I’d got myself all ready well in advance, here’s the car sitting on the trailer and, after a morning lecturing to students. I jumped on the train, zoomed down to Cambridge and drove to Silverstone. There, miracles of miracles (they must have got some new security guards) we got in easily and parked up for the night.

What’s more, the weather forecast was looking good so perhaps we’d even have a dry race. So, first thing on the Friday I got the car sorted, signed on, and I was ready to go. However, looking at the track it was clear that it was still pretty wet from the overnight rain and the dew. So, I took a short detour to put the wets on (there they are in the photo above) and hence got on track a bit late.

And, spun hugely at Becketts on the out lap… Sigh. The session was really slippy and I’d neglected to remove the ARBs which I know is necessary. However, it wasn’t too big a problem, as there was the rest of the day.

So, come the second session, I went out again and was starting to press on a bit, especially as it was now properly dry. One problem was that I’d clearly got the gearing calculations wrong as I was on the limiter from about half way down the Hangar straight. I don’t think that precipitated the awful thing that was to come, but you never know… All the same, the first lap of the second session was aout 30 seconds faster than the fastest from the first and it got quicker every lap after that.

Until lap 6.

At which point, while going around Brooklands, the oil lights (there’s two of them, arranged to be dazzling) came on. Ooops. TBH, I’m not sure I killed the engine as quickly as I should have done but here’s a snapshot of the logged oil pressure. The top trace is lap 4 and the lower one is lap 5, that is the lap before the oil light came on.  The cursor is positioned about 80% of the way around Luffield and, as you can see on lap 4 the pressure was fine, on lap 5 it wasn’t very clever as it was about 50% of what it was the previous lap. Problem is, this wasn’t low enough to put the light on and at this point of the circuit I’m not looking at the gauge. (The reason it drops right down at the end is that on this lap I came in to adjust the tyre pressures.

So, after the light came on I killed the engine and coasted into the pitlane. Luckily there were some helpers there to put me back to the garage. Once there I took the engine cover off and there was oil everywhere inside the engine compartment. at first I wondered about a rod sticking out through the block but inspection showed that wasn’t the case. After much cleaning it transpired that the cooler had sprung a leak. (These things seem to be too fragile…) As a temporary measure I took off the cooler and cleaned everything up. (And, while doing this, Damon Hill came over for a chat; his son was testing from the adjacent garage. Damon was whinging about the cost of motor racing which I thought was slightly rich going by the amount of stuff they had in that garage for one chap.)

With that done, we added some more oil. (Not a huge amount, it doesn’t take much oil to make a quite spectacular mess.) And then I started the engine. The pressure seemed OK but I must admit I wasn’t too happy as the engine didn’t sound right.

All the same, we retired for the night, and set up everything for the race the next day. It dawned cold and damp but, again, the forecast was to clear up which looked right. I was in the second qualifying session, and trundled over to the rather unusually sited assembly area. On the way over, with the engine essentially ticking over the oil light came on again. Now, as the light comes one at 10psi this isn’t unknown when the oil’s really hot. Problem is, it wasn’t. In the queue I fretted and tried a few things but it was clear that something was up. Bugger…

So, I pulled out and that was the end of my Birkett. My team ended up coming 10th on the road which is pretty good seeing as we were down to 4 cars and we had a couple of mishaps. What’s to bet that it rains, again, next year.

I’ve decided to strip the engine myself rather than taking it to Andy, mainly for interest. I’m assuming that I’m going to find some run shells in there. I hope so as something more than that could be expensive. It’s not going to be cheap though, I looked up the prices of new shells and fell off my chair. A complete new set of big end and main shells will be about £250 which is horrible. Cheaper than a new engine though. I’ll just have to hope there isn’t more damage in there when I get in there…

So, I’ve started putting the car in position to strip things over the winter. I’ve taken all the bodywork, and have even secreted a bit of it in the garage roof as seen here. (A long time ago I screwed some hooks up here to hand the Westfield bodywork here. They’re still there…)

Anyway, that’s the absolute end of the racing season. Watch this space for the tale of the winter fixes and upgrades…

After the first outing at Snetterton I’d noticed that the chain had needed adjusting quite a lot. That seemed a bit odd but I didn’t think too much about it. However, I’d noticed that the same thing applied after the Silverstone race. At first I was wondering why the chain was stretching so much, or perhaps the sprocket was moving slightly. However, I think I’ve found the problem…

While looking at the sprocket I noticed rather a lot of wear. You can see the issue in the photo at the top of the page. On the left is the sprocket I took off the car today,  and on the right is a new one ostensibly of the same size. You can see how the aluminium has been pushed aside from the chain lands into a quite appreciable mountain of aluminium.

What’s more, the same applies to the drive sprocket although is steel! Here’s a similar photo of those.

