|
| |
Ranson Times - 15th June 2006
Where were we this weekend? I got in the car and drove off only to have a
doubt as to whether to go North-North-West, North-West, South-West or just round
in circles. I understand that sleepless nights with vomiting children can cause
disorientation but this was ridiculous. So I tossed a coin and headed off up the
M40. There were some likely looking people at Loton Park and a familiar blue
trailer so I parked up.
Loton goes right a bit, left a lot ... right a lot, up, down, bear left, finish.
Far too complicated. I've no idea how to do it properly. I'm sure I'm cemented
in some bad habits, prior to next year I shall put in some book time with the
onboard/offboard DVDunns and consult the local guru.
First job was to fix the shift light that fell off into my lap the other week. A
minor soldering job and a bit of tank tape sorted it. And I was able to make
them come on in a sensible left to right order rather than the centre-left-right
that was confusing in the peripheral vision and only became clear when onboard
video was consulted.
Second job was to reprogram the dash in an attempt to debug the gear position
indicator. The neutral indication is the most useful, ours had been showing
permutations of 1, 0 and 2 depending on how excited it was. Now much improved.
The fact that I can now see exactly what is going on after the event appears to
have forced the device to produce sensible numbers.
It was really really hot and the car was terrible. It felt like a wheel was
falling off, which tends to be distracting. This illustrates the subtleties of
the sport. It was hot at Shelsley the weekend before and the car was great with
no sense of nuts coming undone. Nothing had changed in the week save the track
and the weather.
I think the key factor was that the track temperature was very high, which was
good for the people on road type tyres but bad for us, at least relatively. As
compensation we decided that using tyres for one run only was sensible. We have
four sets, which are normally two sets for practice, a set for qualifying and
the best for runoffs. This meant that the practice sets would have to alternate
for the remaining practice runs and qualifying. The downside was that tyres
would have to be changed between runs, which is hot work. Nevermind.
We also progressively played with rear damper settings, there being some
suggestion that the high temperatures, especially under the engine cover as the
day went by, would lead to a change in the calibration. Fortunately we went one
click too far on the last practice run which gave a base setting for Sunday.
There was no need to be adjusting the setup during the competition.
Saturday evening I had a beer, pitched a tent, intended to go to the hog roast.
But then 'Dunn Cell' rang and suggested a trip to the right pub for a meal. So I
went with the flow and had a very pleasant banter with Dunn, Dunn, Dunn and
Dean. 4D, two DDs, shady lawyers, there's got to be a joke in there somewhere.
We returned via the last beer (or Bourbon and Coke) at the hog roast and then I
got hijacked by the Hillclimb Undertow and ended up at the left pub. Letting
life happen was working quite well, assuming beer was good. Mmm.
Soon enough it was Sunday morning and time for action. There was an overcast for
a while which helped with the temperatures. But it still got hot and we stuck
with our one run per set of tyres plan. This meant qualifying on year or more
old rubber. A realistic look at practice times suggested we weren't taking too
big a risk, especially now the chassis was working better.
In the normal course of events at the moment if I qualify I'm going to be
running first or second regardless of the time. So the qualifying time itself
becomes less relevant. It worked out quite nicely in the first runoff. The
contrast between the old practice tyres and the good set was striking and I
under-exploited them. Everytime I entered a corner thinking 'oops', I was
actually going too slowly. Anyway the time was a personal best and I led until
the next car up, Roger Moran. We then held first and second until the last two
runners, our co-drivers. They duly did the business. Martin made an error at
Museum (hmm) and ended up second to Scott. So we had alternate shades of yellow
in the top four. So far so not so bad.
The results that arrived this morning show that I recorded 47.42 in second
qualifying and Martin ran 47.41. What a difference 0.01s makes...
So first to run again. The only choice is to go as fast as possible, there's no
information about how fast the track is, nobody (else) has fallen off yet.
Anyway an error in the first corner wasn't an ideal start. The rest of the run
was good though, at least as far as Museum where I departed the track at modest
speed and with no damage. An accumulation of several minor errors. I've looked
at the video, both from the car and offboard and it's not too embarrassing.
Simply repeating my qualifying time would have put me sixth. So an expensive
error from a points point of view.
Martin's uncharacteristically slow qualifying meant he had to set a time that
would be hard to beat, which he duly did. Scott made a valiant effort, but
another PB wasn't quite enough.
It was nice to hear Trevor giving his new car some stick, some of the usual
verve starting to assert itself. Chris Pickering continued to impress at a track
he'd never driven before, steady progress in the standard engined Vision/Force/Hayabusa
leaving him third. Tim Wilson took that class, qualifying for the runoff and
getting within a sniff of Dave Kimberly's record. Robert Kenrick broke his
record in the Caterham and would have won the 600cc racing car class and placed
really quite well in the others. Good job it's got fenders and space for two.
 So
it's off to Doune tomorrow via BMTR for some bin diving. Doune is a whole other
experience. I've been playing mind games with myself all week, hopefully I've
won.
'majeccls'
|
