I had expected. I was quite happy to sit behind Steve as I learnt new ways to drive the car with plenty of engine braking and to get a feel for the brakes but that was short lived when I had a good exit from the last corner on the start finish straight right at the time that Steve had a bad exit. By the time we reached the start / finish line we were side by side and I just slipped in front at the turn-in for the corner. From there I was able to steadily pull away without putting much strain on the car and ended the race with a decent margin. It was quite an interesting exercise and definitely concentrated your mind on carrying apex speed and maintaining pace even if you cant get the lines perfect due to a compromised entry to a corner. We even managed to get under the existing lap record, set by a Radical SR4 2 years ago, all be it considerably slower than we managed in the qualify session. I may have over done the gently gently approach!

Oulton Park
The car is now all ready for our next round at Oulton Park this coming Saturday.
At the Oulton Park trackday, we noticed a little liquid around the near side front but could not identify where it came from. Once the car had been sat in the garage for a couple of days it was obvious that the near side front brake caliper had a small leak. The internal seals had once again failed, good these HiSpec brakes! So last we fitted some new seals and made a few other alterations to the brakes to try to give them an easier time and minimise any potential issues with these.
The car is also in wet weather settings, ready for what is forecast to be a rather damp weekend.

As Hispec have been incapable to admitting there are a problem with the discs they supplied last time let along deliver any replacements, it was a fantastic to hear that Brian has found another spare pair of new front and rear discs that we can use this weekend.

As we lead up to the Oulton Park double header, here is a short in car lap of the Oulton circuit. I wonder if we will see if like this at the weekend or whether it will more closely resemble a pond!

Silverstone Video

2008-08-29T16:37:00.001+01:00

Silverstone summary

2008-08-23T23:13:00.002+01:00

Summary for today:
Pole position
Both brand new discs cracked !
Reverted to spares
Race win
Fastest lap (whilst hardly using brakes)
New lap record

Quick advert for the new drivers forum
http://rgb-racing.org.uk

Suspension and Brake refit prior to Silverstone

2008-08-20T14:48:00.003+01:00

As of last night the car is back together and almost ready to roll for the Silverstone round this coming Saturday.

Replacement Front Discs

The discs finally arrived from HiSpec after lots and lots of chasing but to give them their credit, they are a perfect fit. Here you can see the new front disc reattached to the near side front wheels where we had the failure at Donington.

Here you can see the comparison between the old front and new front discs, as I have chosen to run both fronts on the new discs to keep them even. The original disc from the offside will become the spare to sit along side the spare rear disc we already have which we used temporarily on the front.

Crack Testing of Suspension
The result of the crack testing was that we saw some small cracks in both of the top wishbones on the near side suspensions. I took these over to Steve at Concept Designs and he has re-Tig welded these points. In fact once the plating had been removed, he could not see any cracks in the welds themselves so it looks like it was just plating deep. Anyway he has added another weld on top to be certain and these are now back on the car.

Last night I refitted these suspension back on the car. All we have to do before our Friday evening run over to Silverstone is to check the geometry and add some fuel.

Crack Testing

2008-08-17T12:51:00.003+01:00

Click on the image below to see the crack testing images for the nearside rear.

Crack Testing - Near Side Rear

Click on the image below to see the crack testing images for the offside rear.

Crack Testing - Off Side Rear

Click on the image below to see the crack testing images for the nearside front.

Crack Testing - near side front

Click on the image below to see the crack testing images for the offside front.

Crack Testing - Off side front

4 wheels back on my wagon!

2008-08-06T22:44:00.003+01:00

Cool drifting video here - its from Silverstone where we race next. I enjoy sliding sideways a lot but I am not sure I can get the BDN quite this sideways. Worth a try maybe! Great editing.

DRIFT SILVERSTONE 2008 HD from Clashproduction on Vimeo.

Quick update on the racing front. Last night we refitted the rear suspension. Well when I say we, I actually mean John did. Paul and I just stood around talking about what to do next year! So the car is now back in running order. We are still waiting for the new discs from HiSpec so it wouldn't be at full speed but if we completely ran out of time it would be serviceable. They are supposed to be complete by now but not sure when we should expect them. This disc replacement is a very quick job so no worried there. Next on the list is a crack test, we have all of the chemicals needed, now we just need to knowledge!

Donington Video Footage

2008-07-30T13:08:00.002+01:00

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

2008-07-29T16:55:00.005+01:00

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

2008-07-25T23:08:00.006+01:00

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

2008-07-13T19:18:00.009+01:00

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

2008-07-01T17:13:00.003+01:00

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

Brands Hatch June 22nd Telemetry Analysis

2008-06-27T18:53:00.006+01:00

So a little post race weekend reflection and analysis by reviewing the telemetry from the DL1.

In summary, I have managed to improved my best sectors through paddock and clearways at Brands during the qualify session. In the first race I managed to improve on my best sector for druids. The Graham hill and Surtees sectors however were quite a bit slower than pre-season testing back in April.

Through Graham hill for example, my best this weekend was during Race 1 with a 8.21 seconds, some .2slower than fastest which was set in April testing.

Its a similar but worse picture for Surtees, my best in race 1 was 9.83, in fact I did a few at that pace over the weekend but that does not compare too well to pre season testing for that sector at 9:45 - almost half a second there.

The telemetry trace image here shows Surtees, the black trace is from pre-season testing, green for the qualify pole lap and then purple for my fastest sector in the first race in June. In both of my June sessions I was slower on the entry of Surtees although by the second race I had learnt to drive around some of the understeer and reduce the reduction in speed at turn in almost by half

On reflection I think I ran the rake of the car rather too conservatively at Brands this time around. The reduced weight over the front and reduced aero effect meaning I had to get off the throttle for longer in order to get the nose into the left hander of Surtees. From the telemetry, I am about 4 to 5mph slower than before through the initial left hand part although I am back on pace for the apex and right hander.

Even if I compare my race pace this weekend to the previous time we came to race at Brands, therefore going with a more conservative approach than you might see in testing, its still those two sectors that were slower this time around albeit by a smaller margin. If I could have driven those two sectors as quickly as back in April, I would have reduced my race pace lap time down by a couple of tenths and therefore lower the lap record a little more.

I am however quite pleased with having achieved three new best sector times and the car feels better and more consistent through the entry and exit to clearways and although a touch slower through the apex of Paddock Hill bend, it feel more stable on entry and I was able to push more on the exit, giving me a better run up to the hairpin.

Our next outing is back to Cadwell for two races next weekend. I think I will put the car back to a slightly steeper rake so that we don't suffer from understeer through the two technical and fast corners that lead onto the all important back straight. I will be compromising a little for the very fast turn one but this was fine earlier in the year, and of course I will have to be careful through the entry to the mountain section where I had my 'moment' in qualifying last month! It will be interesting to see if the new 7" rear rims help at all through the long high speed corners at Cadwell.

Brands Hatch June 22nd - Snetterton Replacement Race

2008-06-27T17:37:00.007+01:00

The replacement race for Snetterton was held at the end of the day on our return visit to Brands. The entry list was determined by the list of entrance to the Snetterton round and the grid was determined by the qualify times used earlier in the day for the Brands round.

As I rolled up to the pole position grid slot, the marshal told me to be careful on the start due to the oil on the track, right where I would be setting off from - great!

Whether entirely due to the oil or whether partly due to my lack of skill, I had a rather poor start, with both Steve and a rather impressive Doug, getting in front of me for the first lap. The entire field managed a very neat and uneventful first corner which is not easy with Paddock Hill on cold tyres. I might have been able to take a chance into the hairpin but though better of it and just followed Doug and Steve down to Graham Hill bend.

Just as I turned into the hairpin I saw Paul flying up behind me with dust and tyre smoke following as he locked up and span off into the gravel trap! Opps. Al has a great video on youtube of this entry to the hairpin on the first corner, with Paul flying across the track in front of him. Al managed to retain his position and can be seen here on the run down to Graham Hill bend, defending from Tim in the Fulcrum.

Doug missed the apex for the left hander of Graham Hill bend and both Steve and I had a great exit, I kept really close to Steve as he slipped up the inside on the entry to Surtees. A short dab on the brakes to compensate for the cold front tyres and both Steve and I were up in front of Doug by the time we were at the apex of Surtees.

I then latched onto the back of Steve and followed him out of Clearways and down the start finish straight. Down the straight, I managed to get a bit of a tow from Steve, it would seem that Steve's engine has a little more poke than mine but my exit through clearways was more decisive than Steves and I was able to keep very close to his tail. Here you can see my poking my nose out from behind Steve as we pass the line.

Past the start finish line, I moved to the right and placed my car on the inside at the turn in point to Paddock Hill. Steve did not try to defend and I took the lead on the apex of that corner and held to from that point onwards.

The rest of the race was quite uneventful for me, I was able to steadily pull out a lead on Steve and Doug, who had a great race long battle, to end some 22 seconds ahead. Steve came in 2nd place, just 2 tenths of a second ahead of Doug in 3rd, with Tim leading the Class C battle, ahead of a close run battle of John and Al for 2nd and 3rd in Class C. The top Class B finisher was Josh in 11th overall, to give him his first ever race win. Excellent job Josh, whilst Stephen Dean came in 2nd and Adrian finished 3rd in class B

So another very successful race weekend and although I would have preferred to compete this round at my home circuit of Snetterton, it all helps with the championship points position. Again the car was faultless during the weekend adventures, although there was still a little too much understeer for my liking but it did provide a nice stable platform for the race, minimizing chances of my making mistakes

Brands Hatch June 22nd

2008-06-27T16:39:00.008+01:00

Brands Hatch on June 22nd was our latest round in the RGB 2008 season as well as hosting the replacement round for the weather aborted round at Snetterton.

It very nice to have a number of friends, and friends of friend to come down for the Sunday. John was down as usually to help with all things mechanical, Dad was down to do some photography. Tony came down with the boys for support, also joined by one of his new work colleagues and her family. Finally Neil an old friend who I used to race against online before I took up real racing was also along for the race day.

Qualify Session
The Qualify session went very well, I had to bed in some new front brake pads as well as scrub in a new near side front tyre which meant I needed some space on track for some abnormal braking applications and also to run at a decent pace from the outset so I had a fun first lap, passing quite a few cars! In the end I did not quite manage a time to equal our earlier visit to Brands in April, let alone the pre-season testing times but a 50.83 was good enough to give me pole by 1.25seconds back to Doug, who put in a good performance all weekend. Martin punched in a very impressive lap time in the class C car of 52.47 to get third overall on the grid, a time that is 8 hundredths of a second under the current lap record. Paul qualified 6th overall on the grid, a couple of tenths off his own lap record, 2 places and a tenths or so ahead of Colin, the second placed class B car. Here is some in car action from my pole position lap.

Here is some in car action from the first few laps of qualify as I passed through traffic and got the brakes working correctly.

Race 1
Here you can see the pack as we all head down through Paddock Hill bend for the first time. I had a reasonable start, managing to keep in front of Steve and Doug. I was probably a little conservative into the hairpin, where Steve tried to come around the outside but he could not convert that into a pass on the run down to Graham Hill bend so I kept the lead. John managed a good start to jump ahead of Martin, who was followed closely by Tim Gray and Paul. As you can see from these two pictures, the entire pack managed a very neat run for the first few corners, with no incidents at all! It does look as though Richard and Tim might have had a slightly nervous experience of paddock hill however, being that far out to the outside!

Martin kept the inside line for the hairpin and regained 4th overall which left us with a nice picture on the run down to Graham Hill bend.
You can see the start of a battle here for Mat and Al, just behind Paul that would run for the rest of the lap as Al struggled with under inflated tyres due to a faulty pressure gauge.
By the time we came around to the end of the first lap, I was able to pull out a slight lead, enabling me to rejoin the normal racing line and set about building a gap back to the rest of the pack. By lap3 I had a 3 second lead to Steve who then retired due to a hole in his water radiator which left Martin in the class C car as second on the road and by the end of the race I had a 27 second lead. I was not quite able to put in the same pace as I did in qualifying but I did record a 51.01 second lap, a couple of tenths from my lap record set back in April.

The car performed very well, with just a touch more understeer than I would have liked which may have been the reason for the slightly slower times compared to April. The new brake pads were great once they had settled in and I still love driving this circuit. The blast down to Graham Hill bend and the slides through Clearways especially.

Anglesey Lap Record video

2008-06-19T11:39:00.002+01:00

Here is an in car video of my fastest lap from the Saturday race at Anglesey. As its the first time we have been to the circuit, this will be the new lap record for a class A car!
(you can go to Youtube to see a higher quality version)

Rounds 6 and 7 - Anglesey

2008-06-18T17:27:00.009+01:00

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.

Championship Points

2008-06-16T11:59:00.004+01:00

Here are the current championship points standings. Its really close up top, with just two points between Paul and myself, oh how those missed fastest laps have made a difference Paul! Its still going to be hard to keep the leading class C drivers back if we don't return to getting more than 6 drivers each race in Class A. Hopefully Buzz will be back with us and Bob has been bitten by the racing bug after his very impressive debut at Anglesey. Great to see Neil up high in the standings as well. This coming weekend we have round 7 at Brands as well as the replacement race for the aborted round 1 at Snetterton at the beginning of the season. Its a shame we are not racing at Snetterton this year, I was would like to have the lap record at my home circuit. By the looks of the entries, Class A will get full points in the first race this weekend but not the second as this is based on the entries for the first round at Snet.

Round 4 - Cadwell Park

2008-05-19T17:57:00.011+01:00

The 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.

We now have a three week break before our first ever trek over to the new Anglesey circuit!

Videos from Cadwell

2008-05-16T11:05:00.002+01:00

Here are a couple of drive by videos taken by David from the USA from our race weekend at Cadwell Park.

Drive by on the Start/Finish straight during qualify session.

Drive by up the mountain section during qualify session.

Finally for now, here is an in-car video of my pole position lap. 1.3 seconds under the previous lap record held by Gordon. The lap time for pole was a 1:33.39.

Round 4 - Cadwell Park

2008-05-15T08:00:00.000+01:00

Photos from Brands Race

2008-05-02T17:47:00.002+01:00

Here are a couple of photographs from the race weekend at Brands.

Firstly a picture of the car after winning the race on Sunday.
And secondly a picture of the new race road train for 2008. This picture shows the new motorhome, the existing covered trailer I was using last year and the new car beside it.

News Paper Article

2008-04-30T16:42:00.005+01:00

The EDP and local Mercury paper also carried a short mention for Paul and I.

2008 Rounds 1 and 2 at Brands Hatch

2008-04-30T16:34:00.000+01:00

Two weekends ago was our delayed start to the 2008 championship.

Due to the engine problem and lack of running at Snetterton, I booked in for the Friday testing and headed down in the new motorhome with some trepidation after seeing the horrible weather forecast.

Amazingly and in no small part to the handywork from John, expert advise from Brian and Ian Baldwin (Of BDN) and some spanner work from myself and Tony, everything on the car worked first time and stayed working throughout the Friday test, Saturday and Sunday racing!

Apart from the engine change, we didn’t make many changes to the car form the final pre-season test, we took the ballast positioning and ride height changes from Snetterton over and modified the tyre pressures a little to compensate for the changing weather conditions. Amazingly the weather stayed clear all of Friday and the times looked very promising from the first session. In fact it all went so well, I opted out of the final test session in the afternoon to conserve the tyres and make sure I did not over push and cause myself to make a mistake which might compromise the following days racing.

