Cannot believe how much time flies! More updates including actually racing it!
The car has laid dormant under a cover since last year. A rare spare weekend has come up between my work and I have put an entry in for a CTCRC Pre 93 race at Donington on the 6/7th of June!
A couple of small jobs were required on the car. I fitted some switches to my dash. Only two of them are wired up at the moment. One powers the rad fan manual over ride and the other for my heater/demister. I also rewired my gauges as well so they are on an ignition fed live as opposed to being connected directly to the battery feed. Wired the switches up to the light comes on when the switch is active:
The other requirement was to fit my transponder which is what tells race control and the timing which car is which. I've used the redundant screen wash pump ignition live to power that and mounted it at the front:
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So after all this time my first race weekend has been and gone! What an experience. My prior experience with track driving has been a few flurries at Castle Combe (my local) and most airfield days because they were cheap and neigh on next door to my house. It feels great to have finally ventured out and driven a proper race track like Donington. I'd been for passenger laps before with a couple of the race teams I've worked with so I roughly knew which way to go.
Scrutineering: This was my first sort of worry. I knew I had built the car to regulation and it was just a matter of having a scrutineer cast their eye over the car and my safety equipment (helmet, boots, overalls, hans etc.). I had my fire extinguisher serviced before the event so that was all tip top and everything else was brand new so no drama's there. Dispite it being a lovely sunny day and the forecast for the Sunday was the same, I was asked to show them my 'rain light'. This can either be a single light in the centre or both standard fog lights. I am running the latter but for some reason they didn't work
With little time a 'quick fix' was required but it got me through and I will have to investigate further at a later date.
Qualifying: I made sure I was 'fashionably late' for the assembly area so I was at the very back as we went out on track. This way I wouldn't be getting in any ones way early on and I could find my way round. The first few qualy laps were very steady. Just taking in the feel of the circuit and its characteristics. I set a time of 2:04:237 which put me 15th out of 21 on the grid. Happy days can't ask for any more or less than that!
Race 1: This didn't go to plan. On my way to the grid my brake pedal went very very long and any heavy pressure caused the rears to lock up. The fluid was quite old and I suspect may have boiled during the qualifying session. To ensure I didn't DNF (or worse DNS) my first race, I made the decision to just take it steady and get to the flag. This way I also get my first signature on my novice national B licence. The part of the grid I was on had a lot of novices but they had done races before. On the green flag lap I focused on getting the tyres warm and trying to get a feel for how I could use what little brakes I had. Queuing up on the grid and keeping an eye on the red lights waiting for them to go out. Out they go and off I went, 1st.........4th..... crap, find a gear any gear! 2nd! during that little curfuffle I naturally just want backwards and ended up right at the back. In all fairness I was happy with that what with the braking issue, I could properly keep out of every ones way. There was however one issue with that plan in the shape of a class E Honda CRX which was almost going slower than me, did he have the same issue?? Eventually he left such a wide gap I overtook him going into red gate corner. Other than that it was, as you can imagine, pretty boring affair. The positives to take were I had a practice at starting (ballsed it up), actually overtook some one and then when it came to the much more powerful cars blasting through to lap me, a bit of practice with dealing with traffic. Soon enough the chequered flag came out and I could breathe a sigh of relief! into the paddock and while the car was hot, a good thorough brake bleed and fluid flush to get the old crap and any air out!