The thing is, why is this happening? I strongly suspect that when fitting the new engine I’ve got the sprocket alignment slightly wrong. The worst of the wear is one just one side of the driven sprocket which I think is caused by the chain pulling essentially on the corner of the chain lands.

The problem is, there are a number of directions in which the misalignment could apply. The most likely one is that the engine is just translated slightly left or right compared to where the ’07 engine was. As I had to m0ve the engine in this direction to make the sprockets “line up” that would be unsurprising. There are at least two other degrees of freedom though, equating to sprocket rotation about the vertical and longitudinal axes. It’s easy to measure the first one and ther sprockets are within 0.2° of each other. I need to think how to check the other direction though…

Hmm, I suspect this is going to make getting to the next race rather difficult…

While I’m here, here’s the complete (!) video of my race at Silverstone. Listen carefully to see if you  hear the sprockets wearing:

 

The weather was pretty awful in the week before the race, but as it got later in the week the forecast for the Saturday, when our race was, improved. On the Friday the weather was dreadful, absolutely pissing down and I was glad that I hadn’t booked a test session. When we got to Silverstone, after spending hours stuck in traffic jams in torrential rain, we were met by the news that Steve Malyon, one of this year’s new RGBers, was in hospital. He’d lost it on the Wellington straight, gone straight over the tarmac run-off which used to be a gravel trap before the GP boys complained, and hit the wall sideways. His seat had broken up with the upshot that he had whiplash and the medics were worried about the blood in his urine. (Latest news is that he’s going to be fine, although will miss a few races no doubt.)

So that was a bit unfortunate. But, paddock life goes on and we spent a nice evening celebrating Paul and Della’s 25th wedding anniversary in the paddock.

Come race day and the weather looked, as promised, good. Mind you, the weather bods were talking about the possibility of a shower later. What’s more, the track was soaking after the rain overnight. However, with luck it would be dryish for our practice. I was a bit concerned as I’d never really driven the J15 in anger in the wet.

Hmm, and I seemed to have very little grip. I obviously need more work on what to do when it’s wet. Actually, it’s becoming increasingly clear that I really need a lot more seat time in this car. Really, I shouldn’t be faffing around the engine. Oh well.

As it turned out I was 12th on the grid, 7th in class. With luck, though, the track would dry and I’d be able to be balls-out in the race itself.

And, indeed, the sun came out, the track dried and 5 minutes before they called our race it threw it down. So, I rushed to change a few things but, perhaps fatefully I think, elected to try putting the ARBs on full soft rather than disconnecting them.

In the assembly area it actually stopped raining but by now, of course, the track was absolutely soaked. On the green flag lap it was clear that it was very slippy. I was actually quite looking forward to this then, it’s interesting what can be achieved in such situations. I made a decent start and even passed Mat on the Wellington straight. At Luffield I headed for the outside where the grip usually is in the wet only to discover that the Silverstone relaid track has obviously ruined that and I ended up in the gravel trap! Rats, I hadn’t even managed a full lap…

Back home and after clearing out some of the gravel, although there’s still some there. I decided to get stuck into this exhaust. So, I took off all the bodywork, again, put the car up on stands, again, took off the old exhaust, again, and started cutting, measuring, tacking and generally faffing around until I had what’s in the photo on the right.

This though, as you can see if you look hard, is only tacked together. I now had to weld it. I’ve wanted one for a while so, in anticipation I’d bought myself a cheapish TIG set suitable for welding stainless without getting the sort of porous welds that would be a certainly if I MIGged it. I practiced lots and lots and lots until I was getting better at it and then set off to weld all those joints. That took ages but I eventually ended up with the collection of bits shown here. (And a silencer which I seem to have neglected to take a photo of.)

With that all done, and spending ages making sure all the joints were actually sealed up (which involved lots of water) I put the whole system on the car as in the next photo which is much the same as the first photo albeit from a different angle. If you look hard at the bottom right of this photo you can see the lambda bung that I also welded in.

With that done I’ve re-wrapped the exhaust and first tests show that it isn’t actually leaking and does reduce the noise output, at least to a certain extent.

Of course, what I really need to do now is to get the car mapped again. Problem is, there’s very little time. I must admit that I’m giving serious thought to skipping a race meeting to make a little more time. Especially because it’d be nice to get the car on an even keel before giving myself more work to do by racing it.

Final word, if you’re reading this roughly after I wrote it. Andy Bates, of AB Performance fame, made an appearance on Dragon’s Den on the Beeb last night. What’s more, he got some money out of them. He looked cleaner than I’ve ever seen him, but then usually he’s covered in oil… Well done Andy!

In fact, if I’m honest there isn’t really much to say anyway. After the Snetterton race I’d decided that I needed to sort the exhaust system out. I spent a while phoning around a few builders without any joy. I’d imagined that they’d all be twiddling their thumbs at this time of year. However, that appears to not be the case. So, after discussing it with Andy I thought I’d try something that I’ve been meaning to have an experiment with for a while. This is making my own exhaust. After all, it’s just a pipe and as Andy manages to make them out of a collection of mandrel bends, why can’t I?