The most challenging corner at brands is Paddock Hill bend, a downhill blind 4th gear corner with a change in camber mid corning. In the Class C fury, you pitch the front end in quite hard and have a slight oversteer run all the way through. Just before the end of the drop and before the suspension compresses, you straighten up the steering a little to control the slide and then add a little more steering before the edge of the track gets to close. The speed therefore is very dependant upon the entry speed and your nerve. The entry speed also is critical to the run up to the hairpin as the blade engine does not have much power to increase the speed on the uphill run to this second corner in the lap. The class A car is slightly different. Firstly you arrive at the entry to Paddock hill much faster which gives you more work to do on reaching the required entry speed and getting a late enough turn in. Once you have turned in, and in the BDN with the new ride height, this is nice and sharp, you can choose the attitude through the corner with your right foot. It’s a blast to be able to just eek out a slight slide with adding more power, still bring it in a little and straightening the steering as you reach the bottom of the hill and then blast back up the hill. Of course I had to recalibrate my entry to the hairpin due to the increased speed up the hill! I also had to try a few different techniques into the hairpin to reduce understeer as the car is very quick to settleing back down after braking and therefore releasing the weight transfer from the front. A little trail braking worked well and let me be more progressive when getting back on the throttle for the sprint down to Graham Hill end, which can be taken in one long lunge, using all of the available revs in 3rd gear.

Saturday dawned with a soft drizzle after a night of rain and for the late morning qualify I ran it on the softest of front ARB settings but kept the dampers as per normal dry running. Qualifying was the first time I had been out in the new car in the wet, despite the weather over winter and the car seemed to work very well in this setup but I was only just quicker than Martin in the leading Class C car, despite being considerably quicker than any Class A competition, which implies there is more to come from the car and myself. By the end of the session I was starting to get the feel of the car and be less conscious of the extra torque and its propensity to spin up the rear wheels. I do however need some more seat time in the wet to try out softer options and to allow so weight transfer to help reduce understeer and feel confident enough to keep the slides for much longer

In the next wet session I will run a softer damper setting to see and maybe even disconnect the front ARB altogether.

For the Saturday race, it was quite damp and I therefore kept the same settings as qualifying (soft ARB position) but as it dried out this gave me a little too much understeer in clearways for my liking and lost me a bit of lap time but I was very pleased to have broken the lap record with a 50.95 in those conditions. As far as the race was concerned, I got a good start (my first standing start in the new car) and just kept my foot down. By the end of the second lap, I had a 4 second gap back to Martin in class C as unfortunately Steve Robinson in the next best class A car dropped out with a clutch problem. By lap 4 I was lapping the back-markers and taking it fairly steady with some many cars on such a tight circuit. Martin did a very good job to finish second overall in a Class C car, 20 seconds back from me and Paul crossed the line in 3rd overall 8 seconds back from that and a couple ahead of Tim in the new Fulcrum car on its racing debut. In the middle of the race I had some fun getting through the lapped traffic, on one lap I blasted down the start/finish straight at brands to find the track full from left to right with 4 cars all battling amongst themselves and a flurry of blue flags!

Sundays race was dry although there seemed to be the option of rain throughout the morning. By the afternoon we were sitting on the bank by the exit of Paddock Hill bend with just a jacket on to keep the wind chill down. For the race we reverted back to the stiffest ARB setting and although the official 750 timing sheet does not show, the DL1 recorded a 50.58 lap time. I guess as the official timing does not reflect this, we will have to do with the 50.95 from the damp session on Saturday as being the new lap record! That’s not quite as low as the 50.45 I managed in Friday testing but a good improvement over last years times for class A. Interesting the theoretical best is now a 48.99 so I need to try harder when we return later in the year! The race was split into two, with a red flag as the medic attended one of our new racers, Darren Gay who put his car into the barrier on the entry to Clearways. The race ended with the same positions as the Saturday race. Myself winning, Martin in 2nd for another Class C win, Paul in 3rd for the Class B win and closely followed by Tim and John. The restart was a short 7 lap sprint but a 10 second lead over second.

So overall it was first great to be back racing, second it was great that all of the work we did on the car was successful and the times and results point to the potential of the car. The one downside to the weekend is of course that there is rather a lack of competition in class A at the moment although I am sure Steve will give a better showing at Cadwell than both of his shortened outings at Brands

I am very much looking forward to going back to Cadwell, I love the circuit and the car should be lots of fun there. In prep for Cadwell, its nice to see that the spanner check has not highlighted any maintenance issues and apart from fuel and the new power feed to the on board camera, its ready to roll already.

(Pictures to follow)

Brands testing and racing this weekend

2008-04-16T10:17:00.005+01:00

This coming weekend we have our first round of the year now that the snetterton even was canceled. In fact we have a double header and on top of that I am also testing this coming Friday at Brands Hatch. Now that we have the car running, we spent most of the weekend refitting panels and auxiliary components. I almost forgot to refit the heat protection between the driver and engine which could have created a rather hot test for Friday despite the poor weather forecast! Unlike Tim, the focus was really on just getting the car back together in its original state but we did improve a couple of items in a very small way to make it easier to work on in the future. Not quite in Tim's league where his rebuilt became almost a completely new car, but we did some!!!!!

We have slightly modified the end layout of the exhaust to minimise the reflection increase for noise testing as well as making it easier for the noise tester to see where the exit is and therefore where to place the noise meter. The pipe will now exit where the top light cluster sat on the passenger side. The extra length is all thanks to a V8 landrover. The exhaust is now repacked and it will be interesting to see what noise reading we get. The details for the testing at Brands include, for the first time, a notice that we will all be noise tested. Oh how the complaints from a very small minority can have an effect on thousands of people!

One item that we noticed when getting the car back to working order but not related to the snetterton race was a bent top wishbone on the drivers front corner. We have swapped this out to the spare, a nice and simple process on this new car and the only thing that needs double checking is the camber setting. Of course the camber is a simple in place adjustment in itself.

This weekend will also be the first run out for the new race support van / motorhome so that will be fun, staying in the paddock with the rest of the racers and having somewhere to change, freshen-up and relax.

Engine Running !!!!!!

2008-03-30T23:21:00.001+01:00

Finally she runs!!!

The plan for today was to check the cam sensor rota which was had swapped to make use of the changed position from the 2000 model and to check the crank sensor setup to see if that had changed in the 2005 design. With some diagnosis from Brian and some comparison and logic deciphering from John and Tony, we swapped the crank position disc over from the 2000 model, moved the engine to Top Dead Centre and then positioned the Cam session rota to a position half way between the 2000 and 2005 model locations. It would seem there are quite a few differences between the 2000 and 2005 models. We had experience from Brian around the differences between the 2000 and 2004 models but Kawasaki have changed the generator, cam rota sensor position, crank position disc and probably a few other items I have probably forgotten about. Any way after a week of uncertainty we now have a car that runs, and have warmed it all through for some considerable time to check for oil and water leaks, of which there are none. All we have to do now is to put all of the panels and other items together and try to do a test of everything before the race in 3 weeks time.

Round 1 - Snetterton

2008-03-22T19:48:00.004Z

We went to Snetterton with high hopes after winter testing and fired up for a pair of races. I had entered in for the Allcomers race on the Saturday and the RGB race for the Sunday. Saturday was changeable in weather but stayed dry for the allcomers qualify and race with Sunday forecast to be wet.

Allcomers race on Saturday.
We all went out for the qualify session and there were cars everywhere. The nature and fun of an allcomers race is the variety of cars but it does make the qualify session very tricky. For the first couple of laps I just gently made my way around, be careful with the new car and picking my way through the traffic, just behind Paul. In the paddock, I must have knocked the driver side mirror as it collapsed on the outlap, making it hard to see behind. As we came out of Russels three laps in, the engine sounded and felt a little flat and I could not keep up with Paul's acceleration. As I came up to the entry for the back straight, I turned my head around to look behind, compensating for the lack of rear mirror and noticed a lot of smoke. Strangely there was no drop in oil pressure so I wondered if it was engine or a tyre rubbing. I came off the racing line and slowed considerable and brought it back around to the pitlane. As I stopped in the pit lane I could see loads of oil dripping from the engine compartment. Opps!

Engine Issue
Once back at the trailer we set about the task of trying to find the hole in the engine where the oil had escaped. It took a while but we eventually found a small hole just above the clutch on the main block. It would seem that the clutch basket had exploded and a small piece had entered the engine and ricocheted off something and exited the block, followed by quite a bit of the oil.

The hole was low down in the block and the oil had just sprayed out into the engine bay without making a major drop in pressure. Of course once I stopped in the pitlane, it all drained out through the holes in the undertray! Sorry to anyone who found the oil on the circuit.

One saving grace is that Andy (AB Performance) had brought along my spare engine to this race so we did have some hope but this was going to be a touch challenge as we had zero experience of engine changes in this new car. As it would turn out, its quite a different story compared to a blade engine change in a class C car.

We spend the afternoon stripping the car down and trying to work out the plan for the installation of the new engine, made a little more complicated by the replacement engine being a 2005 model compared to the 2000 we were taking out.

As there were small pieces of metal flying around the engine, we had a major task to clean up any items there were needed to transplant into the new installation, the most complicated of which were the dry sump components. We headed home on Saturday night and spent 3 hours in the garage with parafin and an air compressor cleaning out the sump pan, dry sump pump and tank, along with all of the pipework.

Sunday Race
On a very wet Sunday morning, we were joined by Andy from AB Performance and Brian and Ian from BDN to start the install. Looking back on the situation now, we were attempting a fairly impossible task of doing a complete installation of a new engine model whilst at the track side. We completed a number of items but decided by mid afternoon just pack up and retire to the garage and do things in a more relaxed and controlled environment. Unfortunately for all of the competitors on the day and although it did not seem so at the time, quite fortunate for me, the weather was so bad that the entire race day was called off, with the final decision being made at lunch time. It would have been good to see how well the new wet pattern tyre performed but this was we are all still on zero points.

Replacement Week
I will outline in a separate post the items we had to change over and the steps to diagnose the new engine transplant, but the short story is that we spent the entire week trying to get the engine components swapped over, built up, installed, wired and plumbed in. The engine did not want fire once we had all of the required items installed and so started the debugging process for the new engine process being mated to the existing 2000 loom and ECU. The newer models have quite a few electronics to get around to run in the race car, such as power limiters in the lower gears and a speed limited in 6th. With little time to spend in the garage during the later part of the week and a number of failed attempts to get the car powered up, we were left a little deflated. The engine was getting fuel and seemed to be sparking but was just producing lots of back fires with the timing appearing to be miles off.

Quick F1 Practice Link

2008-03-14T11:46:00.003Z

A 5 mins extract from the Friday Practice sessions for the Australian GP for those of us in the UK that did not have any TV coverage last night. From the excellent Axis of Oversteer blog.

Much Oversteer from Axis of Oversteer * on Vimeo.

In-Car Video setup working.

2008-03-13T15:26:00.003Z

The bullet camera and Neuros solid state video recorder are installed and finally working in the car. Many thanks for Tim H for the suggested setup and to the 'Posh' in Posh'n'BECs Birket team, Mr Neil C.B for the loan of a 4 pole mini jack to Phono cable to replace the faulty item that Maplins supplied.

Here is the very quick test. Subsequent videos should be longer and considerably more interesting!

Telemetry Analysis - Just 4 days to go!!!!

2008-03-12T11:14:00.011Z

So with just 4 days to go before the first 2008 RGB race and 3 days before the Allcomers which will be my first race of the year, the car is sitting in the garage almost ready to roll.The BDN between Riches and Sear. Thanks once again to Jamie for the photos.

The focus of work over the winter has been to get the car to fit me and provide the right feedback to help me to reach its limits. We so far have not worked on improving the overall speed of the car with the exception of getting the weight distribution, ride height and brake setup to suit me. The Palm is now installed and working on the dash and this weekend I will be able to test out Tim's new software for the sector timing. All we have left to complete is the installation of some new bonnet catches and the new bullet camera although this is playing up at the moment and may need to be sent back for a replacement which will mean we won't have a video for the racing this weekend which is sad. The bonnet catches are just to stop the rear rub from moving backwards at high speed and fouling the tyres. The relaxed run up to the start of the season, unlike Tim's situation, has enabled me to reflect upon the winter testing and look at the telemetry from the DL1.

The telemetry shows a noticeable improvement in speed throughout the lap due to the focus on ride height and brakes along side increased seat time.

In the following telemetry trace you can see the fastest lap from the pre-Christmas test in black and one of my quicker complete laps in red from the most recent test, both at snetterton in very similar weather.Telemetry track comparing laps from the last two tests at Snetterton

The second trace is a zoomed in section focusing on the run up to Riches and then leading on to Sears. Here you can see the improved braking and less understeer from the first apex onwards which helps me to get on the power earlier and run a faster exit. Boy thats becoming a quick corner with a mid corner speed of 97mph, but although the improvement is quite evident on the trace, it only made a 10th of a second difference!

Telemetry trace for Riches corner

An additional 0.4 of a second is gained from a better run out of Sear and down the back straight. I don't think this has been effected by the changes to the car, instead I think the improvement is based on increased time in the car and getting used to the turn in characteristics and learning how to be smooth on the throttle with the vastly increased torque of the ZX12 engine. The slide characteristics of the BDN are quite different to the Fury of last year and in the first test I was just concentrating on understanding how to use the mid engined layouts different weight transfer to improve the turn in and apex accuracy. With this latest test, I could help the car to turn with the weight of the rear and then balance before the apex, focus on the apex with small steering adjustments and then be ready to control the exit line with the throttle as soon as I had the line for the apex correct. Mind you this all happens quite quickly so it will be interesting to analyse the consistency with which I can replicate this in the race situation

Sear and the back straight at Snetterton

The main chunk of time with this latest test has been under braking for the Esses and the run through there to the exit of the Bomb hole. Some 0.8 of a second from this sector alone and its quite plain that the later and harder braking through the left hand turn of the Esses, a later turn in which results in a better acceleration run up to the bomb hole and a slight brush of the brake with my left foot rather than a complete lift keeps the red trace of above the previous black trace almost all the way through this sector.

The Esses and Bomb Hole corners

Snetterton Test - February

2008-02-19T15:42:00.006Z

Last weekend was the second pre-season outing in the new car and the summary is that it went very well. My overall impression from the day however is that his car is just a complete laugh to drive. Its quick, responsive and gives great fun. To be honest I did not want to come in and a couple of times I only enter the pitlane because the fuel level was so low! You can just about see from these pictures that the front of the car is no longer higher than the rear. Paul and I ran a few laps line astern to get an impression of relative speeds again. Its quite hard to do this on a trackday with other cars of course because of the different performance and driving experience levels so it was good to be on the track together again.

The first outing was just to bed the new Ferrodo DS2500’s in and to see what the 13” rear wheels were going to be like. They both felt fine and the setup modifications combines with the braking modifications all came together nicely.

Leading up to this test, we made a couple of setup changes and the results were very promising. The front weight transfer is now nicely controlled on entry and as you transition into a balanced throttle at the apex and increasing throttle application from there on the front end really grips. The only adverse effect of this change was in the two very high speed corners, Turn1 and Corum where the rear was a little too lively.

