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1st Edition. April 24th 2006.
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A glass half full meeting I think.
The car went back into the trailer complete, both of us scored respectably. The
sun shone a bit. But the meeting didn't quite go according to the masterplan.
I don't have much experience of spins, at least from behind the wheel. Tip
toeing around Loggerheads on slicks on Sunday morning in the rain thinking 'this
is a wasted run', while trying to peer though a visor covered in water, I wasn't
expecting to stop at Triangle. Opening the big book of driver's excuses I
conveniently find 'idle too high', and it was coincidentally adjusted down on
Monday.
Sunday evening was spent changing second and fourth gear, again not in the plan.
Tedious, cold and dark. Del Quigley (of DJ Racecars) offered a torch, which was
nice.
The NME XB engine has to be preheated before it can be started. We have a device
from Tom New's 'New Techniques' that couples a diesel fuelled heater and an
electric water pump to achieve this. Sometime on Monday morning we turned the
car on to check the temperatures. The water was reported as 110, the oil 150.
This was somewhat unusual, the heater cannot take the engine above 70 and the
oil usually remains just above ambient. More importantly, the car wouldn't
start. Trying to push it up the hill in less than 49 seconds seemed ambitious so
we were parked for the duration.
A lot of umming and ahhing followed and various experts were consulted.
Meanwhile the batches went by. The inevitable conclusion was that the ECU had
failed. Plugging it into Basil Pitt's strikingly liveried car confirmed matters.
Now we were back to the metaphorical glass. Mike Dean had had a significant
accident on Sunday morning and his car was out of action. So there was a spare
ECU available. In Newbury.
If Mike hadn't crashed we'd have been stuffed, it was too late to jump into
other cars. If Mike had crashed and got his car repaired we'd have been stuffed.
If he'd crashed and his car had still been at Loton then we'd have been in
action immediately. As it was Sean Gould dropped his grouter and jumped into the
works Transit to rush Deano's ECU up to Loton for us. He arrived a good 20
minutes before I was due to run second qualifying. Comfortable.
So now the pressure was on. Normal service had to be resumed. Jumping from a
Land Rover Discovery into the Gould GR55 is a shock at the best of times. They
both have the same pedal arrangement, but that's about it. At the beginning of
the season driving the Gould at a respectable pace is hard work, both physically
and mentally. Having lost a run in the rain on Sunday and two runs due to the
ECU failure on the Monday morning I was pleased just to qualify. Martin was his
normal self and almost casually qualified. Fastest.
Come the run off and the three slow double drivers were lined up and strapped
in, Mike Dean, Scott Moran and myself. Mike went off and came straight back. The
clocks had failed. After some more hanging about Mike had another go and got to
the top with a time. Then it was Scott's turn. He got all the way to the top, no
time recorded. So he got a whole second attempt. Then it was my turn, everything
was working, so I only got a single run. Damn. I should have qualified more
conservatively.
Martin recorded a record breaking split, but something went wrong in the second
part of the hill and Roger Moran just pipped him. So we ended up 2nd and 5th,
not too shabby in the circumstances but we're on the championship back foot for
the moment.
At Loton, even though we are parked on the way to the start line there is no
clock in view and no coverage from the commentary. So a whole event goes by and
we've no idea what has happened outside our own narrow view of qualification and
runoff. It was good that Roger was able to highlight some special performances
in other classes in his BTD speech.
The next meeting is Prescott, last season both visits to the Lawns were marked
by me crashing. And assorted mechanical, hydraulic and electrical gremlins. So
I'm really looking forward to it. Perhaps the surface has mellowed over the
winter. And maybe we'll get back in the swing of operating the onboard camera.
Paul.
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