So, I’ve bought a load of bends from Andy on a sale or return basis, there’s some of them at the top. I took the existing exhaust off and started looking intently at it to see if a solution emerged. The problem is,  it’s a bit like a 3 dimensional jigsaw with no picture on the box and where you have to cut your own pieces. However, after a quite stunning amount of time I got a start on things as in the next photo. This is just the primaries for cylinders 3 and 4 but, trust me, it’s a good start. As you can see, if you look hard enough, this is just tacked together. In an ideal world I’d be able to TIG these properly but, of course, I don’t have a TIG or the ability to use one. I’m working on that…

However, it’s now getting closer to the next race so I’m going to have to take this off and re-instate the old exhaust and put the car back together. Along the way I’ve had the fire extinguisher re-inspected so that’ll stop the scrutes whinging at me. I’ve also replaced the handbrake cables which, as  I mentioned, were binding slightly. I hope they’ve stopped it…

Well, I’ve been busy. I realise that’s not a good excuse but I really have, honest. I’ve just finished teaching a 4 week long class to a set of Masters students (and writing the exam they have to take) and I’ve been trying to concentrate on getting my thesis written. Problem is, I keep thinking of more things that ought to be in there so I’m actually going backwards on that one.

In the meantime, though, a few interesting things have indeed happened. Most importantly it was what is hopefully the Fury’s swansong in that we went to the Birkett. For those of you that have forgotten this is the annual 750 Motor Club’s Holly Birkett 6 hour relay race. Holly Birkett, curiously a chap, was one of the founders of the club and he came up with this race format 60 years ago. Essentially, it’s a relay race for teams of up to 6 cars which takes place over six hours, on this occasion on the Silverstone “Bridge” circuit, which is what was the GP circuit, barring one small change before they added the new “Arena” circuit this year. There is one theory that this will have been the last event on the Bridge circuit. That seems a great shame as Bridge is a great corner, swooping down and under the eponymous bridge and them up to Priory.

All the same, I’d never been anywhere near the GP circuit before so I booked the test day on the friday, in exchange for an alarmingly large quantity of your Earth pounds, so that I could have a go. The only problem, which we weren’t told of before the day, was that the test day was being run on the pukka (old) GP circuit meaning a really rather tight chicane at Club. The Birkett itself would use the cut-through which meant that Club, and the new pit straight past the new, massive, humongous, pits complex would be a lot faster during the race itself. Ho hum.

You can see the difference on this track map from the logger. The black line is the race day route, and the blue one the test day route. This made a huge difference in the times. My fastest time in this sector with and without the cut-through differed by 3.8 seconds.

Test day dawned gloomy and, as we’d decided to kip in our own bed, we set off for Silverstone to find it raining half way there. Oh good. Still, the forecast was good.

In the first session it was pretty damp on the track, although it wasn’t actually raining. So, I set to learning the circuit and at the end my FL was down to 2:13.9. Not brilliant but a start. Adrian was actually hugely pleased when he went faster in his session, which was just after mine. I claim this is because it was drying out. I’m sticking to this…

By the time the next session had come around, about 3 hours later, it was indeed a lot quicker at which point I managed to get a 2:10.9 in. That seemed to say that I now knew the circuit and there didn’t seem to be much point risking the car any more. So, i got the car scrutineered and settled down for the usual evening of RGB chat and gossip. Hopefully, the weather would be OK on the following day, the forecast was OK apart from a dodgy bit mid afternoon. They did reckon that it was going to chuck it down overnight though.

And so it did. I woke up in the night to the sound of rain hammering down on the roof of the motorhome. Still, hopefully it would stop. Surely it couldn’t be as wet as it was last year?

In the morning it was pretty cold but it was indeed not raining any more. Problem is, the track was very wet and I was due out in the first qualifying session. As that would be the first time I’d seen the real track, with the Club cut-through, it seemed to be a good idea to push a bit just to see. We lined up, on all odd places, on the Club straight (now renamed the Wellington straight in honour of the aircraft that operated from Silverstone in WWII). That bit wasn’t without tribulations as the instructions that had carefully been posted in the finals were completely wrong and, in trying to get to the right place some of seemed to drive around a large part of the Silverstone environs. Phil reckoned that he’d got as far as Northampton and who am I to disagree with him? It was nice to see that as all of us “A” cars were lined up on the Wellington straight that a bunch of B and C cars drove down the middle of the two lines of A cars and up to the barriers. Apparently they thought that they should go out in an earlier session. Nice to note that they were all Stock Hatches. Plus ça change…

Out on the circuit for qualifying then and it was mega-slippy. As if often the case at Silverstone the worst bit was the slight kink on the pits straight that is Woodcote. It’s flat in the dry but in the wet it’s “oh cripes, I’ve overcooked it, I’m going to be in the wall in front of everyone”. In fact at the race last year some wazzock in a Radical managed to spin here and total the car on the very first lap—of a six hour race…

The qualifying times are not actually important at the Birkett as grid slots are determined by the handicappers. The only reason for qualifying is that MSA regs say you have to do at least three laps before a race. So, at the end my time was a deeply unimpressive 2:42.40 but it didn’t affect our 8th place (out of 60!) grid slot.