One thing I was very pleased at was the progress we have made on the braking. Well when I say we, what I actually mean is getting the car to a point where I feel confident when hard on the brakes and with a feel that enables me to modulate pre-lockup.I can get a bias balance which works for all of snett although if I was really pushing in a qualify lap, I might still need to make a couple of in lap adjustments for T1/T2 and the Essess.

Towards the middle of the day, we made a couple of anti-roll bar changes to see the effect with the aim of calming the rear down a little through the high speed corners. Going forward there might be some time to gain through some small damper changes and a change in the location of the ballast.

The modification we made to the seat are spot on, I am now held in enough by the side of the seat to be able to attempt left foot braking into the bomb hole rather than needing to lift just before entry and it stops one more transition as the car gets towards the apex as I am already on the throttle pedal.

Outstanding items leading up to the first race are video and palm installation as we ran out of time before the test and to get the new graphics / colour scheme on to the car. Just 3 weeks left until the first race!

Towards the end of the day I had the chance to drive Rob grants car again. The last time I drove the car was as part of the Birkett relay race. This time Rob had made some setup changes and it felt really good. In the picture here you can see me driving around Russels in Robs car with Neil just behind.

750mc 2007 Awards Dinner

2008-02-19T13:07:00.005Z

Here are a collection of photos from the 750 motor clubs awards dinner for the 2007 season held on the 2nd Feb. Quite a number of the drivers and partners from the RGB series attended for a good fun night of racing chat, wine, dinner and dancing!

Yellow cage, sunshine and new seat

2008-02-10T15:02:00.000Z

The lovely weather this weekend meant I could get the car out of the garage for a change and a good opportunity to take a few photos for a change.

First item to notice is that we have changed over to using the 13" rear wheels, party cost, partly aesthetics and this is the main part of my next test in a weeks time.
From the front here you can see the newly painted yellow roll cage. This a throw back to the Fury which could be stopped from a distance because of the yellow cage, so John suggested we do the same for the new car. So, we did. Well John did!
The next job on the list was to make the final wave of modification to the foam seat so as to provide leg support. In this photo you can see the final shape, giving much better side support for my left leg to help support in the high speed corners when the g-force builds up. Because we are on road legal tyres and are not allowed to run wings, the g-force values are not excessive, during the first test in the new car I realised the without side leg support, my left leg was being pushed to the side quite a bit. Its not an issue to hold it in place but it does increase the time it takes to bring my left back for a quick gearchange or even more importantly some left foot braking. It seems strange to read that back but its surprising how subtle you need to be with these light weight cars and when your cornering at over 100mph, be quick and accurate on the pedals makes quite a difference to the times. After the photo was taken, I finished applying the blue tape covering.

Down at the front left corner of the seat, you can also see on the photo the new Neuros solid state video recorder which is sat (if not fixed) on top of the DL1 data logger. Hopefully I will have the bullet cam before the next outing at the weekend so we can test the plan for improved footage for the 2008 racing season. You can also see the note on the steering wheel to remind me that I have new brake pads installed and that I need to bed these in next weekend. The Ferrodo pads have quite a essay to describe the bedding in process!

One final photograph of the car as it stands as we head to the second pre season test. I hope to have the new air intake design and colour scheme in place following this test and then we should be ready for the first race of the season. When is that again, oh yes just 5 weeks time (or 24 days)!

Brake Bais

2008-01-20T18:52:00.000Z

Not too much progress as I am still recovering from the Flu. I did however manage a short time in the garage this afternoon to modify the ali panels in the footwell so that I could fit the new Brake Bias adjuster to the brake pedal. I have attached the other end to the dashboard just to the right of the speedo which means I can turn it with my right hand. There is one small adjust left to do, to shorten the cable a touch to remove some of the tension but we are nearly there. This should enable me to really get some confidence in the braking and reduce the lap times a bit more.

Bias Adjuster, Snet telemetry and Palm

2008-01-17T11:39:00.000Z

I was not expecting to do much of an updte tis week as I am supposed to be in the USA. Instead I am mostly in bed with the Flu. Despite this, there is some progress.

Firstly the new Brake Bias adjuster has arrived from CompBrake. During the first test at Snetterton, I never really got 100% comfortable with the feel for the brakes, especially braking through the left hander into the Esses.

Looking at some comparison data from Robs last race at Snetterton, he definitely brakes later than I did in my first outing in the BDN and even through I carry a higher apex speed through the right hander of the Essess, Rob is quicker through this sector than I. Something to work on and this bias adjuster should get me part of that way. I hope to be able to to both extremes of front and back bias to get a feel and then find a suitable starting position. When qualifying for Snetterton in the Fury, I used to make a couple of brake adjustments throughout the lap to cope with the straight line braking into Riches and Sear and then more front bias for the braking whilst turning for the Esses and Russells.

The tyre situation has not progressed quite as well. Polley don't have any 15" AO48Rs in stock and don't expect to until the end of Feb. Looks like I will be testing 13" wheels on the rear!

As I may have mentioned before, the plan is to run a Palm Pilot on the BDN to give timing related information, fed directly from the DL1 telemetry box as per Tim and Colin Chapman. Tim has been very kind to make a few adjustments to the code to support sector times, the first development of which can be seen in this image. I very much like the idea of also being able to see an elapsed time counter as our Qualify and Race sessions are time relating and during 2007, I always wondered how long was left and had to work it out from the lap counter whilst in the heat of battle.

If I am feeling better by the weekend then we may also get the front brake seals replaced and make a start on the bias adjust fitting. The next test is planned for the middle of February.

Jones in 3 way newspaper scandal

2008-01-14T13:28:00.000Z

New Year Press Coverage
A few weeks ago, I received a call from Lewis Beales, a journalist we had met at a couple of the RGB races this year. The interview with Lewis covered the ups and downs of last year, my reasoning for moving to Class A for this year and my aspirations for the 2008 season. During the first week of the new year the article, slightly modified for each different paper, was published in the Eastern Daily Press, Eastern Evening News and the Wymondham and Attleborough Advertiser. You can click on the image here to see a larger version if you would like to read the article taken from the EDP.

Meanwhile, not many developments on the new car since the new year, due to work commitments and being hit with the Flu. I have however developed a list of the items I need to do or purchase before the start of the season which is just 9 weeks away on March 16th. The list mostly comprises of consumables but after a very informative visit to Tims, I now have an idea for a bullet camera and solid state recorder to use with the BDN as well as how to link up a Palm Pilot to the DL1 so I can view lap times and some live telemetry data live in the car. My level of understanding of the DL1 telemetry analysis software is greatly increased as well and I have a list of areas resulting from the first test at Snetterton that I can work on to reduce the lap time based on improving my driving and a couple of areas of investigation on the handling side.
The 750 motor club website has the finalised calendar for 2008 here in PDF format, along with the finalised regulations again here in PDF format. No major changes except for the rain light needing to be on permanently and the introduction of a new 'Wet' pattern version of the current Yoko AO48R, which we saw in the draft regs at the end of last year.

2007 - End of year

2007-12-31T17:05:00.000Z

One final posting before the new year celebrations kick in.
Just a few updates for the car over the Christmas period. I now have a fully calibrated fuel stick which will be especially useful as I plan to run some extra fuel as the ballast I need in the short term until I get the car to a point where I want to corner weigh and set the location of ballast. I have also removed the spare upright part of the roll cage that Rob used to mount a head restraint. This is way above my head and the resulting gap is perfect for a modified air intake for the air box, as per a single seater.

Apart from those small items, we have a couple of modification to make to the cockpit, extending the seat to better support my legs and some sort of simple left foot rest beside the clutch. Not quite as industrious as some others like Tim but the car was in very good shape when we picked it up which is nice.

The new year should see an order going into Demon Tweaks for some consumables, such as chain oil, engine oil, etc, which will mean we are fairly well setup of a few tests. One the list of items for the next two tests are:

Test with a lower front ride height to see how that effects the mid corner behavior in medium to fast corners.
Continue the tests started in the last session to understand what the car feels like with a full range of adjustments on the rear dampers and the front anti-roll bar.
Test on a rather more complex circuit than Snetterton, something like Cadwell for example so I can get a feel for undulation and rapid changes in direction.

One last big thank you to the many people who have helped me over the last year of racing and Happy New Year to all. Just 11 more weeks to go before the first round of the 2008 season!

Derek

BDN - First Test

2007-12-16T22:32:00.000Z

Snetterton, Saturday 15th Dec. Cold but dry and almost sunny at times.

Aims

Shake down of car although not expecting any major issues, we had made a new seat, modified the steering position, dash mountings and break pedal setup so there were items that needed testing.
For me to get used to the car and its basic balance, increased power over the Fury
For John to get used to the operational support side of the car, ease of turnaround from a session (fueling, visual checks, ease of access, bodywork removed etc
For us to gather some basic information as to suspension changes and the resulting feel of the car.
Initial weigh in
Feel and running of the car in cold conditions (oil and water cooling) as it may be like this at snett in March for the first race.

Shake Down went brilliantly.
We spent a few short sessions just getting used to the car and finding a good starting point for the brake bias. Steering position is great, small padding area needed for left arm, dials all accessibly, telemetry working. The seat is good but I could do with more side of leg support as well as a better clutch foot rest for the high speed corners.

Basic Balance
Very good, in fact I got into the swing very quickly and was able to try lots of different styles. Balanced is a good word for the car, I do of course need to get more used to the added speed and therefore the larger amount of time spent slowing down as well as the ability to use the wider power band to smooth my inputs. A good example of this is the first corner at Snett. Initially I was going from 6th down to 4th for this corner, running a good line through, on the power for the 2nd apex and full throttle from there to the braking zone for the 2nd corner. Arriving at that braking zone at the top of the rev range for 4th gear. This felt good but gave a lot of work to get down 2 gears before turning in to the first corner. After chatting with Paul I tried going down just 1 gear, carrying more speed into the first corner and using the extra pull of the ZX12 out of the corner and found myself arriving at the braking zone for the 2nd corner considerably faster! Now of course that leaves me more work to do for that 2nd corner but hey!
All of this is just observational at the moment as I am yet to download the telemetry let alone compare to Robs data from the 2007 season.

Operational side – well we found it takes a little practice to remove the rear body work and this is a common activity as its needed for every refuel. We may alter this but for now we either need to bond in the fastener sockets as they ping out when you remove the bodywork or change to using a different type of clip as used on the front bodywork. Re-fueling is easy especially with the new setup we have. It uses quite a bit more fuel though so we need to get used to that and we now have a good way of measuring the fuel level so I can calibrate this in the garage over the next few weeks.

Setup
At the end of the day, we made some basic suspension changes, mainly focusing on the front dampers and gained the results we expected which was great. We tested full stiffness on the front dampers and then a middle ground as the base setup was almost at full soft on the front. Our next change will probably be to change the rake of the car, adding some forward weight and seeing what effect that has on aero balance as well.

Initial turn in gets my thumbs up.
From there to apex is a little pitch sensitive for my liking but there are quite a number of options, including trailing throttle to work the rear a little more.
Apex to exit is again very good, maybe a little soft in roll for the dry but I need to try a more technical circuit to be sure its not just masked by grunt!

Post Christmas Diet needed?
Weigh in was excellent, with almost zero fuel we are well under the min weight so we can either used extra fuel in reserve as ballast and give some margin for red flags/restarts etc (tank is foam filled and in the centre of the car so no movement or balance issues) or we can use ballast to help corner weights.

Cold Weather
In the 4deg weather we had at Snetterton we needed to partially block the water radiator at the front as well as the oil cooler mounted in the passenger side pod so as to get any decent operating temperature! Tyre temperature was not difficult to achieve and was more balanced on cold tyres than the Fury used to be.

So overall a very good day was had. Car worked well, it has given us the confidence to continue on with some of the upgrades we want to do over the Winter period and I am lookind forward to 08!

2008 Challenger - BDN race car

2007-12-16T22:31:00.000Z

Before I go into a lot of detail about the new car, I had at least mention that we had a great time during the Birkett 6 hour race at Silverstone. I have some notes and photos that I will make into a post of its own.

A couple of weeks ago, John (now named Champion race engineer!) and I headed all the way over to Herefordshire to collect the 2008 race car. Brian, Ian and Rob have continuously developed this car of the last few years, culminating in a good number of race wins this year in Robs progress to 3^rd overall in the 2007 RGB Championship.

Their focus has now moved onto developing an S3 model and so the option of buying the current S2 presented itself quite a few months ago. Brian and Ian gave us a very extensive walk around the car, going into details of how and why it has been developed as it is. Along with the documentation, it was a great handover.

The car has been in its new home for the last 2 weeks and each time I have been in the garage, the car has become increasingly less complete! Rob, as many who follow the RGB series will know, is about 9 feet tall and therefore his seating and steering wheel position are quite different to my requirements. John and I have so far, reposition the steering column and made a new seat, along with fitting my new 6 point harnesses. As we have moved everything down by quite some distance, we have also dropped the dash lower in the cabin which allows us as a next step to remove the top 2” form the trailing edge of the front clam, as it attaches to the dashboard.

My seating position is quite laid back and my eye line is well below that of the existing bodywork so this is the last of the items on the must do list before I can get the car out on track. One main benefit we are hoping to gain from this modification is to allow substantially more air to reach the rear spoiler where before it was being direct over the passenger compartment and missing the rear of the car.

To further this improvement we also have plans to relocate the air intake from in the centre of the car and instead make use of the body work cowling that sits behind the driver head. As my head is so much lower than before, we can use the top of this cowling as an air intake a bit like an offset F1 air intake.

The first planned outing for the new car is Saturday 15^th at snetterton so all we have to do is keep the car in working condition, holding off from any major work before that point. Once I have a base line indication of the cars feel and performance with me driving, we can look at the bodywork of any other modifications to suite.

We have kept the same DL1 telemetry setup as used last year so we should be able to do some good back to back comparisons to see which areas I need to concentrate on with driving and where any improvements may have come from modifications.

An exciting few months ahead I think, despite the lack of racing and full steam ahead for the first races of 2008 in March. Only 4 months left!!!

Some more progress.

In the last week we have brought the car back into working condition with one exception.

The seat is now complete, although I need to get some more gaffa tape to make it look better. The seat belts are in and although we were concerned with the top adjusters being too close to my neck, all seems to clear ok. With the steering column in the right place, seat and belts sorted , we were able to see the line we need for the front body work. This was marked up against the top of the dashboard and cut away. The view out is much improved, it should help more air get to the rear spoiler and it also improved the look of the car as well. More of the impression of a radical from the front.

The one item that is holding us up at the moment is that we found a considerable amount of play in the bias adjustment for the brake pedal. John is sorting out the spherical bearing for this as we speak and should be back by the weekend. Of course we will then need to find a way to estimate the correct bias from which to start!

So with the exception of new tyres, that is all of the ‘have to do’ items completed. It would seem that Polley don’t have any 48R tyres in stock at the moment so I cant even replace the existing used set let alone test the new ‘wet’ tread pattern for next year. Not a very good state when introducing a new variable that all of the drivers will have to take into consideration.

Final 2007 rounds at Snetterton

2007-11-04T16:46:00.000Z

Race one on Saturday
Due to the rather truncated qualify session for me, I started the penultimate race of the season behind the two class B leaders of Paul and Colin as well as behind Mike Atkinson and John Cutmore.
I managed to get past John on the first lap, passed colin on the next and then lap 1 latter passed Mike as well.

