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Ranson Times - Wiscombe Park
For some reason over the last few years the trip to Wiscombe has become a
family outing. A couple of years ago we stayed in a rather pleasant cottage for
the week, this year the same cottage was available for a 'short break' from
Friday to Monday at very short notice so happenstance was taken advantage of and
we all went on 'holiday' to a hillclimb.
We broke the journey down to Devon with a break-in to Martin's garage to collect
a clutch and a visit to Gould in Newbury for a cup of coffee and a box of nuts,
bolts, hub and flywheel to complete the clutch kit. The theory being that if a
spare clutch was available then having it in the trailer would be sensible. On
the other hand attempting to change the flywheel and install a different type of
clutch in the rain on Saturday evening might be foolish. In the event the
existing clutch was fine although the rain was extreme and the 'holiday' went
largely by the board.
 The park was in very good
condition, the track had clearly been carefully prepared. This event is one of
the few where the layout requires access to the paddock to use the track, in
fact this is the only National event other than those on public roads where you
get to drive the road car up and down at will. This isn't necessarily
advantageous, the contrast between a sensible 30mph and a competitive 120mph up
Castle Straight is striking. It is however possible to bore passengers with 'we
do more than 120mph through here' while crawling up in a queue...
I don't really remember the sequence in Saturday practice. I think there was
quite a lot of running out of order and in the wrong batch. It was definitely
dry/wet/damp for my runs. Martin seems to have had wet/wet/damp (although it
doesn't seem to make much difference to him). Simon Durling was immediately up
to speed, and Scott Moran and Rob Turnbull were in the right zone. I do remember
that the low cloud at Martini made seeing the corner unusually difficult.
 Sunday
morning the sky was blue but the road was wet. It was going to be the type of
day where the track improves throughout. There was so much water in the trees
that it was going to take a while for even a dryish line to appear from the Gate
to the finish and rather than cloud it was a steaming track obscuring vision. In
this type of situation all that Saturday practice really counts for nothing, so
it's fortunate that the Woolbridge Motor Club offers another go on Sunday
morning. I rolled into the banana shaped and curiously challenging tyre warming
area and dropped the clutch. Nothing. This was a good start. The left inner
tripode had broken (a 'tripode' is a fancy type of constant velocity driveshaft
joint). So the car got towed back to the paddock for the first time. The job of
replacement turned into an ever more complicated exercise with every step
appearing to require more extensive dismantling. We finished just in time to get
Martin out into the end of a later batch. Fortunately there was yet another
batch to run and since I hadn't even approached the line at my first attempt I
got my Sunday morning practice.
As the conditions improved times were plummeting. My practice time would have
qualified 22nd for the first run off. Or rather not qualified. In the event we
bolted on some tyres which actually had some life left in them and a reasonable
time resulted. Unusually Roger Moran, who had gone very well in the slime of
Saturday, failed to make the cut ending up 13th. This meant I was the only
double driver so I just went up and coasted straight back with no idea what time
had been recorded. Better tyres again led to a substantial improvement on
qualifying and I was leading until with three to run Rob Turnbull pipped me by
0.03 seconds. Martin was next and had a bit of an incident. The video is
available from http://www.2t4t.co.uk This
time a tow wasn't sufficient since the left front tyre was missing and the
associated bits were somewhat distorted. The car was returned with the front
dangling from a strap. Anyway the upside was that I couldn't be lower than 3rd
and that really wasn't an expected outcome. Simon Durling was last to run and
duly converted an outstanding qualifying performance into his second
championship win of the season, the last three events and, in fact, ever.
Before the event I'd have been happy to score 8 points. I managed that many last
year but 6 of those were weather assisted in the second runoff. The chances for
more this year depended on repairing the damage to the car. We had one batch,
lunch and then two further batches before I needed to run. The damage was the
left front wheel, wishbones, push rod and steering arm. These were all in the
'spares box' that Gould provide and that Moose stores in his truck. The clouds
started with various authoritatively stated opinions that the upright (the bit
that mounts the axle and brake caliper and is joined by the wishbones to the
chassis) was cracked. The weight of opinion was overwhelming so we dawdled
through the rebuild. Some conversations with David Gould, examination of the
geometry and consideration of the positions of the alleged cracks slewed our
view. I was pretty convinced at one time that running again would be foolish,
but applying some reason led to a change of heart. The upright clearly wasn't
bent, the 'cracks' weren't in a place that made sense given the distortion
implicit in the accident. Wiscombe is a relative low speed, low load course
compared to most. The maximum stress on this upright in normal usage would be in
a very fast right hand corner, a problem at Craigantlet perhaps but not in
Devon. So Martin decided he'd run. By now I'd missed my batch, but the Clerk of
the Course was amenable to me running after the bulk of the class. So all we had
to do was check the suspension geometry and clear out the grass from the
undertray.