After last year’s dismal first lap—I think I started in about 6th or 7th place and finished the first lap in about 20th due to all the heavy cars in the teeming rain zooming past our light cars skittering about on top of the puddles in our A048 wellies—I didn’t really want to do the start again and so Derek did it. I settled in for 30 minutes in the “hare” position, meaning I was strapped in, ready to go out at a moment’s notice.

However, after just nine minutes after the start, Derek approached down the pitlane. He’d had a coming together with a Scooby (one problem with light, low, fast cars is that people driving heavy turbo nutter barges don’t see you coming) and bits of bodywork were flapping about alarmingly. So, I zoomed out of the pits, got the car slightly sideways in the pit exit lane, and set off.

It was the usual Birkett fare; loads of slower cars and the odd quicker one. Great fun though and the lap times started to come down. Problem is, that quicker cars like ours find it harder to hit their handicap time because you’re always slowed alarmingly by slower cars which are still lapping at their predicted times. This is obviously a message to muscle past. However, this is supposed to be a fun event.

As it was I did 17 laps in this session which took me 37 minutes so I was pretty worn out at the end. (Heaven knows how GP drivers do 2 hours around Monaco.) Problem is we were behind schedule given the early change and when I finished we were in 16th position on scratch.

Now, the problem was that Adrian had had a problem on the test day. One of his driveshaft CV joints had exploded. That meant that we got him qualified in my car by dint of talking nicely to the CoC. However, he was now waiting for a new part to arrive at the circuit by courier. It did so and he fitted it in about 15 mins, finished scrutineering (the scrutes had done everything other that the left rear corner!) and eventually he was raring to go. He got out at some point and I was again in Hare position. However, after only a short period the chaps on the pitwall realised that Adrian had gone missing and I was flagged out urgently. Mind you, the pitlane crew were not exactly as motivated as me, as you can see in the video here. This video is some of this bits from this session when I set my FL of the day at 2:07.90. In fact, that was to remain as the team’s fastest lap which is at least something to write home about. In fact, towards the end of this video you can see me catch up with Austen in the white Fury. I seemed to wake him up because I couldn’t then get rid of him and we were in close proximity at the end of my session, 39 mins and 17 laps after I started. He said afterwards that he was really disappointed when he saw my hand go up! Problem is, the video seems to have been affected deleteriously by the low sun and what appears to be some of Austen’s bacon fat.

And what about Adrian? Well, we found out later that the CV joint had failed after just a couple of laps.

So, I’d now done 34 laps and been on track for about 76 mins. As I was supposed to have been on track for about 60 mins in the entire race I could have a rest. Worse, it was starting to rain and we were sliding down the leader board. I ended up being in hare position again and was flagged out at 1510 to do a shorter session. It was now very slippery although it had actually stopped raining hard. The problem was that at this time of year, and this time of day, the circuit wasn’t exactly drying quickly. I spent another 30 mins on track, and did another 10 laps. In that time my lap times started at about 2:41 and fell to 2:38, so that was still way outside our best time and nothing like what we should have been doing.

However, it was still great fun and I finished the day having done about 1hr 40 mins in the car at full-bore race speeds and done 44 laps. I was, to put it mildly, completely knackered. But, a great time was had by all as you can tell from the smiles in the team photo at the top of the page. We ended the day in 18th position on scratch and waaaaay down on handicap. We were 6 laps down on out handicapped target which is just not good enough. Next year, we’re going to need a better strategy.

So, that’s the Fury done. What about the J15, you ask. Well, it’s coming soon. Here’s a photo to help you.

So, we got up to Silverstone early-ish on the Friday and I went for a drive down one of the old runways to see if I could get the thing off the line with any degree of alacrity. The answer was no, it was horrible. If anything worse than it had been at Pembrey. What was worse, as I was driving back to the bus the clutch starting slipping and then I had no drive at all; I could put it in gear, let the clutch out, and the car didn’t move at all. Sod it…

So, I took the thing apart again, groaning inwardly about getting RTV all over the place again… I assumed that I was going to find something broken but that wasn’t the case. Luckily, I got Andy to have a quick look and he noticed that the release bearing in the pressure plate had been dislodged. In fact, the more I thought about it, I don’t remember making sure that it was properly home when I took the clutch apart in the garage. I put it all back together again and it certainly seemed to do something. However, by now it was pitch dark so I covered the car up and retired for the night.