I swapped places with Mike again on lap 5, then a lap later retained the lead. Well that is the story if you look back at the race results but the start finish line is on the opposite side of the track to the main back straight where most of the slipstreaming happens. Mike and I actually swapped places a number of times, we just returned to the same position by the time we completed the lap. It was quite a risk free race from my point of view, the car being well under control and within the pace most of the time and its always easier at Snetterton when there is only two cars in the picture.

With the battling with Mike for the lead and with Paul needing to come from the back of the grid, Paul managed to get fastest lap in class B with a time quicker than Mike and I in class C even though he finished down in 18th place. So in front of us were just the top three Class A cars for Rob, Gordon and Steve. Another victory for Rob in the car I will be running next year and another win for my 2007 season as well!

Race two on Sunday
There was some debate on the lead up to the race that I had actually one both championships before the second race. As we all go racing for the fun rather than the glory or price money there was no point in just taking the start and then pulling in and sitting out the race! So the final round of the season was all about finishing for me, oh and not getting disqualified I guess. I had also already sold the car so I needed to return the car in one piece. I was also thinking that I had only ever finished 3rd (once) or won at Snetterton and the racing is always lower risk at the front.

I spent most of the race, keeping off any of the curbs, controlling my speed, running behind Mike whilst wishing we could run just a little bit quicker to stay well out of the reaches of Al in 3rd place. Part way through the race I realised that I had never raced at Snetterton without touching the drain on the inside of and the exit curb for the bomb hole. A few laps from the end of the race, I passed Mike from a slipstream but decided against the risk of holding the position when we came around for the straight on the next lap.
So in the end, I came in 2nd place behind Mike to wrap up the Class and overall Championship

Sometimes you hear drivers comment about strange noises you hear when you are out in the lead. Well a 5 year old Fury with a fireblade makes so many noises that would be impossible but I was constantly feeling different vibrations, leading my mind into considering whether the wishbone might give way again. Of course the likelihood, especially as I hardly touched a curb the entire race!

Final round of the season - Saturday Qualify

2007-10-20T17:17:00.000+01:00

I went into the final weekend with some good points advantage over Mike in class C, as well as Rob and Gordon in class A. I also had the advantage of a double header at my home circuit of Snetterton

The day dawned nice and bright and I was all prepared, having taken the car down to the circuit the night before. I was ready for a nice relaxed weekend until we headed down for scrutineering and I realised I did not have my race suit with me! So as the car sat in the queue, I sprinted home and returned just in time to see the car being pushed into the scrutineering bay.

I was really looking forward to the qualify session and it all went quite well from the start. I was running just behind Paul and the car was turning in well, I had a little more understeer through the fast Corum corner but was stopping well for Russels and I was able to get good traction out onto the back straight. I did not have any idea of the times as the Digidash was playing up and then as I was getting comfortable the car felt a little strange when I came to the entrance of the Esses where the car seemed to lack turnin all of a sudden.

Then a few seconds later, as I exiting Corum and came to brake for Russels, the car suddenly grabbed to the right, pulling the wheel from my hands and spun at well over 100mph. It slid sideways, scrubbing off most of the speed and backed onto the grass on the outside of the circuit. I waited for the traffic to clear and then drove back to the paddock. Each time I touched the brakes or tried to turn the steering grabbed again.

In the pits it was obvious that the bottom front drivers side wishbone had failed at a weld point. Amazingly the 5 laps I completed before it broke gave me 3rd in Class for the first race later on the Saturday and 2nd in class for the final rounds of the 2007 championship season on the Sunday. Between qualify and the race, we headed back to Johns and he did an amazing job of rewelding the failed wishbone as well as welding a new anti-rollbar fixing onto the spare. We got the new part back on and the car into running order just as we were called to the assembly area. Sometimes its all about the support you get from your pit crew rather than the driver.

RGB 2007 Final Round at Snetterton

2007-10-08T11:41:00.000+01:00

I will leave the summary of the final two rounds of the 2007 championship to the local newspaper report and a couple of photos from the podium at Snetterton showing the championship standings!
A full report of the weekend will follow when I have a spare few minutes!

Firstly that report from the Eastern Daily Press.

Here is a photo showing the championship results for Class C.

Here is a photo showing the championship results for the Overall Championship!

Pre-season finale test at Snetterton

2007-09-24T09:21:00.000+01:00

Took the car down to Snetterton on Saturday for a very quick run just to make sure all is well before the final round of the championship this coming weekend.
The task for the test was simply to test the airbox and carbs were seated correctly by making sure we could get full acceleration through the gears. After the misfire at Silverstone I did not want any doubts leading into the Qualify session Saturday morning of the 29th.

The good news is that it all ran perfectly. The car felt really responsive in the cool and damp conditions, pulling very strongly through all the gears and completely mullering the plethora of MX5's on the test session!

It was quite slippery on the track, as Snetterton can be early in the day when the suns not out, so it was quite a gentle first outing. Snetterton, in my opinion feels very different when you can really lean on the car through the fast corners. As all was well with the engine, I decided to do a quick set of setup tests whilst the session was ongoing. First was to reduce the rear dampers a little to give better slow speed traction in the damp which helped a little but it was still a little too twitchy at the rear. So I came in again and reconnected the front anti-roll bar to run a setup in between my dry and wet configuration, one I had not run before. This seemed to work very well, giving me a little more understeer to lean onto in the slippery conditions. Two small changes, one at a time and a definite change with both which is a good result from a test. So the car is back in the garage, all tucked up with just the need for some more fuel before next weekend.

Car Sold

2007-09-17T12:42:00.000+01:00

A big Welcome to the RGB racing family goes out to the new owner of my race car.

It will be great to see it racing next year in our series.

I had better make sure if does not get any damage during the final two races of the season, coming up in a couple of weeks time at Snetterton.

FOR SALE

2007-09-10T04:36:00.000+01:00

Championship leading RGB Fury Fireblade for sale
Perfect car for a beginner with an excellent existing setup, simplicity of components, full telemetry and videos included and of course, excellent value from an all you need to go racing package.
You too could jump into this car and be at the front of the pack in the 750 motor clubs RGB series, arguably the most competitive and exhilarating race series in club racing.

Price: [Deal available for whole package]
• Race Car, spares and wheels: £7,800
• Spare Race Engine inc Carbs from AB Performance: £700
• Single Axle Woodford Trailer inc Tyre rack: £800

Background:
Built by Warwick Barnes in 2000 and raced in the inaugural year of RGB in 2001. Raced by Graham Hills for 2002/3/4 and half of 2005. Raced by myself for 2006 and 2007.

Extremely competitive car. 3rd in class in 2006 in novice season, currently leading both class and overall championships with 2 races to go. Lap record holder at Mallory, 5 Race wins, 7 Poles in class this year.

Specification:
AB Performance paddle shift
AB Performance Airbox and low mileage RRX Engine
Full roll cage
Live rear axle with Quaife ATB limited slip differential
Hi Spec 4 pot alloy calipers with 270mm vented front discs
Rose jointed adjustable front wishbones, adjustable front anti-roll bar
Plumbed in fire extinguisher – engine bay and driver
New carburetors, dyna jetted with correct size main jets
Reliable Electric reverse
Cockpit Adjustable brake bias
Uprated clutch springs
Digi-dash 2 with full datalogging, shift lights and in-car timing:
Custom quiet exhaust
Fitted car cover
Includes Spares Package

Contact: derekandrewjones@gmail.com

Tasks before Snetterton.

2007-09-10T04:30:00.000+01:00

The race car is now officially up for sale. Even though I am about to sell the car, I do need to buy some more headlights. They have so many stone chips in them that it looks like the helicopter tape over them is the only thing that is keeping the glass from falling out. We did the fibreglass repairs, after the minor touch with Steve, whilst at the track but now the car is back home I can see that the underside could do with some improvements and there is a real need to do some sanding and a little filler to smooth out around the leading edge of the bonnet. If I get a chance, I will also do the same of the rear bodywork. I now have some more blue paint as well so I can clear up the bodywork ready for the cars sale. To cure the misfire, we have removed the carbs and given them a good clean, although there did not seem to be any dirty within them. Obviously as part of that we have also taken the airbox off and after a little fiddling around we have re-seated the box. Personally I think that was the culprit but it would have be stupid not to check the carbs out whilst we were on the job. So bar a quick test to make sure the engine is on full song, we are ready to fly at Snetterton at the end of the month. There has been lots of talk about what I need to do to wrap up the championship but as it depends upon what results Gordon, Mike and Rob get, I have decided the best approach is just to go out and aim for pole and 2 race wins. So far my record at Snetterton is as follows.

Race 1 (2006, 2nd ever race) 3rd place after a minor spin
Race 2 (2006 3rd ever race) Disqualified after finishing 1st
Race 3 (end of 2006 season) Race win
Race 4 (2007) Race win
Race 5 (2007) Race win.

Silverstone Race Report

2007-09-05T13:33:00.001+01:00

Silverstone Race Report

The Silverstone weekend started rather well, although it did not feel it at first.

Took a turn for the worst during the race although I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Ended quite well although not for the best of reasons!

Silverstone was the weekend at the end of my Holiday, so it was a little strange but nice feeling to get back into racing. The qualifying session went very well, I had to complete the bedding in process for the new rear brake shoes and get back into the rhythm of Silverstone. It’s a wide circuit and for that reason it can be hard to get the exact line. The car felt quite good, a little too much understeer than I am used to but it was very consistent and I could get the power down early which is key on a circuit like this with 2 decent length straights. Just nearing the end of the session, Steve Robinson in the Class A Genesis came up behind and we had a little ‘racing incident’ as he passed and I let him through. He braked a little earlier than I estimated and I slowed a little less than I had thought, we touched, he went a little wide and I had a nice tyre shaped gash in the front of the bonnet! I wasn’t trying to get Steve back but I did manage to hit him nevertheless!

I came back in from qualifying thinking that I had done ok but not sure it would be enough for pole. In fact without lap timing during the session I felt a little lost. The lap that felt the fastest was compromised by a small mistake into the final complex. Well it turned out that I had managed Pole and with a 1:05.55, which is about half a second faster than my lap time from last year (and the pole time from last year). In front were just the top 3 class A cars of Gordon, Rob and Steve. Behind was Paul with an excellent 1:05.68. Mike Atkinson being the next best class C car with a 1:05.73. So not too bad a start.

In qualifying we were deliberating over whether it would rain during the session. For the race it was never going to be anything other than rain and more rain. The green flag lap showed up the turn for the worse with a misfire, again! Between the qualify and race, we had repaired the fibre glass on the bonnet and must have knocked the air box. Tony did ask whether we should check it out but I had decided that I would rather leave it alone as it looked like it was ok and had run ok post accident in qualifying so should be ok!!! Not only that but I had a really bad start, even pulling away almost on tickover, the car just sat there with wheelspin. Gordon and Paul had the exact same problem, all I can really remember is seeing Mike Field fly past on the start. Evidently Mike Atkinson passed at the same time but I could not see him, so great was the amount of spray! At the end of the first lap I had lost out to Mike Atkinson, Mike Field and Gordon had re-passed me. The cars were moving around a huge amount and as soon as I got some purchase, the misfire hampered my progress. On the second lap, John passed me, followed by Al who’s car looked well balanced. As Al moved up to John, I started to find a little more consistency by using alterative lines and pulled in some of the gap to John. Lap 5, I saw Mike Atkinson stranded in the gravel trap which gave me the dilemma of pushing hard to get good points or taking it easy to maintain the points advantage. Just as I came up behind John, Tim Hoverd caught me and pretty much just drove past me. I had tried wider lines to gain some grip but Tim was almost twice the distance off the racing line that I had tried. To good effect it would seem, his car also looking nice and compliant like Al’s. Far superior to mine and Johns. Tim’s progress was from 17^th on the first lap to 7^th on lap 7! Two laps from the end I saw Gordon go off in the same place as Mike had earlier, Gordon being the other title contender so if I could keep it on the circuit, I could make some good points improvement in the Championship. I stayed close behind John but whenever I got along side, the misfire stopped me from making the move stick. On the final lap, John made a small mistake into turn one, I maintained to maintain some good corner speed, passed John and the yellow flags for Gordon’s off helped to secure the final stage of the lap. So in the end, despite the misfire, I came across the line 4^th place in class, behind an excellent 3^rd for Tim, 2^nd for Al and a clear win for Mike Field.

It was really impressive to see Al up in 2^nd place, to record his first podium finish in his racing. Even more impressive to see Tim make it to 3^rd after being almost last at the start of the race, completely out driving me and showing me the way in the slippery conditions. If ever somebody deserved to do well, its Tim. His improvements in speed have been really impressive this year, with some good signs of improved positions but this is the first time that they have yielded results.

Snetterton Race part 2 * TWO RACE WINS IN THE WEEKEND *

2007-08-07T17:06:00.001+01:00

Race two was also quite eventful.
Due to the conditions earlier in the day during qualifying, I was starting way back in 11th overall, 6th in class for the second race and had quite a bit of traffic to make my way past before I could challenge for the class lead.
I made a really good start and straight away started to carve my way through the field, within a few laps I had caught the leading pack, having overtaken all except Mike Field, Mike Atkinson and Martin Brookes in class C but the race was red flagged due to an incident at the first corner. The race was restarted from scratch with a reduced time and we were positioned on the grid from the last complete lap so I was in 4th place in class. As we had to stop on the start finish line for the reforming and its on a hill, I had used my handbrake. How silly was that? The pads had started to break up again during the first part of the race, even though John had spent ages over lunch cleaning and sanding them down. So once I transferred more heat into them by applying the handbrake for a few minutes, they did not want to come away from the drums when I released the handle when the red lights went out. So although my reaction was really good on the restart, the car did not want to move as the handbrake pads were still engaged. Great!

I quickly held up my hand so as not to get hit from behind as I played with the hand brake and restarted the engine. Finally I got going in something like 2nd or 3rd from lap place. I had an excellent first lap, just passing at every stage of the track to come over the line for the first time in 12 place overall after passing something like 7 cars in one lap!

The passing just continued from that point onwards. Thankfully the track had not changed from earlier and I know the car was very quick already so I just maxed out each corning, sometimes running way off line throughout a complex, sometimes just backing off before a corner and having a really good run through it and passing a couple of cars straight after the exit curbing. This tactic worked brilliantly with the long straights of snetterton as I could almost guarantee a good slipstream each straight by timing the corners leading onto it and the gap to the next car (or cars!).

The progress was something like….
2nd lap, past Tim Hoverd and Richard Wise for 9th
3rd lap, past David Wale
4th lap, past Mike Field (on the inside through Corum)
5th lap, past John Cutmore
7th lap, made up another position by overtaking Martin Brookes, which meant I was just behind Mike Atkinson Paul Rogers (class B) and with the three class A leaders out in front. On the entrance to the back straight on that lap, Mike made a mistake and spun out, letting Martin and I straight through and I was leading the class C battle.
On the next lap I finished the race 8 seconds behind Paul, the finishing order being 1,2 and 3 in class A, 1st in class B and then first in class C.

Current Championship Standings

2007-07-23T10:38:00.003+01:00

With just 1 race at Silverstone and a double header back here at Snetterton left this season, the current championship standings look like this.....