 Checking
the geometry involved a long piece of string, various bars pressed against the
wheel rims, a tape measure and a healthy dose of guesswork. By now the main
unlimited racing car batch was running so time was of the essence. It appeared
we had some minor toe out, so that was OK, especially at this venue. However as
Martin was warming up the car it became clear that an incident had occurred. It
wasn't immediately clear how serious. Martin joined the end of the queue. As it
became apparent that Rob Turnbull had had a serious accident at the end of
Castle Straight the opportunity for doubt reasserted itself. By this time I was
confident the car was OK and wanted to run. Unfortunately before the restart the
Clerk of the Course came over and stated that due to the delay he couldn't offer
me an 'out of batch' run. This was extremely disappointing but it seemed best to
accept his decision and retire to the bar rather than argue and then retire to
the bar having wasted potentially useful goodwill.
 About this time I had a call
from Alison (my wife) who was returning from Seaton with the children to say
that she'd been overtaken by an ambulance on the way in and that the Discovery
wouldn't go more than 20mph. A sea of troubles without much in the way of
outrageous fortune. We established that she knew as much about the ambulance as
we did, there was no information being offered. The Discovery would have to
wait. Perhaps it would get better all by itself.
Eventually some race cars and a Discovery descended the hill and shortly
afterwards qualification restarted. Martin drove the rebuilt car into a
comfortable third fastest after Simon and Scott. Unusually Roger Moran missed
out with another 13th. There still wasn't much information about Rob. We were
able to ascertain from fellow competitors who had witnessed the incident that it
was potentially serious but not immediately life threatening.
The Discovery appeared to be running OK. The race car didn't need much turning
around for the runoff, it had enough fuel, having only done one qualifying run,
the tyres were the tyres since the best runoff set had been forcibly
disassembled the last time up, the seat was right.
The runoff was a return to form with Martin taking the win from Simon and Scott.
I'd lost my last 'life', there's no chance of dropping scores now, I've got 6
zeroes. And Chris Merrick had overtaken me in the championship, albeit only by
one point.
 So
it was all over bar the shouting, and when the Discovery ground to a halt on the
bump in Castle Straight there was the potential for plenty of that. Fortunately
the mood was mellow and tows were available. We abandoned the dead vehicle in
the top paddock and Georgia Dunn gave us all a lift back to the cottage. Martin
changed his plans and took the trailer to Newbury on his way back to Guernsey.
There were some repairs to do, setups to perform and gears to change before the
trip to Ireland the next weekend.
Monday morning was supposed to be family fun time with no motorsport intrusion.
Never mind. The owners of the cottage kindly returned us to Wiscombe where the
RAC were called. I pointed out to the operator that the RAC themselves had
signposted the venue but this didn't seem to help. Anyway a van turned up
remarkably promptly and a very competent operative poked about and in the end we
determined that there were volts applied to the in-tank fuel pump but no action
from it. This was an orange van show stopper, so a truck was called.
Once all the hillclimbers have left the top paddock at Wiscombe is a bustling
place. We walked about a bit, talked to the man who prepares the course, picked
carbon shards out of the bank and eventually the recovery vehicle turned up. We
installed the child seats and loaded the children while Reg loaded the Discovery
and off we all went.
Everything went well until we reached the west of Oxford on the A34 where the
traffic just stopped. Eventually they chucked us off at the Peartree junction,
we ground through the back roads, driving past Martin's house, which was where
we came in, and on to a local garage. The reason for the road closure made our
whole weekend of tribulations seem trivial, a family of four returning from
holiday had died in a collision with a car transporter.
A day or so later a new fuel pump restored the Discovery to full health and it
was as though the whole topsy-turvy weekend had never happened. At least the
children got to ride in five different cars, for an eighteen month old boy whose
favourite word is 'car' (although he can also say 'sheep shit' he knows what a
car is) this must have been as good as it gets.
When the smoke cleared on Tuesday I heard from Sean Gould that the
authoritatively cracked upright was in fact fine. We're running it in Ireland.
Paul.
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