The next morning looked pretty bright, although the forecast did talk about the possibility of showers later. However, I prepped the car—I’d scrutineered at the end of Friday—and tried out the clutch. Interestingly it felt very different. However, it could just be that it felt like what it had been before the Pembrey race after I’d moved the actuation point. All the same, it was off for the Allcomers qualifying. As usual, this was a mixed affair with all sorts of different cars out there. My original plan had been to get to the assembly area late so I could push the clutch on the exit but it was not to be. However, out on circuit the car seemed to be going well. FL before this meeting was a 1:04.49. The circuit is now a little different from last time as the GP circuit now goes down the National straight. In fact, that straight has been renamed as the Wellington Straight in homage to the Wellington bombers that were based at the Silverstone airfield in WWII. Nice touch that. I actually think the circuit is now very slightly slower as the wide exit to Becketts is now ruined by a load of astroturf! As such I reckon that times this year are a tenth or so slower than last year.

I ended up 8th in the Allcomers quali with a rather poor time of 1:05.38. However, I don’t think I’d got a clear lap because of all the slower cars on the circuit so perhaps that was OK. Interesting, there were three RGB cars, including me, all at the front of the “non slicks and wings” grouping.

Later on it was time for the RGB qualifying. That went rather better in that the FL was 1:04.48. That’s right, 0.01 seconds faster than last year. However, conditions were very different. Down the end of the Wellington straight I was 5mph slower than last year, and not all of that can have been due to the remodelled circuit at Becketts. All the same, I was 8th, again. This time 2nd in class.

Come the Allcomers race and it was going to be good to see if the clutch worked. I was spectacularly careful with it at the start and got away fairly slowly. However, it didn’t bang in and out in the way it did at Pembrey, and indeed while testing it out on the runway on the Friday evening. Does that mean that I was just driving it differently, or could the release bearing have become dislodged inside the engine? Seems very odd… A couple of people got past me at the start, including Dan!, but I quickly got past to my alotted place and after that it was really a Saturday afternoon drive. I kept getting closer and closer to the slick-shod people in front only to fall back when catching up with back markers. As I’ve come to expect these guys often don’t watch their mirrors and both someone in a Mini (a real one) and a Lotus Europa tried to kill me by ignoring my presence. In fact, the Lotus also had a go at the leader who was coming past at the same time as pulling in front of me. Oh well.

So, coming up to the RGB race, as you’d have expected, it started to rain. I trundled over to the assembly area and it promptly decided to throw it down big time. However, it looked as though it was going to stop just as quickly so I decided to leave the suspension alone which might not have been a sound choice. However, it meant I stayed dry under the umbrella! I reckon the J15 is going to be easier to adjust in a rush which will be good, assuming I ever finish it.

We got a green flag lap because of the conditions and, at the start, I was very careful again with the clutch but got away reasonably. However, at Copse Gary spun, see the photo taken by Austen’s friend Dan (a different one) on the left (as was the photo at the top). Luckily we all avoided him and set off on a very wet and greasy track. In the first couple of laps I passed a couple of class A cars (David Wale and Doug Carter) at Copse, I suspect the extra power only makes things difficult, and set off after the leaders who’d got away a bit. In retrospect this bit would have been a lot easier if I’d just softened the dampers. However, I was caught by Al (class C) who was having a storming drive. We actually had quite a good dice, each giving the other room to make a mistake which was rather important here. He got past after I screwed things up monumentally at Luffield on one lap but I stayed with him all the way to the end. In the later stages Tony (the silver car in the photo) started to catch up alarmingly. In particular, he seemed to much quicker at Becketts which necessitated some Olympian levels of blocking from me on the straight. I still don’t know what he was doing!

However, that’s how it finished. I ended up 5th on the road and 2nd in class. So, quite a good race really. To show you how different driving in the wet is, the traces on the right show the throttle position and speed traces around the fastest laps in qualifying and the race itself. As you can see there’s a considerable difference in both speed and how brutal I am with the throttle.

And, here’s a video of some bits of the race:

I had thought that the best bit was that the car was undamaged. However, since then I’ve been looking at the logs and have noticed that the oil pressure was a bit down. This is very odd and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a consequence of fiddling with the clutch as taking the clutch out requires disconnection of the pressure sender. I hope it’s that as I don’t think I can face swapping an engine from the J15 to the Fury before Snetterton…

“Once hooked, teams return year after year, blind to the strong chance of inhospitable weather, because it’s great fun. And, given a fair wind after a summer of sprint races, plenty of mileage for your money. The perfect opportunity to wear machinery out prior to the winter rebuild is oversubscribed from the moment the regulations are published. Like being on the waiting list for a Bournemouth beach hut, it may take years to join the party, but that only heightens the anticipation.”

