It was an oil leak Gaz...
Having been at Castle Combe last weekend and the car being fine, we expected to have a trouble free weekend! Had problems pretty much straight away though...
First of all, we were greeted with with rain and fog on a day that was meant to be 24c! Perhaps it was an omen?! Anyway, my old man went out in the practice and complained about the brakes. It seemed he'd just forgotten they weren't very feelsome, as i managed to go about three seconds quicker. After a couple of laps though, the exhaust became very loud so i was called in. Turned out the backbox had fallen apart, so it was whipped off!
Fortunately another team had a welder, so it was fixed with additional strengthening (it's a standard road exhaust that has done about 90k!) just before the first qualifying session.
My dad did most of the session and improved him time. We weren't last, woop!
Towards the end of the session though, we noticed some smoke on the TV (fortunately we have a camera in the engine bay) so called him in. Things didn't look too bad, until the undertrays were taken off...they were covered in oil! My dad complained of oversteer, which was down to oil being on the rear tyres...lol.
Looking at the data, the oil temperature had fallen off...so clearly it was leaking. Upon inspection, we were getting surge at the top of the engine which wasn't an easy fix! The guys thought up a bodge though, and thought we'd be ok to start!
Unfortunately i didn't get to do my qualifying session, but i was confident so wanted my dad to start the race.
Again looking at the TV, we saw smoke as soon as he put his foot down. We started to walk out of the garage to see what the car looked like going round, but then the flames started!
My dad pulled over quick sharpish. Took a while to recover the car as the towing strap had melted!
The NSX was then dumped in the collecting area, feeling sorry for itself. Damage is largely superficial, but the engine loom is fcuked and needs re-doing. Obviously the engine is buggered too, but even before being on fire, we knew it clearly needed attention!
So, thats two races i haven't done in a row now. We're not going to rush the repair, we will use the Elise for the next round. We're going to build two engines so we have a spare ready to go. Will try and develop it in other areas too...
The phoenix will rise again! Just a shame we've single handedly fcuked Honda's reliability record in each race so far LOL.