Before the buzz of the weekend subsides, absorbed into the normality of the everyday, I’m committing my recollection of the weekend to writing, mainly for posterity, but also to acknowledge the effort made by the people involved in the ExplodingFist Racing project.
With the Team Trophy entries booked for Donington on the 28th and 29th April 2012 we still needed a big push the week before to make sure the car would be on the grid come Saturday morning, not least getting the car dyno’d so we could get a classification from MSVR. Tractive in Melton Mowbray were having software issues with their hub dyno which meant we couldn’t get a run in until Wednesday afternoon, which in turn was cutting it fine for the series co-ordinators to publish the entry list, but after a few calls back and forth we were entered in Class B - just as we’d planned.
It’s worth mentioning at this point, the engine TrackspeedUK built for us made a healthy 122.04kw at the hubs (164bhp – you lot go and argue about flywheel figures!) – a great result validating how strong the car pulled on track. Fantastic!
Adam Stevenson wasn’t happy we’d done enough dicking about with settings/tyres/general running so Chris Hoey had booked us onto the BookaTrack day on the Friday before, and myself and Phil House were also there to decide tactics for what was shaping up to be a very wet debut – the weather forecast was horrible!
All was going well until 3pm, when Phil rolled the car into the pitlane. “It’s just cut out coming down the straight”. Quick scratch of heads just as Dave Slate (mobile mechanic extraordinaire) turned up with some spanners. After 10 minutes we’d found enough bits of metal in the intake to realise it was probably terminal. Adam piped up that he knew of a ‘172 engine buried in the back of a mates workshop’ and by this time Aaron Harding from TrackspeedUK had turned up with a look of dread on his face (mainly caused by doing his year end all day). So, I went off to dig this engine out, and the Clio was dragged down to Aaron’s workshop in Derby for what was looking like a late night. We all met up back at the workshop where Aaron, Dave, JD, Darryl, Adam and attacked the Clio with hammers and air rachets.
Now, the bare block/head I’d fetched was indeed buried in the back of a workshop and when we dragged it out it was rusted over and looked in a right state. “It’s been there for at least 4 years” was Adam’s parting shot and to be honest, whilst I knew we didn’t have any choice but to take it – I didn’t hold out much hope of it firing.
The lads fitted a new cambelt to it, and swapped all the ancillaries while me, Chris and Trev from Carman Recovery set about organising a pizza delivery.
Meanwhile, whipping the head off the scrapped engine revealed the extent of the damage, it’d dropped a valve and pretty much scrapped the whole thing, including our trick head. The other downer was, our trick cams wouldn’t fit the Phase 1 engine, so we were basically turning up with a stock engine with god knows how many horses left in it. Still – at least we’d be there. If it ran.
Got to about 10pm and we were ready to turn the key. We all knew from the look on each others faces that this was a big moment. AND IT ONLY BLOODY FIRED! We loaded the car onto the wagon and went home exhausted.
I’d got back to Coventry at about midnight, and still needed to fill the jerry cans up and buy food for the catering effort so I was in Tesco at 5.15am Saturday before heading back to the track. We’d set up a marquee the day before, so we met up, I unloaded the car off Trev’s wagon while Chris and Adam went to sign on. We’d had the car looked over by a scrutineer the weekend before, so as expected there were no issues when we presented the car this time.
The power thing was still bothering me, we guesstimated it should really be in Class C now, so I spoke to Nick at MSVR about it. The upshot was, we could have moved down a class but we’d have to run as a guest entry with no chance of podium classification if by some miracle we placed, so we all decided to leave it where it was, we had nothing to lose, and again – given the problems we’d had – we were just relieved to be there at all. Also, by this time, the day was looking like it was going to be dry, bit of a ballache as we’d tweaked the suspension on a hunch but not had chance to dry test it.
Qualifying saw Chris head out first, followed by Adam on the second stint and together they managed to make 14th on the grid, and finished off a set of pads in the process. We’d live with that!
During the interval the lads decided Adam would start, and Chris would bring it home. I was timing the pit stop and Aaron and Dave were on pit board duty.