To me that gets it exactly right. To get another idea what it’s like, see the photo above, taken after last weekend’s race. You will probably think that we seem to exceeded the maximum number of drivers slightly, but that’s the entire team including all the hangers on. The lunatic on the left is Guy, our team manager who seems to enjoy nothing so much as bossing us around for a day. Eagle eyed readers will notice Anthea standing in front of me. (I’m the mop of unkempt grey hair at the back.)

Anyway, back to the beginning. Having spent a while getting the car sorted for the race, as described previously, we drove over to Silverstone on the Thursday evening before the race on the Saturday. The race was taking place on the Silverstone International circuit which I’ve not done before. It was also on this circuit last year but that was just after Anthea had had her coronary bypass operation and it didn’t seem sensible to get involved in such a race at the time. So, I wanted to the outrageously over-priced test day that the circuit was offering us.

We’d rented a garage so we parked up behind it, in readiness for another three members of our team to meet up on the Friday morning. In the morning it all looked a bit greasy and wet. However, the forecast was good, which was more than could be said for the race day.

We only got three 30 minute sessions for our £170 (!!!) so we got out early and found out what the circuit was like. Slippery was the answer and the fastest lap in the morning session for me was 1:50.8. My target for the day was to get below 1:35 which was the fastest lap that an RGB class B car had done in the Birkett last year. So, 1:50 wasn’t very clever but, as I said, it was slippery.

Later on and it dried up a lot. In the next session I got down to 1:34.3 and I knew I could make that about a second quicker at least. To get an idea what this circuit is like, here’s that lap:

After that session I decided to call it a day as I didn’t want to risk bending the car and it was clear that I did now know, sufficiently, my way round the circuit.

So, in the afternoon I got the car scrutineered and we moved camp over into the outer paddock. As there’s hundreds of cars in the Birkett we’re limited to how many vehicles are allowed in the main paddock. Later on, all the rest of the cars arrived and this is a fragment of our garage at the end of the day. This space would be used by a single F1 team, so they’d have two cars in here. We (and there’s four  teams of RGBers  in here) had 22 cars. Oh, and that’s the safety car over there in the far corner too.

In the night it rained.

And rained.

And, in the morning it was really wet. Ho hum. Still it was the Birkett and we were going to enjoy ourselves. We’d got load of provisions in as you can see, we had hundreds of litres of fuel and we needed to have fun. So, after we did qualifying (which is a bit daft really as the grid positions are allocated on the basis of the times we submit to the handicappers. The qualifying session is just to satisfy the regs that say you have to do three laps of qualifying. I was down to do the start, for some unknown reason I’d volunteered. As we were on row 5 of the grid that meant there were about 45 cars behind me at the start. Stalling would be a very, very, bad idea.

And, as the start time approached it rained even more. Eventually we went through the start procedure which, for the first time ever in a start that I’ve done, proceeded to the times shown on the boards. Normally, the club just goes through the 5 minute/3 minute/1 minute/30 second boards as fast as they can so as to keep the meeting rolling along. This time, as the Birkett is scheduled to start at 11:15 exactly, it was done to schedule. Eventually we were off. You can see the first couple of laps and a few other bits of my first session, which took just over 40 minutes and in which I did 19 laps, in this video.

We had been a bit worried about tank capacity before the race. This is because key to doing well in the Birkett is optimising the changeovers between the cars and running for a long time is a Good Thing. After the session I measured the tank and found I’d used a whole 10 litres. At that rate I could have kept going for another hour or so! My FL in this first session was about 2:04 which is reason for this. The problem in the wet is that RGB cars just can’t get any heat into the tyres and the cars are so light and they just skitter about on top of the puddles, which you can probably see in the video. Mind you, we were as daft as that chap in the Radical you can see in the video. He rammed the pit wall on the very  first lap. That, of course, brought out the safety car so we were doing laps at around 2:40 before they cleared up the mess.

At the end of the day, we finished in 19th position on the road which was actually in first place for our class. In that I did 42 laps and about 1 hr 20 mins on the track. It’s not wonder I was so tired later that day. The problem is we got shafted on the handicap and ended up 50th on handicap. As you can see in the video we were just being driven around by bigger, heavier, tintops all the time. (And those BMWs apparently had ABS which seems a mite unfair. How’s that then?)

All the same, we had a great time. Roll on next year. Let’s pray for non-rain next year!

Now, though, it’s down to the serious business of the winter. First thing will be to tidy the Fury away and then it’s back to the Spectre. I’ll tell you all how I’m getting on with it soon. Problem is, I’m a bit short of time at the moment as I’m lecturing on this course at the University at the moment in my copious spare time.

Of course, I was hoping that the car was going to work after sorting the cam position sensor at Mallory and, subsequently, fixing the clutch. I didn’t have time to do any running before getting to the circuit so when we got there on a fine Friday afternoon I took the car for a run down the old runway (which is inside the national circuit) to see if it worked right. Luckily, it seemed to do so. Even better, I managed to get the car scrutineered on the Friday evening so I could have a bit of a lie in on Saturday morning.