Snetterton double header - Qualify and Race 1

2007-07-20T18:01:00.000+01:00

Qualify
Just as we went do to the assembly area it started to rain. We went back to get the allen keys and spanners needed to disconnect the anti roll bars but in the end decided that the track was going to dry as the session went on. Unfortunately although it stopped raining, it never dried off and because we were the first out on track on Sunday following a full day of racing in the dry the day before meant that the track was very very slippery. My main problem during the session was the lack of tyre temperature. I even had a nice trip into the corn fields at the exit of Riches simply by locking the front wheels up for a split second, exploring the limit of grip!
So qualifying was not a very successful start to the weekend but thankfully the day cleared up and we had 2 nice dry races.

Race 1
I had a good start off the line, followed John Cutmore close into sear, I ran a wide line in and cut to the inside for the exit, caught a slipstream for the first part of the straight and past John before we entered the the Essess.
On lap 2 as I came through Corum in front of John, I had a slight lock up in Russels, John copied me and takes out the centre post on the chicane in dramatic style. I must admit I do not remember seeing this in the race, I must have had my eyes elsewhere!

By lap3 I was catching the lead pack of Mike Field, Mike Atkinson and Martin Brookes. We all came down into Russells in a close group and had some slipstreaming fun. On the entry to the Essess there were sparks coming from the front corner of Martins car and I slipped through on the inside of the Bomb Hole as he let me though.

The following lap I overtook Mike but he took me out at Russels, spun me around and I droped back quite a long way down the field with all that work to do again. Mike rejoined just behind John Cutmore, Steve Robinson and Paul Rogers with Mike Field still leading the race for Class C and Rob leading Class A and the overall race.

After returning to the mid pack, I set about catching them all up again, starting on Lap 5 with a 1:19.72. Only Rob and Paul were running quicker at this stage of the race so there seemed to be no lasting damage from the impact with Mike!

Lap 6 was nice and clear for me which enabled me to get put my head down, concentrate on lines and carry good mid corner speed to get a 1:17.64 whilst catching Martin Brookes. This would end up being my fastest lap and the fastest lap of the race. Thats a 0.4 second improvement over last year.

Lap 7 was back into the 1:20's as I caught up with John and on the following lap I overtook John and Mike Atkinson again.

On lap 9 I managed to catch up with Mike field and got a really good run out of the Essess, closing quickly through the bomb hole and slipped up the inside at Corum to take the lead for the Class C runners. The only remain cars in front were Rob leading overall, followed by Steve and then Paul who was next on track in front.
By lap 10 I can caught Paul up and passed him on the exit of Corum. Paul ran a little wide at this point and David Wick took some fantastic pictures of Paul's wild ride on the grass which I have uploaded to Flickr here.
In fact both my Dad and David took a large number of excellent quality photos, thats my excuse for the time it has taken to do the blog, I had so many to browse through!

Amazingly Paul kept the car under control, bounced around and returned to the track to brake just like normal and continue as if nothing happened!

I then put in another 1:17 lap to catch up with Steve Robinson in the class A Genesis.

From lap 11 through to the end was just behind Steve. I slowed down to his pace and ran a little back from him as his car is very noisy and slipstreaming just meant my water and oil temps started to rise a little.

The damage from the impact was not too great. Just a bit of the rear wheel taken off as you can see from this photo.
We did need to sort out rear brakes again, in the same way as after Cadwell as they were starting to lock the inside rear into Russells occasionally and I did not want the same problem we had at Cadwell! It would seem that the compound of the rear shoes is either too soft or just faulty as it seems to be continuously breaking up. Time for some alternative shoes I think

So from a rather uncharacteristic qualify and being a lot further down the grid than I am used to, was a race win and fastest lap which will do a world of good the Championship points. In fact Gordon was to have some problems with an engine cut out dropping him down the field to record a 3rd place all be it with fastest lap and Mike Atkinson had a spin towards the end of the race which helped even more with the points gap.

Snetterton double header - Press Coverage

2007-07-19T12:21:00.000+01:00

Well we had an excellent time at the Snetterton double header. Nice to be at my local track again and some great results. More on that shortly as the real blog entry is on its way but here is what the local press had to say.

Cadwell Park Double Header (3rd and 2nd)

2007-07-12T18:29:00.000+01:00

The Cadwell park visit this year was a double header. It was a very enjoyable weekend but I didn't quite reach full potential but I did come away with some good points and overall lead of the RGB Championship.

Qualifying was wet to start with and drying throughout until a slight increase in track moisture for the last few mins. The lap times kept coming down, the first surprise was to see the Dash show a lap of 1:49.71 which is faster than my dry qualify from last year. Then on the next lap I saw the display read 1:48.8! The lap after this was half a second faster in the first sector but I had a misunderstanding with Neil on the back straight. I went right to pass him, just before he signaled and guess what he signaled for me to pass on the left! This left me almost completely on the grass over the brow at the fastest part of the track. I just got it back onto the track before the entry to Park corner so I could scrub off some speed but entered the corner with excessive velocity. An interesting pirouette on the grass followed and I returned without any damage but with a slightly raised heart rate. On my final lap of qualifying, I was also well up on sector times but I caught back-markers through the mountain and then between the hairpin and Barn corner which completely ruined the lap.
So although the lap time was well under that of last year with a 1:48.8, it was only good enough for 4th overall and 3rd in class C.

The first race of the Cadwell double header was on the Saturday afternoon and the rain had set in again so it was soft settings and huddling under umbrellas pre-race. Out on to the grid and a really long wait until we went for our green flag lap, why we could not have waited in the assembly area under cover whilst they towed back the cars from the race before I can not work out. The track was not too bad despite the amount of water and I got a fairly good start, getting in front of Mike for 2nd in class off the line and holding that for 6 laps. On the 7th, I had a very small lock up into Park corner at the end of the back straight, just missing the apex by a few feet and allowing Mike to come up along side me. As the visibility was quite limited and I know how slippery that next corner was, I backed off to let Mike take the inside rather than risk a tap and resulting spin into the barriers. For the next lap I could see Mike increase the gap each time we came to the exit from a slow corner, where his more compliant rear suspension enabled him to get better traction. Although I could make up some of the gap in the faster corners, I decided to be a little more cautious, reducing the risks I took as I had a 15second gap back to Matt and cross the line for 3rd in Class and 10 more championship points. Rob took a fantastic first win in Class A and with Gordon missing the race that has helped the championship standings.

Sunday dawned much brighter although still menacing clouds but delivered a dry period for our race. Off the line, I got a very good start although I got baulked by Martin on the run off from the line as Mike had a clear and easy run down the inside before we got to the first corner. I followed Mike very closely into turn 1, stopping Martin from getting to the apex and arrived at turn 2 with enough room to turn in front. I followed Mike for the remainder of that lap, although the increased slipstream effect of the head wind on the Park straight caught me out as I touched the back of his car, sorry Mike! As we came around to the end of the first lap, I dropped back a little and made a run through Barn corner which allowed me to easily overtake on the start / finish straight and into turn 1. From there on I put in some fast laps, straight into the 1:37's for 4 laps and then a final burst on lap 6 with a 1:36.84 to give me a 4 second lead over Mike in 2nd place. From there on a backed off a touch to maintain the gap , staying well within the limits of the car to bring it home for the win. Until, that is, braking downhill for Mansfield on the final lap, the rear wheels locked up expectantly and I headed sideways onto the grass! I gathered it up, arrived back on the track facing the wrong direction, flicked it back around to the right way and just as Mike passed me for the lead, I fired up the engine and recovered. From there all I could do was to follow Mike to the flag, recording 2nd in class and the fastest lap which gave me 13 points to his 15. Rob had his second win in Class A, whilst Gordon who had started from the back of the grid made it up to 2nd in class A, giving him 8 points.

So although I don't think I could have held off Mike for the entire length of the first race, I should have been able to record an easy win the second race. My plan for the weekend was to return with 2 podiums and I managed that. I am also quite happy to have recorded a 1:36.84 at Cadwell, which is the fastest anyone has managed in a race since the series moved onto the current specification of tyres.

The rear brakes issue has been diagnosed as a problem with one of the rear brake shoes braking up along with a build up of brake dust from the new pad material. We have cleaned this up, added a leading edge to the pads and will instigate regular maintenance checks to stop it from happening again.

So if my calculations are correct, I now lead the overall championship both before and after the dropped scores are taken into account.

This coming Sunday we are racing a double header at Snetterton. Cars ready to go and it will be interesting to see how much quicker we are this year at my home circuit. Amazingly there are 5 more rounds left, 3 more race weekends and only 2 more tracks.

Championship Points

2007-06-28T12:25:00.000+01:00

Before we head to Cadwell for the next two rounds this week, I thought I would post up the current championship points positions.

The Car is all packed up in the trailer ready to head to the circuit this evening and the test day tomorrow. I just need to refill the oil which is coming from AB Performance and set the Digidash up for the correct circuit length and anticipated lap times. Last year I managed 2nd on the grid with a 1:39.06 which wasn't too bad for first time out at a complex circuit but it was 2 seconds slower than Tim's pole time for Class C. In the race I was able to get the fastest lap with a 1:38.19 but only I think because Tim was out in the lead and not pushing. All of our times this year have improved so I think I need to be in the 37's for pole and a race win. Mind you it could be wet all weekend and then its anyones guess as to the times needed.

Mallory Qualifying Video

2007-06-26T17:57:00.000+01:00

As we build up to an exciting double header weekend at Cadwell Park, I thought I would post the first 10mins of the Mallory Qualifying session.

For Cadwell, we have replaced the fuel line running from the tank, forward to the pump as it was starting to perish, modified the mounting of the tank itself to give a slight tilt and enable all of the fuel to be used, re-calibrated the fuel 'stick' and replaced the fuel filter. More significantly we have completely changed the reverse gear engagement linkage to remove slack, changed the fuel filler design and welded up a cracked main engine mount. Appart from that, just a simple oil change!

Off to Cadwell on Thursday night for the Friday test day and the Saturday and Sunday races. Aim, well lots of points, preferably 16 each race but podiums are enough to keep the championship on target ;)

Press Coverage

2007-06-25T10:05:00.001+01:00

Following the Mallory race, I have a bit of coverage in Autosport!

Other Press:
There was also a mention of the 'Norfolk' lads in the Local Eastern Daily Press (EDP)

Video Update - Donington Race

2007-06-25T09:22:00.000+01:00

I know its rather late but I thought I would post up the first 10 mins of our race at Donington Park earlier this year. Interesting to compare my driving style this year with way back last year. All of the race was spent behind James Johnson in the Busa engined, class A fury with Gordon and Rob out front and the the Class B and C drivers some way behind.

Mallory Race OVERALL RACE WIN

2007-06-13T22:05:00.000+01:00

Excellent outcome to a great weekend at Mallory on our second visit.
As per my last post, nothing major required to the car before the race and a fairly relaxed schedule for race day.
I knew from some reviews of the telemetry from the first race of the season that I had some time I could save in a number of areas of the circuit, all be it small amounts each and I also knew that I had a good margin. Would that margin be sufficient?

Well qualifying went very well, I got into a good rhythm with some clear track early on in the session which meant I was not handicapped by the oil leak and subsequent oil slick on the track in the last 5 mins of the session. It was quite easy to spot the first oil line around the hairpin, a little surprising to see a second line around the hairpin the next lap, followed by a line all the way around the track and that sequence just continued for the next 5 laps as the marshals failed to pull Steve Robinson in as he continued to drop oil. On the last lap, I caught Paul and thought it would be fun to run with him a while to see our differences and he proceeded to follow me off the track at the esses when we both hit an even wider strip of oil! Fun!
So I managed to reduce my best lap time around Mallory in that session with a slightly higher entry speed and some smother driving elsewhere, we are only talking a few tenths, with a lap time of 50.53 to give me pole in class C. Just Gordon and Rob ahead of me again and a comfortable half second back to the next best in class C of John Cutmore.
Great to see Paul up in the lead Class C pack yet again with a much improved lap time of 51.32 for a Class B pole and for Tim to be 4th in class C with a 51.56

The race got off to a strange start, with Rob pulling off into the pits on the out-lap with a brake problem which left just Gordon in front of me. I got a good start, pulling up along side Gordon on the run down to the first time into Gerrards. I backed off slightly to slip in behind him but staying ahead of the rest of the pack and got my head down to gain a lead.

For the first few laps I was able to pull a gap out and from there on the race went perfectly to plan. I could see the following pack of Mike, John and Paul were keeping each other busy and although they seemed quite close each lap at the hairpin there was a good space between us and I was able to moderate my pace. The race changed as I saw Gordon slowing and pulling off after being pulled in by the marshals for loose body work and suddenly I was the overall race leader!

I had a few interesting moments as I came up to lap some of the other racers and had to pioneer the way through as I was the leader of the race. This including running a very tight line through Gerrards with the inside wheels on the grass and the needed to back off and time the place on the track to meet the back markers.

Towards the end of the race, I lapped a few drivers where I knew roughly what their lap times were compared to mine and used that to guess at the gap back to 2nd place. After analyzing the results sheet, I was 0.3 of a second out in my calculations!

The last few laps of the race seemed to take ages but even though Mallory is quite a simple circuit, it is surprisingly fun to drive with some nice challenges like the run through the devils elbow, which requires a gentle slide whilst flat out accelerating from the hairpin and of course the 'event' that is Gerrards every lap.

Crossing the lineFor once I actually saw the last lap board and was fairly animated as I cross the line for the chequered flag. Although I have won in class before and did not gain any more points for this overall win, it still felt better! You can see and hear the last two laps in the video taken by John on his digital camera.

A nice cooling down lap, waving to the crowds! and into pitlane to collect the laurel and be interviewed by the commentator.

So the old car can beat all of Class C, Class B and Class A (well as long as Gordon and Rob have problems!)

Championship Standings after Brands - Prep for Mallory

2007-06-01T17:19:00.001+01:00

Amazingly I am still leading the Class C championship standings and second overall. A little close in points with Rob! Fastest lap and coming third at Brands has helped to restore the position but I need a good set of results this weekend and at Cadwell to maintain the position. Good job I love those circuits!

No major changes needed for Mallory this Sunday. The car was running very well at Brands and no damage from the impact with Steve. I have changed over to a new set of Coils and HT leads so that I can take the borrowed items back to Andy. Weather forecast looking like rain for Sunday afternoon so might be a chance to test out the new tires oh and have some fun sliding around Gerrard's all day :)

The incident that probably cost me class C victory

2007-05-29T09:08:00.000+01:00

Lap2 of the third restart, saw Steve Robinson (Class A Genesis) make a mistake into the Druids hairpin and push me into the gravel trap from 1st in class. I returned to the track in 22nd place, making it up to 3rd in class by the end of the race, whilst Steve went on to his first race win.

Brands Hatch Race - Pole, 3rd Place and Fastest Lap

2007-05-21T21:07:00.000+01:00

For me the brands hatch round of the RGB championship last weekend race filled the complete weekend, I signed up for the allcomers race on the Saturday so I had some time on the track and some time to test out our fixes for the engine misfire that limited the points from the last round at Castle Combe.

It turned out to be very valuable as for both of the Allcomers sessions I had reoccuring misfire issues. The first 2 laps of the allcomers qualify were fine and then it returned. We changed the battery, carb rubbers and remounted the airbox between qualify and the race but the same issue persisted. It did however give me a chance to learn more about the circuit all be it at a reduced pace – in fact at about the same pace as a hot hatch as I raced with a few of them for the entire duration!

