BMW 420, UK Clio Cup
Hi guys,
Thought this may be of some interest to a few of you on here, I have just completed my first 24h endurance race in the UK Clio Cup spec gen3 race car. My background in motorsport is 4 years of karting until the age of 18 then i moved onto racing cars, my first season in car racing was in the MGZR trophy championship, I finished 2nd in my first year with a number of race wins, podiums and fastest laps. In 2014 I then moved onto racing in the Michelin Clio Cup (a dream come true for me as its always been my aim to race a Clio Cup car) I finished 9th overall after a difficult year of ups and downs. We then decided to move onto the BTCC UK Clio Cup, I spent the majority of 2015 testing the Gen4 race car before competing in the last two rounds of championship at Silverstone and Brands hatch, I achieved 3 top tens in one of the most competitive grids in the UK.
In 2016 we started of in the UK Clio Cup but after 3 rounds decided we wanted a new challenge so I signed up to compete in the 24h series endurance race at Paul Ricard in the south of France.
The car started out life as a gen3 Clio Cup identical to the one I raced in 2014, but had been modified ready for the endurance race. The engine has been upgraded by RSport and together with a port and polished cylinder head and uprated exhaust manifold we end up with around 240 bhp compared to the standard 207bhp. We also run fibre glass bumpers, no rear defuser and a side exit exhaust which saves us around 50kg over the standard gen3 race car. The car also runs a 120 litre fuel tank and air jacks.
The week didn't get off the a great start as we headed out for practice on Thursday and only managed 7 laps before a low oil pressure warning brought the car to a stop, on closer inspection we quickly found out that it was game over for our race engine. The team spent the next 4 hours swapping our race engine for a standard clio cup engine, this was a massive set back as we were back down to 207bhp with a lot of our competitors running 250bhp+
With no testing we headed out for qualifying and managed to put it on P2 which was a massive achievement considering out lack of power!
With the race starting at 14:30 on Saturday with a temperature of 30degrees we quickly got into first place, we had a clean race for 3 hours before a warning on the dashboard for high engine temperature we boxed and quickly figured out that the fuse for the cooling fan had blown, with a quick fix we were back out but now down in 3rd place. We then had more electrical problems with an issue with the gearbox pump and the engine fan again, another fix got us back out on track still down in 3rd place. We then worked our way back up into 2nd place before we had an injector seal leak which we again had to box for losing us 2nd place. With the injector leak fixed and another quick fix for an electrical issue we were back out and chasing 2nd place.
We ha a clean run until about 7am when we realised we had a power issue which was effecting our performance, this was down to a missing alternator belt. Once again the team were straight on it and we were back out. For the remained of the race we we had to lower our pace to monitor the gearbox temperature which had started rapidly climbing. With 30 minutes to go we were changing gear early, avoiding second gear and had completely lost 6th gear but at 14:30 we crossed the line in a slightly worse for wear Clio to finish in 2nd place.
Thought this may be of some interest to a few of you on here, I have just completed my first 24h endurance race in the UK Clio Cup spec gen3 race car. My background in motorsport is 4 years of karting until the age of 18 then i moved onto racing cars, my first season in car racing was in the MGZR trophy championship, I finished 2nd in my first year with a number of race wins, podiums and fastest laps. In 2014 I then moved onto racing in the Michelin Clio Cup (a dream come true for me as its always been my aim to race a Clio Cup car) I finished 9th overall after a difficult year of ups and downs. We then decided to move onto the BTCC UK Clio Cup, I spent the majority of 2015 testing the Gen4 race car before competing in the last two rounds of championship at Silverstone and Brands hatch, I achieved 3 top tens in one of the most competitive grids in the UK.
In 2016 we started of in the UK Clio Cup but after 3 rounds decided we wanted a new challenge so I signed up to compete in the 24h series endurance race at Paul Ricard in the south of France.
The car started out life as a gen3 Clio Cup identical to the one I raced in 2014, but had been modified ready for the endurance race. The engine has been upgraded by RSport and together with a port and polished cylinder head and uprated exhaust manifold we end up with around 240 bhp compared to the standard 207bhp. We also run fibre glass bumpers, no rear defuser and a side exit exhaust which saves us around 50kg over the standard gen3 race car. The car also runs a 120 litre fuel tank and air jacks.
The week didn't get off the a great start as we headed out for practice on Thursday and only managed 7 laps before a low oil pressure warning brought the car to a stop, on closer inspection we quickly found out that it was game over for our race engine. The team spent the next 4 hours swapping our race engine for a standard clio cup engine, this was a massive set back as we were back down to 207bhp with a lot of our competitors running 250bhp+
With no testing we headed out for qualifying and managed to put it on P2 which was a massive achievement considering out lack of power!
With the race starting at 14:30 on Saturday with a temperature of 30degrees we quickly got into first place, we had a clean race for 3 hours before a warning on the dashboard for high engine temperature we boxed and quickly figured out that the fuse for the cooling fan had blown, with a quick fix we were back out but now down in 3rd place. We then had more electrical problems with an issue with the gearbox pump and the engine fan again, another fix got us back out on track still down in 3rd place. We then worked our way back up into 2nd place before we had an injector seal leak which we again had to box for losing us 2nd place. With the injector leak fixed and another quick fix for an electrical issue we were back out and chasing 2nd place.
We ha a clean run until about 7am when we realised we had a power issue which was effecting our performance, this was down to a missing alternator belt. Once again the team were straight on it and we were back out. For the remained of the race we we had to lower our pace to monitor the gearbox temperature which had started rapidly climbing. With 30 minutes to go we were changing gear early, avoiding second gear and had completely lost 6th gear but at 14:30 we crossed the line in a slightly worse for wear Clio to finish in 2nd place.