I didn’t manage to do so, of course, because I never do on race days. I got up, checked a few things and essentially waited around for qualifying which was a joint session between us and Bikesports. I had worried that we were going to get mugged by hordes of Radicals but that turned out not to be the case, oddly enough. The problem was that this was my first time out on this circuit since I fitted the CBR1000 so I was pretty much at sea with respect to gearing and braking. So, I was going to have to re-learn that as well as putting in a half-way decent time.

In the event, it wasn’t too bad, even though qualifying was marred by a large number of yellow flags and, right  at the end, by Phil blowing up in spectacular fashion and dumping a prodigious quantity of oil in the circuit. When I hit it, at Copse, I thought I was going to be in Silverstone village before I stopped but I slowed once I got away from the most liquid of the oil.

FL, though, was 1:04.73 which wasn’t too bad. It was good enough for 9th, out of 16, on the Bikesports/RGB grid and 8th, out of 23, on the RGB grid. Also 3rd in class for RGB, and directly behind Duncan on the grid. That was good, normally he was out of sight.

The bikesports race was next and we formed up on the grid. A novelty for us was the green flag lap, as the Bikesports boys are on slicks they need it. Come the start and I got my now trademark useless start and Bob Mortimer came past me like I was standing still. That was annoying, especially as his lap time was about 3 seconds slower than mine! Still, I managed to squeeze by into Becketts, admittedly with a rather forceful move. Actually, Bob’s slowly getting faster and faster which is nice to see. He’d done some mods to the induction for this meeting and it looks as though it’s paying off.

Once the race was properly underway I was in position behind Duncan who was crawling all over Steve in front of him. We stayed in that situation for a while and I managed to work out how to go a bit quicker (I was still in getting up to speed with the CBR1000 mode). In fact, my FL was a 1:48.4 at about this point. In the process, I got closer and closer to Duncan and started making a few attempts to get past him. Mind you, he’s a hard but fair man and I was clearly going to have to try harder. However, perhaps provoked by me dodging around behind him, he spun on the exit of Luffield; most likely on the cement dust/oil mixture that was on much of the circuit after one or other of the Formula Vees, who were on before us, had dumped oil all round the circuit. I’ve never seen the attraction of Formula Vees, becaus they’re essentially VW Beetles and use the same deeply, deeply naff suspension system. I’m even less enamoured now.

Still, I was past Duncan, although later in the paddock it was clear that he’d been having clutch problems which were doubtless part of the reason I’d got past him. Then Steve was in front of me. I’d surely never be able to pass him? However on the penultimate lap he seemed to be slowing a bit and I got closer and closer on the last lap, going round Luffield, the last corner, I was really close to the back of him, hoping for a dodge to the inside at Woodcote and he suddenly practically stopped! I oh so nearly ran into the back of him but managed to dodge right and crossed the line 5th overall! Coo, that had been real fun.

I’ve realised that a real attraction of Silverstone for me, even though it’s not a fun place in many ways, is Copse corner. This is really, really, quick and is a real adrenalin fix as you go round it. I approach it in 6th, doing about 122mph, and then it’s a surprisingly light dab on the brakes, down two gears and hard on the throttle before you get to the apex. If you get the line right and take lots of kerb on the inside the car just hunkers down onto the (progressive rate) bump stops and blasts up the hill towards the Maggotts kink. Great stuff…

Lots of people came up in the paddock afterwards and congratulated me on the drive. From inside the cockpit it had seemed business as usual, but I guess it was better from the outside.

Later on we lined up for the RGB race proper. This time I got another lousy start, although that was probably a good thing. As we approached Becketts on the first lap I was quite wide, looking to pass a bunch of people as they all tripped over each other. I saw Duncan spinning and putting his arm up to try and warn people but to no great avail as David hit him quite hard. I avoided the mélée by going even wider, even though that meant bouncing over the huge Becketts kerb but it seemed likely that they were going to red flag it. On the way past after they’d stopped it, it was clear that Andy had piled into David quite hard after the initial accident and there was a lot of oil on the track. Hmm, that’s a shame.

This is my video of the first start, although you can’t really see that much about what happened:

Still, the restart came and we set off. Pretty rapidly I was into 4th place but not really making any progress towards the leaders, who I could see in front of me. Then my palm display fell off the dash! I could feel it swinging about on the cable and at an appropriate point I managed to grab it and lob it into the passenger side of the car. That meant, though, that I was driving blind with only the shift lights and an oil pressure warning light. I don’t work well like this although the lap times weren’t too bad. FL was 1:04.7. I couldn’t catch up the leaders though and, to be honest, I had a pretty lonely race which happens sometimes.