Saturday evening was full of head scratching but Andy (AB Performance) took the carbs apart and found some dirt in one of the primary jets which we are associating with the earlier fuel pump failure. A quick test before dinner seemed to show it as resolved but we had thought that before of course!

Sunday dawned nice and bright and the midday qualify for RGB would be the true test. Well I am more than happy to report that the car was back on true form. In fact right back to the same as I had at the start of the season. I was able to post a lap time 52.64 which was good for pole in class and 3rd overall. In fact I was able to post 4 laps that would have given me the pole time, my closest competitor being John Cutmore with a 53 second deal. The main change over last year (and its about a 1 second improvement I think?) is down to a smoother driving style. I have continued to analyze the videos from last year, highlighting the actions that seem to unsettle the live rear axle and waste acceleration and build that into my preparation for the track. Still running the same setup for each track though which is interesting in itself.

The aftertnoon race would be in three parts as we unsuccessfuly tried the first two starts whilst making an unimpressive show for the marshals when show red flags.

Attempt 1 –
I had a rather poor start, using too many revs and not blocking the inside into Paddock Hill bend and was down to 3rd in class. Gordon span part was down the hill through paddock hill bend and cars when everywhere. I tagged on the back of John's tail and overtook Mike into hairpin and then just about to make a move on John Cutmore down the back straight when we both saw the red flags and slowed. The cars in front slowed quite a bit and by the time that concertina had rippled back a few rows, we have cars flying past us manically trying to slow down. Unsuprisingly I dont think the marshals were too impressed with that show.

Attempt 2 -
Gordon missing from the grid, with some front end damage from the first race start so in front of me was Rob all alone. I altered the starting revs based on too much wheelspin from first start and got a good start, all be it not as good as Cutmore. I defended into turn one and got a good run through the rest of the lap to give a bit of a gap and as we came around to the start finish line there was another red flag. Yet again a few of the mid field cars went in all directions to try and slow down in time after a slightly delayed reaction to seeing the flags

Attempt 3 –
After a big talking to from the clerk of the course we were allowed to restart the race as the last of the day. Originally planned to be 18mins as first defined but it turned out to be just 13 + 1lap which would be a shame for me. Third attempt at the start and this time I got a good start, into turn 1 in the lead in class and off for the first few laps sprint to get clear of the pack. All was going very well, the car handling good as usual with cold tires, I was able to attack well into Paddock Hill, holding a slight slide over the crest and keeping it straight at the point of compression. I tweaked the brake bias a little over the first couple of laps to get a better balance between stopping from wheel lockup at the hairpin and not causing too much rear effect into Graham Hill and the entry to Clearways. The gap was building when Steve Robinson in the Class A Genesis came up behind. There was no point in racing him and loosing time to the Class C pack so I opened up the door into the Hairpin by staying wide and braking early. Steve went for the inside as offered to him and then just as I was turning into the corner, expecting him to slip through, he came straight at me and barged me off into the gravel trap. I immediately grabbed second gear and planted the accelerator whilst trying ease the car around to the right and execute a 180deg turn without getting stuck. Engine screaming and a massive spray of gravel existing from the rear wheel as I slowly headed back to the black stuff and the field came screaming through.
By the time I was back on the track and trying to shake off the worst of the gravel off line, I was almost at the back of the field with a lot of work to do. I knew the car was going well and lap times were good so I put the off to the back of my head, and set about catching everyone up. The tires took a lap and a bit to come back but I soon started to catch up the field, closing nice and quickly so as not to give much opportunity for other drivers to defend. I very much agree with the train of thought that you should attempt to overtake immediately on closing up on another driver rather than settleing in on their speed. The most successful overtakes taking place into the hairpin after a good run through Paddock Hill and then again into Clearways after a good run through the chicane. I kept a very close eye on the lap times, concentrating on bring them down lap after lap, especially on the very rare occasions when I did not pass another car in a lap, and watching the time count down on the very handy timer at the end of the pit exit. Desperate to catch the leaders before it came down to zero. Of course, without a pit crew you never know the gap forward to the next car or the leaders but I was heartened by the consistently low lap times which I doubted the leaders would be able to equal if they were in a battle which thankfully they were. As I came around to a couple of minutes left in the race, I could see Mike Atkinson, Paul Rogers and John Cutmore at the front and new I had the leading pack in my sights with few other cars in the way. I was then able to concentrate on the clearways exit, trying to manage the tire heat buildup on the passenger rear. As we came around for the last lap I was less than a second behind John but ran out of time to make a move, if only it was an 18min race rather than just 13!

I was heartening to see that my fastest time on lap 11 of a 52.79 (almost identical to my pole time) was faster than anyone else’s who completed the race, including Class A and some 7 tenths of a second faster than the quickest class C time of John Cutmore’s. So as it has turned out I got 3rd place which means 10 points + 1 for fastest lap which was quite a save after being taken out. Later in the paddock in discussions with Steve it would seem he locked up the rear wheels under braking and hence was not able to turn into the corner, which is a pity but an understandable mistake I guess. Whats interesting is that I made a mistake in the last of the brands races last year and sent David Wale into the gravel at Clearways. That incident which was totally my fault, require me to present my case to the clerk of the course and could have resulted in points on my license. Seems to be less of an issue this year! Steve actually went on to record his first ever race win, after Gordon spun, taking Rob out on the exit of paddock hill bend and James retiring due to a chassis / steering failure.

So although I came away with the thought in the back of my mind that I should really have returned with Pole, Win and Fastest lap, the fact that the car is now fixed and back on speed as well as getting some good points and remaining in the championship lead is actually quite a result. I also have a new found fondness for the Kent circuit. Amazing how different results can leave you with different impressions of the same circuit. I must admit I really enjoyed that race, a race that was probably as hard as any I have completed so far but boy did I have a grin on my face at the end!

All is set now for some minor checks and off back to Mallory in 2 weeks where I will attempt to recreate the success of the first race this season once again.

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

2007-05-19T00:35:00.000+01:00

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!

Donington Reflections

2007-04-10T17:42:00.000+01:00

Overall reflections

Air box, carbs and air intake have definitely improved the top end pull and especially the pull through 5th and 6th gears. The new throttle pedal, modified linkage and its revised position had definitely made a difference at Mallory but as I was not running the video it was quite hard to remember the details. At Donington when I had the video, you can actually hear nice well defined throttle blips throughout the braking zones. The handling had been nice and consistent throughout the race as well. I was running with the slightly softer setup I had tried in the one winter test session I completed in the run up to the race. It had worked well over the bumps at Mallory and helped me a little with the undulations and curbs of Donington.

Last year my fastest in race lap was a 1:20.55 and I know I was in a pack quite a bit of the time but it surprising what some track time can do, this year with the car improvements adding up to some part but not all of the improvement to a new fastest lap for me at the circuit of 1:19.40. I wonder if I can transition this into a similar improvement at the other tracks I have raced at before?

A very impressive run from Rob and Gordon out in front, some fantastic lap times there, just a pity there are not a few more racing together at the front of class A.
Class B showed some really promise as well. Paul running almost identical times as me in the all comers race, Tim showing his usual brilliance at Donington by getting Ian Gray's Phasar to very impressive 1:18.28 before it lunched itself.(1:19.76 in the Class C Phoenix last year)I think this might be a good indication that a class B version of the Phoenix or Fury class C cars should be capable of running around 2 to 3% quicker. Although Colin Duce had a rather eventful race and finished back in 13th overall despite winning class B, he did manage to get fastest lap for class B of 1:19.41 on lap 12 which again shows great promise. (1:22.77 best from last year)

Two very noticeable improvements for Donington this year were Tim and Paul. Firstly Tim for an excellent 3rd place in class for the start and an equally impressive improvement in lap times, from a 1:25.00 last year reduced down to a 1:21.47 this year. I am sure his new AB Performance airbox and pimp my ride alloys have made a different but most of that must come from driving.

Paul's lap time improvements have definitely come from seat time and improved confidence. Last year Paul managed a fastest lap of 1:23.19 during the race and this year he brought that down to a 1:20.33 before being taken out by John Cutmore. Even better still, he managed to get into the low 1:19s in the all comers race when we were running within sight of each other. We have been able to sit down and compare that last lap of the allcomers race through the DD2 and the results are quite interesting. I definitely carry some more speed into and through the corners, that faster corners especially but Paul is much smoother out of the corners and makes up all if not more of the time through that and the better pulling power of his R1 engine. So Donington is like Snetterton, where we are both improving and now running at almost identical lap times. Bring it on !.

RGB Round 2 - Donington Park RACE WIN

2007-04-10T17:39:00.000+01:00

A few weeks ago we went to Donington Park for the second round of the 2007 RGB championship. I elected to do the Allcomers race as well as the RGB race to get some practice in for what I think is probably one of the most technical circuits we go to. The Allcomers qualify was just to learn the track again. In the RGB qualify I managed to get Pole, 0.7 of a second ahead of John Cutmore in 2nd and about 2 seconds ahead of Tim Hoverd who managed a very impressive 3rd in class C.

As we lined up on the grid, there was Rob and Gordon (both Class A) in front of me, unfortunately no Tim Gray in the lead Class B car beside me due to his engine expiry and James (Class A) just behind on my right.

As the lights went off I got a good start but the engine bogged down just a little, I have been trying to remember the exact revs I used successfully last year and I think I now knows it’s a little higher than I had thought! Mind you my start looked really stunning compared to Gordons!

As we ran up to Redgate, Gordon had caught a second wind and was pulling away, whilst James had made up some good speed and was on the inside and in front of me. I received a little tap from behind by Mr Cutmore as I turned into Redgate but got a good run out of the corner, through the craner curves and down to the old hairpin. As we came up the hill and through to Coppice we were all quite close still but the next part of the lap started a pattern that would repeat many times. I would get a good run through Coppice but James would use the power of the Busa to pull away quite convincingly down the straight, I would make up some in the braking zone for the chicane and then he would get another extension to his lead down the start finish straight. Redgate for each lap would show the biggest gap between us, followed by a closing up of the gap as I carried slightly more speed through the craner curves and the old hairpin, until we were quite close again through McLeans and up to Coppice.
Lap 2 saw Aaron continuing straight on and making intimate contact with the barrier which meant we had yellow flags being waved all over the entry to Redgate and Paul Haynes was sat up at Coppice watching the race following another engine failure. Over the next few laps, as we went down the hill through the craners, I could see that Rob had pulled quite a margin over Gordon and then about the same back to James in front of me.

By lap 3, I had already dipped into the 19’s with a 1:19.4 with a nice clear run, no need to defend and a fair bit of concentration on keeping smooth and some good mid corners speed. This would in fact turn out to be my fastest lap of the race, not through design but due to a little problem I had at the end, more of which later. Mind you by this time Gordon and Rob were both in the 17’s and even more impressively they both managed 15s over the next couple of laps!

As we started Lap 6, Aaron’s car was being pulled out by a massive tractor, which takes on a completely different image when you are in a small and low lightweight race car traveling straight towards it at 120mph! By this point, Paul and John had passed Steve Robinson behind me and were the next cars down the track from me, all be it 9 and a bit seconds behind.

On Lap 7 we came up to lap Julius Bates in the Aeon Blaze, where I got a nice view of a flame out under braking into the chicane.

Lap 8 coming into Coppice, James chooses not to dive up the inside of Dick Adams in the class A Westfield as we lapped him which means I reduced the gap considerably. The next couple of laps would show around a half second gap. Entering the chicane on Lap 8 and we had yellow flags out and what looked like Paul’s Phoenix sitting against the barrier. Lap 9 is almost replication of the former, where we are both held up heading into coppice by lapping Garry for the second time.

This time through the chicane and I could see Paul watching from behind the barriers, it would seem that John Cutmore had dived for a gap that was not present and had taken them both out of the race. Some quite major damage to Paul’s driver side, thankfully the side impact bar doing its job, but a real shame as Paul’s had been putting in some really good lap times and he was on for a good win in class. Even more of a shame when you realise that neither were actually racing each other for position, John even doing himself out of a solid 2nd place and some good championship points bearing in mind he came second in the previous race as well.
Once of the real joys of our race series is the close, wheel to wheel racing, sometimes this is improved upon even more by running mixed classes (sometimes it’s the other way around of course!) but a major issue comes when one driver effects the race of a different class. I had been very conscious of this in the former, all comers race where I had to make sure along side having a good race and learning the track, that I did not get in the way of any of the drivers in the 7’s race as it was theirs we were taking part in.

Lap 11 was over a second slower than the others as James and I caught Judy up going down into the old hairpin, her hazard lights on and her car puzzlingly placed slap bang in the middle of the track, around the half the speed we were expecting. It wasn’t not until the entry to McLeans that we managed to pass Judy.

Lap 13, we lapped Rob Grant in the Striker, again one of our new racers in the series and doing very well in what is a rather steep learning curve.

Lap 14 was quite busy, lapping Mike Allen in the Tiger on the outside around the first right-hand sweep of the craner curves and then Garry just after a rather hasty gab on the brakes at the left hand apex on the craners! I was just about to lap Simon Maybe in the Fury and Pete Rope in his multi coloured Pheonix on back straight when the first of the engine stutters appeared, which meant it was the end of the following start finish straight before I passed them. This let James get more of a lead and would be the end of my very enjoyable run in close proximity.

Of course by this point, with John going out on lap 7, my closest Class C competitor Mike Atkinson was some 25 seconds behind and I did not really need to push.

Over the span of the race I had been able to keep the times in the low 20’s to mid 19s but concentrating on carrying corner speeds rather than pushing hard to sliding a lot. A bit of a surprise to some, me not sliding around much! As the fuel level had come down, I had kept an eye on the times to make sure I was not slipping back but equally not over stressing the car or tyres.

Back at Laps 12 and 13 we were into the low 19’s and as the last 3 or so laps came, I was planning to put in a bit of a spurt to attack the lap record. Unfortunate by this point the car was running a little low on fuel and I started to notice a touch of spluttering on the start of the straight.

After the event I found I still had more than the required 3ltrs left, its just that the bottom of the tank is so mangled now after all of the repairs (prior to my ownership I hasten to add.) that the pump was having difficulty in getting fuel out.

So the penultimate lap showed fuel starvation on the latter half of the straight and the final lap it appeared as early as the entry to Coppice and lasted through a little swerving until I was half way down the back straight!
On analysis it would seem the fuel pickup issues is actually from starkeys bridge and up the hill into McLeans but because I now have a swirl-pot post pump, there was sufficient pressure to run until came to Coppice. A short while after that the pump had managed to catch up and all was well again. A good job I had a nice lead!

The final excitement happened as we entered the chicane for the last time to find Doug had parked his Genesis slap bang in the middle of the track at the centre of the chicane and required us to thread our cars between his and the corner markers! I was following Julius at this point and it seemed he had little room to get past behind Doug from where I was so I elected to brake for longer in a straight line and go in front of Doug. Trouble was there was even less room but I managed to borrow some space on the dirt!

All that was left after that was to cross the line for a win in Class C, fastest lap in class and 4th overall in the race.

Donington Allcomers Race Reflections

2007-04-10T17:00:00.000+01:00

During the Donington RGB weekend, a number of our racers signed up for the allcomers race. Paul and I used this as a chance to get some mileage in the cars and get some laps under our belt at the circuit. Donington is quite hard and expensive to get good testing at due to the stupid local council who restrict the noise at a circuit that’s been around for generations, supports social activities for hundreds of thousands a year and even more bizarrely is situated under the immediate flight path of East Midlands Airport. I once remember being told of for exceeding the noise limit (due to an exhaust failure) but being unable to hear the marshals comments as an airliner was landing!