It was all terribly exciting! Adam made 5 places on the start (see vid - car 89 from behind)
then had a right ding dong battle with the yellow E36 M3 (29), we were all jumping up and down as they traded places lap after lap. When we brought him in to swap drivers he was beside himself with smiles, but had to warn Chris the brakes were ‘shocking’ (we’d chucked in some EBC yellows off his road car that morning and they hadn’t been bedded in). We clocked a 1.53 stop and Chris set off like a rocket on his way to 6th place overall, our quickest lap of the day and 2nd in class! The decision not to reclassify meant we’d actually won a trophy! Result!
As you can imagine, everyone was dead chuffed, and whilst walking back to HQ Adam pulled me to one side and confessed “you know that engine? When I pulled it out of the car 4 years ago it had done 106,000 miles” Damn! We christened it ‘Old Faithful’ and vowed never to take it apart! Chris got pulled and weighed in parc ferme – he’d reported the car was suffering from fuel surge toward the end and we’d put a full tank in before the start!
Forward to Sunday morning, and it was mine and Phil’s turn to have a go. Obviously – given yesterday’s performance the team were expecting results, so no pressure there then. The one thing we’d all agreed in the run up was, wet conditions would brings things our way, both with the Clio and the fact we’re reasonably happy running in wet conditions.
And man, was it wet! As everyone huddled in the drivers briefing the wind and rain were howling outside. Put it this way – if we were running a track day we would have stopped before we started. But, this is racing – and I figured that at least 50% of the competition would be shitting themselves and a large portion of the rest would be tentative at best.
I took the wheel for the first stint. I had three jobs – firstly, make sure I completed at least 3 laps so I could actually race, secondly to try to bed in a new set of pads (the EBC Yellows from yesterday were scrap) and thirdly to make sure I didn’t crash so Phil could complete his 3 laps. We’d agreed that if my times weren’t terrible then I’d come in early for Phil to set a time, but I was a little surprised to see the ‘In’ board after what felt like a really short stint. “You’re running P1 or P2” was the report as I jumped out of the car. Not bad for class I thought. “Overall”. s**t THE BED!
I felt there was loads more time in the car, and boy did Phil find it! He drove like a demon. No one came close. Even as I type this I can still scarcely believe it – P1 overall by the time the flag went out. Awesome.
So, there we were. On pole, the team’s first outing, my first race. Everyone was over the moon. I ate a sausage batch – with egg. Phil just drank more coffee.
Agreeing tactics, we assumed the Clio would struggle to get power down off the grid and lose a couple of places so I suggested that Phil should start as he’d be able to regain places more confidently that I would. And so, when the flag dropped Phil had dropped to 5th going into Redgate, but was back in first by at McLean’s! It was like Senna in 1993 all over again! Lap after lap we monitored the gap he was pulling and I kept wondering how much I’d lose again. The pit opened for stops but we weren’t near half way yet so I kept my waterproofs on. You know when you’re absolutely sure of someone else’s performance that you feel you’re the weak link? All I was thinking was, as long as I didn’t throw it off in my stint, we might, just might be OK. I knew I’d lose time compared to Phil but I felt I’d be able to do enough to place well come the chequered flag. That was the most amount of pressure I’d felt all weekend.
And then, on lap 8, the one thing that no one expected to happen, happened. Phil didn’t come round. We were tumbling down the order and slowly accepting that sinking feeling that he’d gone off. We’d had a slight issue on Friday with the car jumping out of gear when locking up under braking, it happened on the run down to Old Hairpin, and he went off and got beached in the kitty litter. We were done. And that’s how it ended.
And yet, even as we were wet through taking the marquee down, the buzz of the whole experience refused to die. Everyone involved in the whole thing knew that despite what happened, despite what could have been and against the all the odds - we’d all achieved something this weekend and we’d had a proper laugh doing it. I know I’m all heady with residual excitement but, a finer bunch of blokes you couldn’t hope to meet.
And that my friends – is racing.
Long live team ExplodingFist!
Adam and Chris with the Mighty Clio 'Old Faithful'