However, I crossed the line in 4th place overall, 2nd in class B. This would, of course, all be pretty good for my championship standings if I hadn’t missed 4 races this season with the catalyst problems and the cam position sensor problems. I bet the competition’s going to be tougher in B next year too…

I’ve got a couple more videos that I’ll show you when I’ve processed them. In the meantime, it’ll be back to the Spectre. Loads of people came up to me in the paddock asking about the Spectre. It seems that lots of people are watching to see what happens. Sorry people, you’ll have to wait until the next time…

It turned out that the problem with the clutch at Mallory was due to something really rather dim. When we’d put the replacement plates in we couldn’t make things fit properly in that the plates seemed to thick. When I took it all apart, in the calm and lack of heat of my garage I realised that we’d left one of the plates behind; it was just that it had worn so smooth and shiny that it looked like the clutch backplate! Once I realised that I took it out and everything fitted properly.

So, let’s hope it works at Silverstone. I’m not testing there, because the test day’s full. However, there’s lots of runway to play on so I’ll try and get there in enough time to zoom around and, hopefully, the clutch will work properly. Mind you, having had the front cover off the engine yet again I’m slightly concerned that it’s going to leak again, so I’ll have to keep an eye on that.

Wish me luck…

This photo was taken by Mark <something or other> who’s talking about coming racing with is. I’ve shamelessly nicked it off his on-line photos, I hope he doesn’t mind. (You might also be able to tell that I washed the car before the race!)

The weekend started for us with the drive to Silverstone on the Thursday evening, as I was testing on the Saturday. However, there was a race meeting taking place and we had to spend the night in the car park outside the circuit. Of course, if I’d read the testings finals that the club had sent me, I’d have been expecting that. Still, it all worked all right and we got into the circuit at 0730 the next day.

I had been a bit unsure about whether going testing was a good idea, but in retrospect I think it was useful. The big problem was that there were lots of things like stock hatches on the circuit and as the day wore on they got more numerous and seemed less and less able to look in their mirrors. This photo gives an idea what it was like. The wall of cars in front is more reminiscent of the Birkett than a usual test day.

The problem on this day was that many of those hatches were effectively racing each other and completely messing up lap after lap after lap for people like me. In fact, I got tired of it and sold my last session to Andy Grant.

Before the weekend, my fastest lap under race-like conditions was 1:06.82 from qualifying last year. (The race itself was wet, so not representative.) I didn’t manage to improve on that time during testing, as I just didn’t get a clear lap the whole day. I did, though, improve the theoretical fastest lap, from 1:06.38 to 1:05.97. That is, I put in some faster sector times than I’d managed before which should be good.

At the end of the day, I got the car scrutineered as they were allowing us to get this done a day before which was very useful. The scrutineer remarked that my helmet was looking a bit bashed up, which is probably correct. So, as we were at Silverstone I went to GPR and bought a new one. Expensive business, motor racing, but it’s probably best not to save money on safety kit.

Race day dawned bright and clear, which was a relief as the forecast hadn’t been too good. Come qualifying time I got near the front of the queue which gave me a relatively decent set of clear laps in qualifying. I managed to get in a 1:06.57 which was good enough for 13th on the grid, 8th in class. OK but not good really. I’m sure I could have gone quicker. I need to get my head around going really quickly for a single lap, I’m still no good at that… One problem, though, was that the gearbox was clearly not too happy. It jumped out of gear a couple of times, and refused to go in on several others. Clearly, I’m going to have to do something about this.

When the race came around, the weather was still fine. I was directly behind Andy Grant on the grid which was a shame, I’m sure I’m quicker than him. That’s Andy in the white car in front of me.

When the lights went out I was almost caught napping and made a pretty gruesome start with far too much wheelspin. Phil passed me on the way down to Copse as well. But I managed to pass Andy when he left the door WIDE open at Becketts and outbraked Phil at Brooklands. So, I finished the first lap in pretty much the position I started in. I’m not too sure what happened to Andy and Phil after this as I didn’t see them again.

Then I was in a battle which lasted the whole race and was great fun. There was a train of me, Henry, Colin, Al (who’d stalled on the grid and was making his way forwards) and David. We swapped places several times although I mostly just watched from the rear. I was having more and more trouble with my gearbox and on the couple of occasions when I did make progress I was knocked back again. If you click on the photo on the left you’ll get a snippet of video which neatly summarises the problem. In fact, at the end of the race, I wasn’t entirely sure that I’d even manage to get to the finish line. But, I actually made up three places on the last lap as Henry spun and Colin and David managed to hustle each other off into the Brooklands gravel. Thanks chaps!

So, I finished in 9th place, 4th in class. I’ll take it but it was rather lucky really…

Now I’ve got a couple of things to fix. The first is the gearbox which is made rather tricky by Andy going off on his summer holidays! Also, the damper that sprung a leak at Brands earlier in the year seems to be leaking again. Having had it rebuilt I’m not too pleased about that. I’ll phone Protech and see what they say about it.

Problem is, I haven’t got long before the meeting at Oulton Park…