I went into the Allcomers race with the aim of testing my start, learning the circuit, trying a few different lines and not over pushing the car and in fact did most of it well away from the rev limiter. Towards the end of the 18mins race, Paul was running quite close to me and we up’d the pace a little. Interestingly we both ran telemetry so we are able to do a little side by side comparison of both our cars and our driving styles. What makes it even better is that on the final lap we both did almost identical times, Paul in fact beating my fastest lap of 1:19.48 with a 1:19.36.

Firstly its interesting to compare the temperatures of our two cars. My mods over the winter included a simplifying of the cooling system, making it pressurized and the running temps have dropped quite substantially. So here’s a graph of the water temps of mine and Paul’s – 90degrees average for mine on the last lap of the race and an average of 72 for Paul. Now we were both out in clear air and it was quite cool at the time although each time I have run mine so far this years its been the same. If we look at the oil temps as a similar comparison we see an interesting difference. Paul’s averaging around 101degs and mine at around 113 (10deg down on mine from last year).
Paul is running a bike radiator, I am running a polo dual core car rad and we are both running separate oil coolers. I wonder what mine would look like if I removed the oil cooler and allowed the oil/water heat exchanger as standard on the blade?

Comparing speeds into, through and out of corners is also quite enlightening,
The first obvious difference is the run down the craner curves seen in this graph from our telemetry. Paul’s speeds are in green and mine are in red. The highlighted blue cross marker is placed on the apex of the left hand part of the craner curves just as it is dipping at its steepest and the part of the circuit that I find the exhilarating. Some say scary and a few times it can be, its probably the one place of all of the circuits we race at that my car is out of shape at the highest speed! I must admit that in both of the races we did at Donington this weekend that it took me a few laps to be confident to run flat out through these corners. Anyway you can see that Paul is running through this corner at 108mph with a further spurt to 112mph before braking for the old hairpin. Comparatively I am doing 116mph with little improvement until having to brake earlier for the next corner. Interestingly by the time we both get to Paul’s braking point we are doing the same speed! There is a 3mph difference in the mid corner speed through the old hairpin, I get a bit of wheel spin due to the slide through the corner where Paul gets a better and smoother run out of the corner and this advantage runs all the way up the hill where he makes good use of the increased power of the R1 engine meaning he is 2mph up at the top of the hill.

Again I enter and run through McLeans a little faster than Paul – 76mph as apposed to 69mph but Paul gets a great run out and reaches the same peak as me at 100mph before we enter Coppice, run almost the same speed through and down the straight. Again his power helping a little to reach a back straight maximum speed of 130mph compared to my 125mph.

All of the other items in the telemetry are unsurprisingly quite similar.

Mallory Race RACE WIN

2007-03-19T18:39:00.000Z

As the day came to a close we lined up in front of the 60's style pit garages in qualifying order. Unfortunately I did not have my video camera with me for this round so the only pictures I have are some long shots from John. They do however show the order and the gap I had back to the rest of the pack later in the race. The run out to form on the grid at Mallory is almost a complete lap so it was a good opportunity for lots of tyre and brake warming, which I fun quite enjoyable!
I had a tense moment waiting for the lights, frantically trying to remember what revs to use for the start! I got a good start when the light went out but John C had a flying start, passing James and I on the inside whilst we were barely moving. The first corner is always fun in a race but for that corner to be Gerrards and will just a small lift after the drag from the standing start it was always going to be a time for a short intake of breath. The front end was nice and responsive so I drove around the outside of James into Gerrards, got a good run through the middle and end of the corner to slipstream John down the back straight and take 1st place in class (3rd place in the race) into turn2. As we exited the hairpin and powered through the Devils Elbow, I took a look back to see where John was and as I brought my attention back to the straight in front I saw there was a red flag, worse still Gordon and Rob had responded very quickly and were doing half my speed. The next few seconds were, how should I put this........ interesting is a little bit of an understatement. The car was a little squirmy as I tried to slow the car down and miss the two cars in front, which madly scanning the track for the reason for the red flag.

So we went around again and lined up for the second time. This time I got a better start (remembered what revs to use, well it has been 5 months!) and kept my place. Rob and James had a little contact as they both went for 2nd place and because of the distraction, I was able to go around the outside of James as we entered Gerrards. James was later to drop out because of the contact. From lap one I just concentrated on keeping in touch with Rob in the class A BDN and get some space between me and John in 4th overall. For the first 5 laps I managed to keep the gap to Rob down to 4 seconds and had a 3 second gap back to John. Keeping up with Rob was harder as the laps ticked by as well started to pass back markers, all of which were very well behaved but its hard to make up the time you loose following somebody though the slower corners. I did find I had more pace potential than I qualifying had shown, when I had to run a tight line into Gerrards to pass a back marker. I found I could run that line at the same speed I had been entering when I was on the racing line. Towards the end of the race I had a 4 to 5 second gap back to 2nd in class (4th overall) and tried to ensure I kept the lap times coming down slightly each time but without over pushing the car or taking too many risks. Its hard to judge gaps at Mallory, every time you go around the hairpin the following cars look really close and when you fire out of Gerrards and down the back straight they seem miles back. As the fuel came down I managed a couple of laps in the 50's even though I was running a very tight line out of Gerrards to minimise the risk, most of the improved lap time coming from a better entry speed at Gerrards which takes a little bit of practice to build up to. By this time I had completed 24 laps of the circuit (one of the benefits of a short lap) and had a good feel of the grip levels. The last two laps seemed to take quite a while and I must admit I was looking at the lap counter and trying to work out how many more to do when I saw the chequered flag and crossed the line for 3rd overall and 1st in class C. How come I always miss the last lap board?
So first outing of 2007, Pole in class, Race Win and Lap record for Class as well. Good start to the season :)

So I was going to leave this post at that, but I can't finish without some congratulations. Obviously the first needs to go to Gordon for the Class A win but maybe more importantly to Tim H who managed a complete Qualify and Race without bending his car, excellent show Tim! A good round of applause for all of the other racers who have complete major changes of the winter including those who have moved to Class B with complete engine transplants. 2007 should turn into a very interesting battle in Class B with the new cars, a challenge for you there Paul!. Finally congratulations and warm welcome to our many new competitors for this year, its a great series to race in and even more interesting when you have lots of new faces. Excellent!

Mallory RGB Race - Part1

2007-03-15T13:08:00.000Z

Last weekend saw us head over to Mallory for the first race of the 2007 RGB championship.

An easy and relaxed trip out on Saturday afternoon so that we were all set for Sunday. In fact the whole weekend was nice and relaxed as our scrutineering was not until mid morning, the practice session just before lunch and then race not until after 5pm. Even the weather stayed nice, with the small exception of a cold wind but what can you expect of mid March in England!

Mallory was yet another new track for Paul and I, although we had completed a handful of laps a the Focus RS during our ARDS test but not really comparable with the RGB cars!

The track in a development of a trotting track and resembles a slightly warped oval with a strangle loop ending in a very sharp hairpin. You obvious attention is taken immediately by the fast and very long Gerrards first corner which went on for ages in our Saturday evening track walk.

Before I get into the details of the practice and race I have to mention that this is an excellent track in my opinion. I know we have seen a number of incidents here in RGB over the years and some of my fellow racers have come home with broken cars but the racing is close and it has speed, tight corners, short and long braking areas and required neatness and guts! Good combination.

So practice got underway with a slow train heading out on the first lap. I was a little way back from the front but spent the first half of the lap getting some good heat into the tires and then blasted past some of the leading pack at the hairpin and then we were off. The advantage of a short track is that you get to do quite a number of laps and therefore opportunities to try different lines and hone the braking zones / turn in points.
I love Gerrards, a turn in or around 95mph and an exit of over 110 some 200odd degrees later. In my next post I will put up some telemetry info for a couple of laps.

We had one interesting lap, coming around the hairpin with waved yellow flags to find Buzz, a new member of the RGB racing fraternity had parked his Genesis half way up the inside Armco barrier! Way to go Buzz. :)

I knew I needed to be near the 50 second lap time to be right at the front but thought that as long as I could hit the low 51’s that would be ok for the first outing. Well as the fuel came down and the confidence grew so did the traffic to pass!
My two or three fastest laps were all slightly compromised by traffic but in the end the fastest was still fast enough.

So practice left me with a lap time of 50.59 to give me pole in class and 4th overall in the race, with just 3 class A cars ahead. John Cutmore in the Westfield (now one of three westies in our race series) was only just behind but would be starting on the 3rd row of the grip, all be it on the inside.

We had quite a wait between the practice session and the race and although I should have spent that time looking at the telemetry, actually I enjoyed a nice lunch, watched some close racing and refueled the car. Did I mention it was cold?

Preseason Testing for 2007

2007-03-15T11:46:00.000Z

Well what an interesting start to the new season.

The build up to 2007 started really late for me, my focus being on a house move and rather too much on the work side. The house move has helped amazingly in that I now have enough space in the garage to work on the car and room to maneuver the trailer. In light of this I have upgraded to a covered trailer so that the car stays clean in transit and does not need to be packed away or loaded up immediately before or after an event, leading to a much more relaxed time around the race day. Due to the late start in prep for the new year there were a few items I had wanted to do which will need to wait until later in the year. Namely the upgrade to the dampers and a replacement set of body work. The dampers are the original steel bodied avo single adjustable which much be well past their best and the body work well how can I put it, is rather tired and has more patches of fiberglass and resin that the base mould!

So anyway to get ready for the first race we (ably assisted in part by John, Tony, Steve from concept designs and Andy from AB Performance) have completed the following.

Swapped out the old ‘spare’ engine and back in with a refreshed late model blade with fully working gearbox.
Installed a new AB Performance airbox with near NACA duct in the bonnet
Modified the bonnet for the aforementioned airbox
Rationalised the cooling system to make it a closed loop and therefore pressurized setup which has dropped the water temp quite a bit.
Welded in some strengthening supports to the dash/steering column mounting to reduce flex during gear shifts on the paddles
Repaired and created new mounts of the exhaust silencer that fell off on the cool down lap of the Birkett 6 hour endurance race!
Made a ‘NASCAR’ sized throttle pedal and replaced the pivot point on the pedal arm to improve the smoothness of the throttle action and make heel and toe action on down changes easier in a bid to improve gearbox life.
New grill to protect the radiator

So there has been quite a bit to do and Paul and I did a shake down test at Snetterton a couple of weeks ago to test our hard work.

The day started a little damp which meant we just slithered around but it was a good opportunity to bed the engines in a test for any silly mistakes. By lunch time as the track dried the cars were really flying and although we were not timing, my thought was that the no.4 Fury, as it will be in 2007, was straight back on pace.

A very good test and with some added fun of being able to drive Andy’s blade engined Pheonix (ex Steve Savage RGB car) as well as doing a swap with Paul (current R1 Pheonix RGB car) for a run out.

More on my analysis of these cars later.

Third Donington video from 06 uploaded

2007-01-30T17:14:00.000Z

Video 3:
RGB Donington 06 Race 1 - Last few laps heated battle

The last few laps of the first race saw me in close battle with John G and Mike F. Lots of passing and sliding around

2006 race results

2007-01-30T16:06:00.000Z

So as a summary of the 2006 championship, here are the race results which give me for 2007 a race number of 4

Brands - 3rd
Snetterton - 5th
Snetterton - 1st disqualified
Cadwell - 2nd
Cadwell - 5th
Thruxton - 1st <<<<<<<<<
Brands - finish
Brands - 5th
Pembrey - DQ
Pembrey - DNF
Silverstone - 6th
Donington - 2nd
Donington - 2nd
Snetterton - 1st <<<<<<<<<

First post of 2007

2007-01-30T15:46:00.000Z

Its been a while since I last posted and lots of things have happened. House move, Christmas, New Year, you know all those sort of things.

Well before I get into the build up for the 07 championship, with all of the new development on the car, I thought I would post a couple of videos from last year. Most of the circuits we go to have a form which you have to sign to say that you will not post any footage on the web. Donington is the exception to this and therefore I can post a few short items from our visit there last autumn.

Video 1:
RGB Donington 06 Race 2 - Lap 1
The first lap of race 2 at Donington, UK in the 2006 RGB championship

Video 2:
RGB Donington 06 Race 1 - 3 Lap behind Paul H
3 Laps of race 1 at Donington, UK in the 2006 RGB championship. Catching Paul H.

Snetterton Race Report - WIN WIN WIN WIN WIN

2006-10-09T17:08:00.000+01:00

On the startline for the race I had a nice clear view in front. Just 3 class A cars would start in front of me. I got a goodish start, holding my position in class but Paul Haynes (class A) had a really good start from behind me and was in front before the first corner. I kept on his tail for the first 2 laps, making use of his tow but being held up through the corners. My car seems to be really good now on the start of the each race. I think I need to analyse that a little, maybe adding in a little compromise to aid pace towards the end.

Paul Rogers overtook at the back straight on lap 3 and we ran together for just over a lap until he missed a gear on the down changes into the Esses and I passed between there and the bomb hole as he was in 4th not 2nd. That short time with Paul actually seemed much longer, I had to look at the final results listing to see the positions on each lap, strange. Dad has an excellent picture of me and Paul running very close through Corum, Paul slightly off the apex by just over a cars width. I will upload this later but for now here is a low quality version from my camera. We are traveling at over 100mph and fully committed (a way of describing being at or more likely just over the limit of grip in an unstable state of control without freaking out loved ones!) From the picture you can see that I had a clear view though the corner on the inside of Paul and I actually looked at going up the inside but the thought of taking Paul out and the wrath of his wife made me air on the side of sensible for once. After Paul slipped back John Cutmore was less than half a second behind me, making good use of the slipstream, a very good engine and longer gearing to just walk up to my tail and two laps later he was past on the back straight. For the next four laps we ran nice and close, again with me dropping back a little on the straight (I was on the limiter for a good 4 or 5 seconds at the end of the back straight as John pulled away) and then I just about managed to reduce the subsequence gap back up through the corners. In fact on lap 7 I managed a 1:18.09, my fastest lap at Snetterton ever with the aid of some concentration to keep it smooth and a nice tow from John. Coming around Corum and into Russells on lap 9, John and I found Judi mid corner running at a rather slower pace. John headed for the inside of the corner, flying over the off track dirt and I just had to wait for Judi to get on the power as she was right on the second apex as I arrived. This knocked a good 1.5seconds off our lap and John Goodwin made the most of it. Our slower run out onto the start/finish straight meant that John could just drive straight past John Cutmore and I into turn 1.

And then there were three. For the next four laps we ran in a pack having lots of fun. Not quite as manic as the race here earlier in the season when there were five of us and it was very hard for me to run in front for any length due to running out of revs each lap. I decided to sit behind the two Johns and wait till later in the race for my attack. I learnt back in April when we first came to Snetterton that you just need to be in the front pack and then it all comes down to the last lap. In fact by this time and probably because I had put in some very quick laps tucked in behind John Cutmore, my engine was rather hot. All I could see on the main display of the DigiDash was the warning for Oil temperature, in fact the water temp was close to the warning point as well. The fact that I had to keep in the slipstream to keep up with the two Johns was not helping much but I did reduce the temperature a bit by short-shifting. Looking back at the race I think it was more physiological for me though as the telemetry does not show much of a drop off in the revs! Lap 13 and it was getting rather heated between the two Johns, there was tyre smoke, dust and some rather interesting lines / slides. Sometimes you just get the impression something strange this way comes. Low and behold going into Turn 1, John Goodwin is on the inside and gets the first Apex, while John Cutmore ran on the outside at what looks like an unaltered pace for which you need to be on the right line. John C gets a slide as he continues to brake into the corner and heads nose first towards the apex of the corner, 90degs to the direction of travel and straight into the side of Mr Goodwin. They both at this point head out of view of my in-car video as they fly across the grass on the inside. John Goodwin getting some serious air man.

