Elises first race - Pic Whorage

[Icarus]

brilliant piks and thread, good mate of mine is the team manager for the clio in the championship, he says you must of seen them as you shot past when you lapped them! haha

Yeah, good to see a Clio out there! At least it seemed reliable, a lot of people seemed to have problems...

Good to see you there. Plans were running your car weren't they? Is John still there?

We've engineered the Clio for reliability above all else. As such it goes out, puts laps in that are pretty much in the same second lap to lap and then pootles back in again ;-) Didn't stop us having a bit of a mission on Saturday with bent suspension. It went out and qualified with a rear beam that was 12mm out of alignment........ then found the tyres.

Its making around 210bhp on a good day, is a bit lighter than a Cup racer, has gearbox oil cooling, tougher rear wheel bearings and front brake cooling, radio, two lots of data logging, ATL Dry break etc. etc. only downside is its 1100KG's with full fuel and a driver.

We had two very good races. Clio was beautifuly consistant all the way around and both out pit stops went to plan, 90 seconds line to line means we end up holding the driver back for 8 seconds to make sure we cross the exit line at 91 seconds.

We're happy with where it is now so are pushing on with development. Looking for Class 2 podiums in 2009 which means we need to get the weight down and the power up. We may convert to padle shift as well rather than a mechanicaly actuated change. It's a good little thing and with the right modifications to put it further towards endurance racer rather than sprint racer its tough as nails!

Cheers
M - Technical Director, BPM Racing

 

[Englebert]

Glad you had a successful weekend.

Yes John still works at Plans, i think hes on holiday at the moment. Plans did well to blag a scrutineering bay for the weekend except that we got chucked out on race day... despite them not needing it

Unless James Tucker gets a bit stricter about the rules - which i doubt he will in the short term - i'm not sure we're suited to Britcar. I don't begrudge our own Steve winning the race but if a Supercharged Honda's Elise is considered 'Production' then we're never going to get a class win, let alone an overall. I took a look at the M3 CSL there and i wouldn't be suprised if over £100k had been spent on it... they had even moved the suspenion turrets to give you an idea of how far they had gone...

Despite that, we will probably do a couple of more round later in the year so will hopefully see you again. Good luck getting the weight down!

Cheers,

Rob

 

[Icarus]

We're not too fussed about Class wins. Championship position is all we are really concerned about and we're currently running 4th overall. With a bit of luck and a following wind we should be able to maintain that. We're only in that position as we have consistantly finished. Hopefully we can maintain that for the rest of the season. We're happy to take 5th/4th in class as reliability seems to be an issue for some of the guys we are racing and they drop 15 - 20 points every couple of races as a result. Understand where you are coming from as an invitation racer but for our Clio the current setup isn't really a problem for us, after all our car isn't really production LOL

09 Season we'll see about some podiums ;-)

Have Plans not got a transporter/awning they can use? To be honest I'm pretty impressed they let you use a scrutineering bay at all LOL Can see where they were coming from on race day as if you need the top three cars from all classes in at once you need all the space you can get.

If it comes to it mate we'll give you some shelter and a bag of crisps ;-)

See you at Brands?

Cheers
M

 

[bradfincham]

Cheers lads.

From what i've heard, Minister is better than say Scholar. The engine is certainly due a rebuild. The Elise Trophy looks great but i'm not sure how easy it is to get in... plus its being able to dedicate time to all of the rounds, which is impossible at the moment!

We would need a K20A to be competitive anyway, some boys will be running over 400bhp ATW.

Ive dealt with Minister for years with Caterham engines. Many like them, many hate them.
The fact you never get a dyno figure or graph after you part with 8k for a rebuild is what annoys me.
Personally after dealing with a few engine builders Mountune would be my obvious choice now. I rebuild the K-Series in our Caterham - wasnt much trouble at all!

 

[Englebert]

Minister actually built the engines for the Motorsport cars officially... i haven't really done much research on whos best to be honest. We're going to see what series the car can enter and be competitive in, otherwise we will drop in a K20A ourselves.

 

[Englebert]

Have Plans not got a transporter/awning they can use? To be honest I'm pretty impressed they let you use a scrutineering bay at all LOL Can see where they were coming from on race day as if you need the top three cars from all classes in at once you need all the space you can get.

If it comes to it mate we'll give you some shelter and a bag of crisps ;-)

See you at Brands?

Cheers
M

Lol, they never use all the bays though... and if you drop a few names you can blag it! Those scrutineers really got to me though, they love their bit of authority!

Plans do have some lorries, not sure why they didn't use one to be honest but thanks for the offer.

Hopefully will be at Brands, but i'll be there anyway even if we're not racing

 

[Icarus]

Scrutineers got a bollocking from me with there "Where are your pit wall passes? If you haven't got one get off the wall" - was on the radio at the time and didn't take kindly to the interuption so pointed out fairly harshly that there was no wall passes for Britcar/PS1 LOL

Cheers
M

 

[bradfincham]

Minister actually built the engines for the Motorsport cars officially... i haven't really done much research on whos best to be honest. We're going to see what series the car can enter and be competitive in, otherwise we will drop in a K20A ourselves.

If you need a hand sourcing an engine dont hesitate to contact me.
I can get Uk and JDM spec engines for not very much £££!

 

[BenR]

buy a K24 short motor from the states, K20's are gutless.

 

[Ian_182]

Thats a nice looking race car

 

[Justin]

awesome!

 

[Waitey]

buy a K24 short motor from the states, K20's are gutless.

mmmmmmm K24

goes to find photo's of the DC2 with one in.