Turbos.
We arrived at Combe with a slim lead in the championship, feeling a little ill-prepared as our previous experience totalling a few laps in a 1.6 Focus. We had a day's testing, a blank day before Saturday's qualifying and Sunday's race.
Unlike most tracks, Combe has no pit garages so we had a fancy arrangement attached to the truck. We were to be joined by another Elise later on.
The weather started dry, and in the first 15 minute session i managed to get a decent time. Things were looking promising, until the heavens opened!
I suddenly had a water temp warning light. The radiator was punctured so a change was needed pronto. We were worried about the how the engine would cope with going over max heat, but it seemed OK in the wet weather after the change.
The rest of the day was pretty greasy, in the afternoon we were one of about four cars that bothered to go out!
My dad was caught out with not enough brake bias to compensate, but came away unscathed. It left the boys with a bit of a clean up though!
The next day was a public track day. We ruled it out on noise, but many Britcar entrants used it as a test day by using supertrap sound mufflers. The back pressure issues meant a Civic's engine blew! I was glad we didn't bother... but the other Elise did.
Annoyingly, our biggest competitor (black BMW) was faster than us by a couple of seconds. All we could do was watch on for the rest of the day.
On Saturday, it was a glorious day of sunshine. We were itching to get on track for the warm up. Disaster struck though, the previous wet weather masked the engine's true state of health. Water temp went too high and we had no choice... we had to change the engine before qualifying.
The boys did a sterling job, putting the spare engine (a lower powered and higher revving 1.8), but didn't finish until mid-way through quali.
We studied our notes and looked to see who we could beat after our woeful times in warm up.
We managed to do a few laps each and managed to put her 2nd in class behind the aforementioned BMW. Relief!
A celebratory race driver diet...
So. The race. We were pretty pumped up we could do well, looking at the datalogging my dad and I were quicker at different places, so if we corrected our mistakes a mid-1m10s lap was on.
I opted to start, but it had to be my worse to date! At the first chicane the other Elise turned in on me. There didn't appear to be any damage, but a few cars slipped past. It then took a turn for the worse as a BMW locked up and took me out at the second chicane.
Some stills from the video footage...
What i didn't know was that the right front disc was now touching the wishbone. I entered the last corner with no brakes, and promptly came into the pits. After some poking around i was sent on my way again, two laps down.
The braking was frankly scaring, changing the brake bias made no difference so i resorted to pumping the brakes and doubling brake distance. I started to get into a comfortable rythm at 2 seconds slower than my qualifying time.
I then handed over to my dad who didn't last long. The suspension collapsed on him at the same turn that the crash happened. We retired, but since we did most of the race we were registered as finished... last place!
Back in the pits the damage was pretty obvious!
To think we were tanking it around with a sheared ball joint was a bit scary! Overall, we were gutted we couldn't make the most of the weekend after another miserable outing at Spa beforehand.
So thats it... hopefully the next round at Snetterton will go better, we're certainly due some luck!
Unlike most tracks, Combe has no pit garages so we had a fancy arrangement attached to the truck. We were to be joined by another Elise later on.
The weather started dry, and in the first 15 minute session i managed to get a decent time. Things were looking promising, until the heavens opened!
I suddenly had a water temp warning light. The radiator was punctured so a change was needed pronto. We were worried about the how the engine would cope with going over max heat, but it seemed OK in the wet weather after the change.
The rest of the day was pretty greasy, in the afternoon we were one of about four cars that bothered to go out!
My dad was caught out with not enough brake bias to compensate, but came away unscathed. It left the boys with a bit of a clean up though!
The next day was a public track day. We ruled it out on noise, but many Britcar entrants used it as a test day by using supertrap sound mufflers. The back pressure issues meant a Civic's engine blew! I was glad we didn't bother... but the other Elise did.
Annoyingly, our biggest competitor (black BMW) was faster than us by a couple of seconds. All we could do was watch on for the rest of the day.
On Saturday, it was a glorious day of sunshine. We were itching to get on track for the warm up. Disaster struck though, the previous wet weather masked the engine's true state of health. Water temp went too high and we had no choice... we had to change the engine before qualifying.
The boys did a sterling job, putting the spare engine (a lower powered and higher revving 1.8), but didn't finish until mid-way through quali.
We studied our notes and looked to see who we could beat after our woeful times in warm up.
We managed to do a few laps each and managed to put her 2nd in class behind the aforementioned BMW. Relief!
A celebratory race driver diet...
So. The race. We were pretty pumped up we could do well, looking at the datalogging my dad and I were quicker at different places, so if we corrected our mistakes a mid-1m10s lap was on.
I opted to start, but it had to be my worse to date! At the first chicane the other Elise turned in on me. There didn't appear to be any damage, but a few cars slipped past. It then took a turn for the worse as a BMW locked up and took me out at the second chicane.
Some stills from the video footage...
What i didn't know was that the right front disc was now touching the wishbone. I entered the last corner with no brakes, and promptly came into the pits. After some poking around i was sent on my way again, two laps down.
The braking was frankly scaring, changing the brake bias made no difference so i resorted to pumping the brakes and doubling brake distance. I started to get into a comfortable rythm at 2 seconds slower than my qualifying time.
I then handed over to my dad who didn't last long. The suspension collapsed on him at the same turn that the crash happened. We retired, but since we did most of the race we were registered as finished... last place!
Back in the pits the damage was pretty obvious!
To think we were tanking it around with a sheared ball joint was a bit scary! Overall, we were gutted we couldn't make the most of the weekend after another miserable outing at Spa beforehand.
So thats it... hopefully the next round at Snetterton will go better, we're certainly due some luck!
