2008 Rounds 1 and 2 at Brands Hatch

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)