Race 2: A much more enjoyable affair although I was nervous as anything whilst waiting to go to assembly. I had made a bit of a set up change in the shape of a few extra clicks on the dampers to stiffen the car up a little as it had been rather soft. Starting from near enough the back this time, I only had ground to gain over the cars in front. Green flag lap this time was more vigorous getting the temperature into the brakes and tyres. Queued up on the grid again watching the lights *don't put it in 4th, don't put it in 4th*. Lights out....1st......4th.....b****cks....2nd.... ah I'm at the back again :roll: . Never mind push on. By the time we got to Red gate I was back with the pack and made up a place as we exited and made our way down the Craner Curves. closely following a VW Scirocco and passing him on the back straight on the opening lap still. After him was the Honda CRX and an Alfa Romeo having a tussle which I caught up to about half a lap later. The pair were being very feisty shall we say and I didn't want to get caught up in any silliness. Sure enough though a lap later, the Honda put a wheel on the grass which fired him sideways across the front of me. As he did he also clipped the back of the Alfa causing him to go into the grass too. I slowed to avoid collection either of them and made my way through the gap to take both their places. With that one car remained in near distant view. A Rover P6 3.5L. Me and him had been on the same row of the grid for race one but he had a gearbox issue so didn't make the race. 2 laps later I was behind him and going on the attack! His 3.5L engine certainly had the legs on the straight but it was woefully bad in the corners and this is where I made up my time on him. For the last 3 or so laps of the race we had a fantastic battle. My car nimble in the corners but his car having the grunt certainly made for an exciting end to the race for us. I made a mistake coming out of the hairpin on the Melbourne loop and caused the rear end to get very snappy, this enabled him to get past me and it was up to me to chase him down. We spent most of that lap side by side. It all came down the the finally corner, he was in front and it in all honesty was his place. He went super defensive into the final hairpin and locked his brakes, in doing so he over shot the corner and went onto the grass leaving me to keep it clean and claim the place back right before the flag. Afterwards in Parc Ferme we had a great chat an the two guys who had the earlier contact came over and were talking about the race too.
Sum up: to round up quickly I had an amazing weekend. It started a little stressful I must admit but by the end I just wanted to get back in and go again. My track day experience is fairly limited as mentioned above however I cannot ever see a track day fulfilling the same feeling that the racing did. Sure it's expensive to get started in and the track time is substantially less in comparison, but there is nothing like being able to race other people. It sounds strange but it took a bit of time to sink in that 'oh I can overtake this person and hound them for a position', as opposed to the track day rules of only over take on one side and with consent etc.
For now some photo's which my dear mother took:
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Had a little post Donington/pre Brands Hatch prep day yesterday. I had bought a few bits and bobs to put on the car this last week. First is a Direnza aluminium radiator. It has a slightly thicker core so will hopefully take more heat away from the engine and keep those oil temperatures in check as a result.
At Donington I forgot to ask any one to put my lap timer beacon on the pit wall, net result is I wasn't able to get my lap times on my OTTO lap timer. This wasn't the end of the world as it was more about just getting into the swing of things but the info would have been nice. 'Back in the day' when I used to look after cars in Kumho BMW Championship all of them used Race Technology DL1 data loggers with a Dash 3 display. The DL1 uses a GPS sensor to map the circuit and give you your lap times based on this. You can set markers and do quite a lot of stuff with it which I have yet to sit down and properly look at. So the bonus of this is my lap times will be displayed without having to place (and potentially forget) a beacon on the pit wall and the data is recorded so it can be analysed after the session. One of the chaps who I used to do some bits for in that championship did me a bit of a deal on his old DL1 Mk2 and Dash 3 full pairing so I had that off of him.
I'm going to mount the whole lot in the dash vents so I have removed them and will take it all to work and make it all fit in to fit when I get to Brands Hatch. I have fitted the GPS sensor and wired the basic power in so all I need to do is plug it in.
Finally for this time, many of you said I would need it when I fitted my bonnet originally and after the weekend I decided it probably was a good idea, to fit an Aerocatch to the centre of the bonnet. It wasn't lifting too badly but it was starting to flap a little bit on the long straights. I had one which was my emergency spare as I've seen them snapped and broken quite a few times by people being rough with them or in a collision.
I took a bit of time getting it lined up with the badge and trying to fine the best place for the pin. I used a pencil grinder to cut the hole out which made life much easier than previous efforts stitch drilling and filing due to lack of compressed air. I need to get some more arrows so they all match now and that'll be a good job done.
Brands Hatch CTCRC weekend is the 25th/26th. Myself and Mike Sheraton will be there representing the E30's
