Anglesey Lap Record video

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

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

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

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

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

Photos from Brands Race

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.