Well with the current situation and the first half of our season being cancelled its been nice to reflect on the last race of last season while I have been writing up the race report which is well overdue!.... The final race weekend of the year certainly had its highs and lows.
RACE REPORT- RND#7 TDC Brands Hatch Indy (16/11/2019)
The weather forecast for the weekend was looking dark and wet! typical for mid November. Friday was setup day and very wet!, so we swapped to our full wet setup, softest springs, camber and toe backed off. We didn't want to be caught out again like we were at Oulton Park.
We turned up Saturday morning and the rain was holding off for now but the track was very saturated and standing water everywhere.
Again we were the first group of cars out on track for qualifying. Ben started and put in some good solid laps around the 1:10 - 1:08 mark in tricky conditions. putting us P9. Due to the 24 cars flying round at some pace, a dry line started to appear and the laptimes started to drop lap by lap. Graham Hill bend and McLarens still proving to be very greasy tho!.. I jumped in and could instantly feel the car felt better in the wet conditions than it did at Oulton was was great. I put my head down and tried to find the grip. 1:08, then a 1:06, followed by a 1:05 .. P6 at this point.
Couple of our not so finest slides through Graham Hill Bend..
Ben giving full beans!
Me not so much giving it the beans, but lucky to be a bit further to the right of the track when I lost it.
With a few minutes left in the session I started a flying lap. First couple of corners felt great, The class B Clio of Honeybone catching me however. As we dropped through Graham Hill Bend I could see I was 1s up on my best time but I was shown blue flags. I wasn't going to lift off as I was on a hot lap (not normally an issue but on such a short circuit its difficult to manage).. Going into surtees I saw Honeybone come up the inside which pushed me wide off line. As I came into McLarens I had a moment and the back stepped out twice, which saw me sliding sideways off the track and into the gravel, coming to rest against the barrier. Session over! P9 at the end
Nice video of me pawing at the wheel in full panic mode haha.
RACE>>>>
After spending all our prep time between quali and the race cleaning all the gravel out the engine bay and off the car. We didn't have time to make any adjustments to setup. The day had turned out to be quite nice and the track was pretty much dry by the time the race came!. We were going to have to stay on our wet setup!
We decided Ben could have another go at starting a race to get more experience, and I'd take over for the 2nd stint.
Ben had a tricky start, not helped by our lack of handbrake and having to hold the car on the brakes while trying to get revs up. (something to sort for our next race). He dropped from P3 in class to P4. It was tricky to know how far to push the car, especially as the last time Ben was out was the first few laps of a soaking wet quali session. Ben found his feet after a few laps and really began to push, catching up with the yellow Fiesta of Littlewood in P3.
10 minutes into the stint, P1 and P2 of Gay and Harrison have some contact coming through surtees which leads to Gay in the Civic having to peel into the pits with a puncture! putting us into P3
Mid way through the stint (19:50 on the video) you'll see Ben narrowly missing a Golf and some of the pitlane barriers as the Golf had a moment coming onto the pit straight and sliding into and back of the pitlane entrance bringing some tecpro barrier with him as he does! Obviously Ben was the first on the seen and immediately radio'd to say he thought they would have to bring the safety car out to clear the debris. Which they did. He rounded McLarens behind Littlewood only to see Littlewood run wide onto the grass and slide off the circuit. So Ben dived into the pits now in P2, 4s behind the Leader Harrison who also pitted this lap too.
Ben came to a stop in front of Harrison in our pit box. Putting us P1 on the road. The mandatory minimum pit stop time is 2:00 minutes. I took over and watched the dash timer counting down. The pit exit line is the 2nd line out of the pits and about 5s from the box. I saw Harrison behind who came in 4s infront still not moving at around 8s, so made the decision as he started to move around my 5s mark to go for it!. (you cant go excessively slowly in the pitlane of you will get a penalty, so i kept my speed up). The counter went to Zero as I crossed the line so I knew it would be close.
We were now P1 on the road, under safety car conditions. I pushed on to catch the train. The track went green again and I managed to hold Harrison behind for about 1 lap before I got a little tap from behind at Druids and through he went. (He was running about 1s a lap quicker so not really surprising). So back to P2.
I was really struggling with the car balance, it was heavily under steering at the hairpin and through the last corner. I could feel the suspension bottoming out somehow. My pace was about 1.5s off what we've done in the dry. Obviously he had our wet soft springs on and realisation hit. The car was now cornering faster due to the dry conditions and the car was rolling a lot more and the RH was too low as I hadn't compensated for the fact we had softer springs on. This meant that the outside tyre was bottoming out against the inner wheel arch! stopping the travel and causing the US. (was pretty obvious after the race as we had worn through all the paint on the inner arches).
With my lack of pace i could feel the P3 Fiesta closing the gap. I managed to hold him off. Then As we pulled out of Graham Hill Bend Littlewood pulled off the circuit with an issue (DNF), so I had some breathing space!
Unfortunately Chris came over the radio to tell me I had a stop-go penalty for a short pitstop!... 1:59.233... Gutted, but worth the shot at P1. (Harrisons pit stop was a 2:04.313 hence why so close)
I came in to serve my penalty @39:20, and back out i went. Unfortunately I had lost P2 to the Porsche and wasn't able to catch back up.
So we finished P3. But gutted to not have secured P2 but I wanted to go for the win and it didn't pay off.
Another trophy to add to the collection though!!!
Full Onboard below!..