His landing unfortunately makes a real mess of his bonnet and ends his race whilst John Cutmore continues on. At this point with waved Yellows everywhere I think to myself, can I pass John as he recovers or not? So I wait for him to get back up to speed and anticipating his lack of grip after being off track, I just let him spin on the next corner and off I go. Unfortunately by this time I had lost almost 4 seconds. So 2 laps to go and there is less than a second back to a fast charging Chris Seaman. Oh did I mention my front tyres were well past it and giving me understeer through the bomb-hole and Corum? I really should have swapped onto the other set before the race. So with Chris catching up quickly I need a little lift on entry for Corum each lap to setup the cars attitude to reduce understeer, not normal behavior for such a fast corner. Penultimate lap was not too bad but by the end of the last lap I was in need of some defending so I went in careful and slow to the last run through Russells to make sure that Chris could not get back on the throttle before I did and it was then just a straight drag race up to the line. After 21 and a half minutes I had won my 2nd official race of 2006. Yeeee Haaaaa.

What I had not mentioned before was that I just needed to get 2nd place or higher finished in the race to get third place in class C in the championship. Now that was not part of the plan for the year I can tell you. Just as much a surprise to me was that I also came away with 4th place overall in the championship.

Sorry for the length of this post but I am writing it sat on a 10hour transatlantic flight so there is plenty of time! Its actually been quite a good flight, what with the opportunity to sit back and think about an excellent way to finish the season, my first season. I have also enjoyed some good music, ranging from TBC, though Spring Harvest 2000, a few podcasts, The Kaiser Chiefs and even some of Joaquin Phoenix from the Soundtrack ‘Walk the Line’. Interspersed of course with some articles from Evo and Car magazine, of specific interest are the reviews of the new Lotus Europa and many thanks from Paul over the road for the opportunity to see the car in the flesh (or should that be Ali and GRP) just before it was delivered to Mr Clarkson! I also had the chance to start reading Rob Lacey’s ‘the Liberator’; a paraphrased modern language of Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospels version in the style of a novel with some ‘Don’t Like This?” commentary and chat show type interviews with key people. I’m only a few chapters in but if you have never read the bible before, read it so many times it has become a little dry for you or just don’t ‘get’ the language then give this a go, you won’t regret it.

Season Finale : Snetterton Qualify

2006-10-09T16:37:00.000+01:00

A home race for the last of the season. A track that I know very well although every time I go there I come away thinking I need to improve through Russells and this would be no exception. Last time out I managed pole in class for both races, a 5th after a spin trying to get the lead and in the second race a win which was to be disallowed after the reverse gearbox failed to work. My aid for this race, well that’s simple, repeat of the last time (well qualify and 2nd race anyway!) without being disqualified. My racing has definitely improved since we were at Snetterton last, which amazing to think back now was only my 2nd and 3rd ever race. Unfortunately I have not had a successful test at Snetterton since then, with a couple of aborted ones due to mechanical issues or work commitments. In addition to that the rest of the top drivers have improved and the car at Donington was definitely not on the pace of the others. I think I had sorted out the top end with the refitting of the airbox seals but with no opportunity to test it, all would become evident in qualifying.

We turned up to Snetterton with an OK’ish forecast (you can see the sky in the phot at the top of this post) and a few missing from the normal front group. Mike would not be running due to the rather large accident with Paul Haynes at Donington and Tim would sit out the race as he tried to sell his car which was sporting a very shiny new skin of purple. A welcome return however would be Chris Seaman, back from his model jet flying, and ready to put us under pressure if last years end to the season would show us.

I decided to run the normal set of fronts just in case the race turned wet, kept the suspension as per normal (have not changed this since Pembrey last I think!) and headed out right behind Paul. As per my normal style, straight on it and passed a few on the first lap. A couple of laps later and I had some clear space and worked on refreshing my mind on the lines and understanding the current grip levels, oh and tweaking the brake bias to suite the heavy breaking into the Essess. I like that corner! Balance felt good, as long as I got the drain for the bombhole and I was able to run a nice tight line, full throttle in 5th through Corum. The first couple of laps focused my attention a little through there as the exit strip appeared a little quicker than I remembered but after a while you learn to focus on the entrance to Russells and no the edge of the track. In the race this is even easier as you just focus through the corner and to the inside of any other cars, that way hiding the left edge of the circuit completely. Self preservation comes in many themes, denial being one of them! Oh and some added pressure in the form of my parents watching. No big accidents today please Derek.
As I said, the car was feeling good and although it was much much better than Donington, it was still not pulling the top end of 6th cleanly and I was a fail few mph down on my previous. Anyway I put in some very low 1:20’s which was at least somewhere near the front but then I always do my fast laps right at the end so I was not too worried. Then a very interesting and nice surprise happened when Paul caught me up and power past. Excellent I thought so I grabbed into the tow and off we went, Pauls lines improved a little as the laps went on, or more like as his confidence grew and the times came down. Paul was obviously quicker down the straight and I was a little quicker through the corners so the gap grew down the straight, although I kept most the slipstreaming effect and then I reduced the gap through the corners. I have to say at this point that I was very impressed and loved every minute of running nose to tail with Paul. He is the main reason why I went race this year, well maybe not reason but more the main reason why I did not say to myself this is a stupid, expensive idea that I will not be any good at. He won’t like me saying this in public I am sure but he has a very smooth style just lacks that lunatic side I have for running over the limit all the time! With some new found confidence in the car balance after running stiffer spring he is now making big strides in performance. Excellent fun as I said. Penultimate lap of qualifying, 1:19.44 and the last, well a 1:18.56 to take pole in class and 6th overall.

In between the qualify session and the race, which was to be a 18min and thankfully we remembered to add some fuel to the normal amounts, I swapped over to an ECU specific to the RRV I now have installed. It would seem that there was a chance between the RRV and the RRW that I was running before and Andy prediction was that this might have a different top end map to better the suite the changes that Mr Honda made in the different models. We would see.

Top Speed Fixed? Plus prep for Snetterton tomorrow

2006-09-29T10:02:00.000+01:00

A short spell in the garage last night was all that was needed to diagnose and fix the straight line speed drop off experienced in the last race. The airbox had moved a small amount and caused the seals to come loose that join the airbox onto the top of the throttle bodies. Only slightly though so not immediately obvious. I think also what happened is that as the speeds increased the air pressure and aero effect widened the gap and therefore made it worse on the back straight compared to down the craner curvers or the slower start/finish straight. Good news though as its easy to fix. There seems to have been some sort of sealant used before which I might try and replicate to help the seal but for now it should be OK. It would seem that my bonnet moves around quite a bit when it gets the opportunity to. Helped in this case by losing one of the bonnet catches from a loving kiss of the chicane marker posts during the previous race!
In prep for tomorrow we have moved the transponder forward to a better position, bled the brakes, cleaned out the discs (the fronts had lost of dirt in the vents, including singed tissue!) and checked the oil levels.

Derek Fantasy Track

2006-09-29T09:57:00.000+01:00

As we draw near to the end of the 06 season I have been thinking about all of the tracks and my favorite corners. My fantasy UK track would have Copse from Silverstone, Craner Curves from Donington, the Mountain section from Cadwell, Coppice and the straight from Donington leading into Paddock hill bend from Brands. Dibeni from Pembrey and then to complete the lap the Bomb Hole, Corum and Russells from Snetterton. Now that would work well for club racing, extended to include Spa for longer races and then 24hour challenges on the old Nurburgring Nordschleife!

Donington Race 2 Report

2006-09-29T09:42:00.000+01:00

The second race was after lunch and this time I had a 4th place in class grid position behind Tim, Mike and John.

For the first couple of laps it was Tim out front with John and I chasing for the remaining podium positions until John would go straight on at the old hairpin when he hit the throttle as well as the brakes. By this time Tim had pulled away, making the most of a clear track and the many laps of experience he has at this track. I reminded myself that I had only completed about 20 laps of the circuit and concentrated on refining my lines and keeping the car in shape to minimize mistakes. After a few laps though I noticed that my lap times were not reducing much. Definitely not as much as I would expect with the tyres coming up to temperature and the fuel loads reducing.

Even more evident when I had some clear space. In fact over the next couple of laps I could see Mike catching me up, especially down the back straight. The car did not seem to be pulling 6th well at all so I changed the dash to show revs and speed rather than lap sector times and saw just 115 – 118mph for a peak speed as compared to 125mph or so in the first race and qualification. Hmm this did not bode well.

By lap 6 Mike had caught me up but more significantly he came in the tow of Paul Haynes who was making the most of his 30 or 40bhp advantage.

Paul caught me on the back straight unsurprisingly and in the processed of him overtaking enabled Mike to come right up close. The next few corners of that lap Paul was concentrating on defending his position where I was quite happy for him to just run off in the distance so I could keep in front of Mike. Paul’s defending slowed us down and Mike found it easy to pass my down the craners.

Up front Rob was doing an excellent job keeping with Gordon and Jonathon. Great improvement in speed this year and just a pitty we did not have separate races so I could watch the close running

We ran close up the other side and as we came around the last left to straighten up before the next right hand turn Paul span. Mike, a cars length ahead of me went high and I braked in the straight line to give myself some more time. By the time I needed to make a decision of what direction to go, I had scrubbed of most of my speed and Paul had completed his rotations and was traveling backwards towards the outside of the track, in fact exactly where Mike had gone! There was a very interesting impact, unfortunately just out of view of my camera, sending Mike skywards and ending the race for both. In fact as they were the gravel on the outside of that corner the race was red flagged and rolled back to the last complete lap excluding Mike and Paul so that left me with another second place! Very unfortunate for an RGB race to be red flagged especially because of an accident but both Paul and Mike were uninjured and it saved me form being easy pickings for people like John and Mike Atkinson as my top speed deteriorated.

So overall a very successful racing weekend and I have come away with a real regard for the circuit. Its even more of a challenge than I remember and then is immediately obvious form a spectators point of view. Cycling around the circuit goes part way to highlighting the fun of the undulations but until you are heading down the craner curves, car sliding whilst being flat in 6th at over 120mph or turning into Coppice, blind and over a crest in 4th the reason for Donington’s high regard by many racers is not apparent

Donington Race 1 Report

2006-09-29T09:22:00.000+01:00

Race one call to the assembly area at the bottom of the Melbourne loop, we were directed up the wrong direction and then around a 180deg turn to the chicane before the grip linup. I put a lot of effort into warming the tyres and brakes on that short run up the Melbourne loop with the thought of the first lap run into Redgate and even more importantly the fast run down the craner curves and into the old hairpin. The thought of that with cold tyres and even worse with cold brakes did not fill me with excitement! We sat on the grid for quite a while for Paul Haynes to form on the grid after he had instigated a made rush back to the STM factory to get a replacement damper for his new Phasar R1

In fact Paul was to line up just behind me and run close by for the start of the race. As the lights went out I got a good run off the line, arriving in the middle of the track right beside Tim on my right and Paul, who had made a great start, on my left. For the first lap or so the car felt really good, I was able to keep up with Paul Haynes in his twitchy but powerful R1 in front and almost hang on to Tim ahead of him whilst pull out a small gap to Mike and John behind.
The Racing was nice and close and in fact it would seem that Paul and I touched at some point on the 3rd or 4th lap when he started to experience fuel starvation problems. I did not notice it from in the car and its not obvious from the in car video either but anyway. So Paul dropped back and would later retire, leaving me clear in 2nd place.

. By mid race Tim would also retire with his exhaust fouling his rear wheel leaving me in first place but being caught by Mike and John. The last third of the race would see a really exciting battle between the three of us with lots of overtaking through out each lap. Donington is one of those circuits where defending costs lots of time and the two of the three at the front would be caught by the third as soon as defending was needed and then the process would just repeat itself.

Great racing and nice and clean. I was very conscious not getting too close to John as we had had contact back at Silverstone and his is in the hunt for the championship. Nevertheless I made an assertive overtake into Coppice on what would turn out to be the last lap and managed to get 2nd place.

Dereks RGB Racing Blog

Rounds 2 and 3 Videos from Brands Hatch

2011 Rounds 2 and 3 - Brands Hatch

2011- Round1 - Mallory

Pre-season testing

Mallory - Final round for 2009

Silverstone and Snetterton Rounds

Mallory

So a catch up for the season so far.

Snetterton Race Videos

Autosport

Testing Tomorrow

2 weeks to go!

We can rebuild

The Start of 2009

Birkett Relay Race

Videos and Pictures from Oulton Park

Rear Suspension

Oulton Park Double Header - Championship decider or will it go to Mallroy?

Silverstone: DONE, Oulton Park: BRING IT ON!

Silverstone Video

Silverstone summary

Suspension and Brake refit prior to Silverstone

Crack Testing

4 wheels back on my wagon!

Donington Video Footage

Donington Telemetry Analysis

RGB Donington

Cadwell Park - July 2008

Pictures from Brands

Brands Hatch June 22nd Telemetry Analysis

Brands Hatch June 22nd - Snetterton Replacement Race

Brands Hatch June 22nd

Anglesey Lap Record video

Rounds 6 and 7 - Anglesey

Championship Points

Round 4 - Cadwell Park

Videos from Cadwell

Round 4 - Cadwell Park

Photos from Brands Race

News Paper Article

2008 Rounds 1 and 2 at Brands Hatch

Brands testing and racing this weekend

Engine Running !!!!!!

Round 1 - Snetterton

Quick F1 Practice Link

In-Car Video setup working.

Telemetry Analysis - Just 4 days to go!!!!

Snetterton Test - February

750mc 2007 Awards Dinner

Yellow cage, sunshine and new seat

Brake Bais

Bias Adjuster, Snet telemetry and Palm

Jones in 3 way newspaper scandal

2007 - End of year

BDN - First Test

2008 Challenger - BDN race car

Final 2007 rounds at Snetterton

Final round of the season - Saturday Qualify

RGB 2007 Final Round at Snetterton

Pre-season finale test at Snetterton

Car Sold

FOR SALE

Tasks before Snetterton.

Silverstone Race Report

Snetterton Race part 2 *** TWO RACE WINS IN THE WEEKEND ***

Current Championship Standings

Snetterton double header - Qualify and Race 1

Snetterton double header - Press Coverage

Cadwell Park Double Header (3rd and 2nd)

Championship Points

Mallory Qualifying Video

Press Coverage

Video Update - Donington Race

Mallory Race ****OVERALL RACE WIN****

Championship Standings after Brands - Prep for Mallory

The incident that probably cost me class C victory

Brands Hatch Race - Pole, 3rd Place and Fastest Lap

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

Donington Reflections

Snetterton Race part 2 * TWO RACE WINS IN THE WEEKEND *

Mallory Race OVERALL RACE WIN

RGB Round 2 - Donington Park RACE WIN

Mallory Race RACE WIN