Mar 2018
31Mar
Croft Preparation
I have changed the springs on the car. The 750lb/inch that were on the rear are now on the front axle. And the rear is now using 950lb/in, with four turns of preload. More packing spacers have arrived, so I can pack the rear dampers out to stop the car from grounding out at the rear at Croft. The folded DJ front wing bracket has been strengthened again, so it should not allow the front wing to wobble. And DJ have provided me with CAD drawings in Step and IGS format, so I can get the new bracket CNC machined. I've removed the wire ropes from the rear wing, and replaced the outer ropes with aluminium bar, to keep the diffuser pressed down, as the wire ropes were allowing it to float too much.I've collected a VW T32 Transorter Kombi 4Motion LWB, which will be the tow barge from now on. The van is 3 years old, and with the 2.0D engine and 6 speed gearbox, should be a better base to carry all the spares around in, and I should be able to sleep in it, rather than sleep in the trailer, which is an awful experience.
Video's from Combe and Rockingham are below. I've added telemetry, and you can see I took Avon Rise at 152MPH at Combe, despite the lack of front downforce, and the floor dragging its arse on the tarmac.
25Mar
BARC Rockingham
The following day, we all trekked over to Rockingham Circuit, and after heavy overnight rain, the track was very damp and extremely greasy for P1 first practice, resulting in many spins. My P2 time of 70.4s was 1.5s quicker than my 2017 PB, putting me 4th overall before the break for lunch. But the following T1 run resulted in me almost leaving the circuit on Steel Straight, following a lot of understeer out of Pif Paf, and I had to hit the brakes to keep the car on the track. 71s was quite disappointing. I then went slower again with a 73 on T2, again, the understeer was causing me to struggle round the corners the harder I tried, but I ended up 2nd in class, and 8th overall with a new PB, so again, not too shabby. Not the day I was hoping for though. The challenge now is to get the front wing bracket beefed up prior to Croft on Easter Monday, and in the mean time, talk to DJ about a replacement bracket.24Mar
BSC Round 1
The first round of the British Sprint Championship was a visit to a wet, and very overcast Castle Combe circuit in Wiltshire on Saturday, and it proved to be a very challenging day. I’d never driven the car there before, and with it being the fastest circuit in the championship, it wasn’t a place to be testing the car at. Regrettably, that’s what I ended up doing.With all the snow over the winter, I’d missed two opportunities to test the new aero package, and after yet more snow over the previous weekend, the third attempt at going testing, was moved to last Thursday, just two days before the first event. On only my first test lap at Blyton, the front wing bracket was found to be not rigid enough, allowing the wing to windmill/oscillate at around 90mph, causing the front wing end plates to strike the floor, which needed a hard press of the brakes to bring the speed down to stop the oscillations. After making several adjustments to wing angles, the problem was not going away, just getting worse, so after just 7 laps I packed up and headed home. I was particularly annoyed as the day also involved professional coaching, which I’d also missed out on.
On Friday, a pair of diagonal aluminium braces were TiG welded to the inside of the front wing bracket to try and strengthen it. And then on Saturday, the first (and only) practice run at a very wet Combe, I fitted the DJ front wing back on the car, but after reaching 100mph the wing was found to again oscillate, so I completed the practice run slowly and returned to the pits. Fortunately I’d taken the original Mygale front wing and brackets to Combe, so I quickly fitted them back on the car, ready for the first timed runs. The new wet tyres inspired no confidence either, they needed quite a few more laps before the release agent would disappear, and the grip would come in.
On to T1, and on a damp but drying track, and again on new slick tyres, naturally the car was unbalanced, due to the standard front wing and DJ rear wing on the car. So I drove around at speed and recorded a rather slow 139s run. On to T2, and I really had the hammer down, and ran 130.44s, which was very pleasing. However, the car was reported to be producing huge showers of sparks from underneath, so I added the rest of the packing spacers to the rear dampers to arrest the reduction in ride height due to the new rear wing producing more downforce than I’d experienced before, and I found I’d qualified 9th in the Top 12 run offs. Excellent.
On to the two Top 12 run offs, and I ran a 133s banker on my first run, and then a 131s on my second, to finish a disappointing 11th, however, considering the understeer, and ride height issues, it was a bonus to salvage 2 points. The car was still running too low, and the skid blocks underneath made for a spectacular shower of sparks as the car approached Avon rise at 151mph, so much so that someone commented it looked to be on fire.
So after the first round of the championship, I’m sat 11th in the points tables, and the next championship round is at the Croft Circuit on Easter Monday. The manufacturer of the wings is going to fix the front wing bracket, but whether they can do it in time for Easter Monday, remains to be seen. So I may have to struggle round with the standard wing on the front, but the pressure is on to score more points and hopefully climb a few places up the rankings.
I did finish 4th in class, ahead of Pete, and recorded points in the HSA and BSC championships, so it wasnt as bad a start to the season as it could have been. I should have been a lot higher up in the BSC run-offs results, Graeme Harden beat me yet again with his 1000cc Jedi, but again, salvaging a few points was a bonus.
18Mar
The snow strikes again
Yep, more heavy snow the day before we're meant to be testing at Blyton, and its not looking great weatherwise at the moment. But all is not lost, as I'm due to be at Blyton again on Thursday, so I will still get an opportunity to set the car up prior to Castle Combe at the weekend.The Pi3 datalogger is ready to be installed. I've added the connector to the Pi3 to allow it to connect to the loom I've made that joins it to the four potentiometers. I know the capture software I've written works, and I'm hoping to see some suspension movement data after I've driven with it fitted. I'll post the results when I have them.
I now have a second set of Force Racing wheels, in 8.5" and 10.5" widths, and the new slicks will be fitted to these. The wets will go on last years wheels, once I've finished testing at Blyton on Thursday.
12Mar
Combe Finals
The final instructions came out today for the Castle Combe sprint, and I'm car #16 in class E4 Racing Cars over 2000cc, which has 7 cars in total, and of the 24 registered BSC contenders, 22 are out at Combe, the first round of the championship. Its going to be quite a fight for a Top 12 place thats for sure. In E4 we have reigning 2017 champion Heather Calder, and former multiple champion Colin Calder in their shared Gould V8, John Graham (Gould V8), Terry Holmes and Graham Porret (Lola V8), and me and Pete Goulding (EcoBoost) so our little 1600T engines are going to have to work very hard to make any kind of impact on the class. Aside from E4, there will be Piers Thynne making his debut in D2 Sport Libre in a Radical SR8, and it'll be interesting to see how Simon Bainbridge gets on with his 4200T Audi Chronos against Piers. Class E1 Racing Cars up to 1100cc has 4 BSC entries, with the shared Force TA of Chris Bennett and Chris Jones, plus Martin Pickles, Graeme Harden and new boy Nick Houston in their Jedi's. Then in E2 Racing Cars over 1100cc upto 1600cc, we have new boy Steve Brown with his JKS JR01, veteran Bill Gouldthorpe sharing his SBD OMS 1600 with Carole Torkington, and then in E3 Racing Cars 1600-2000cc, we have Steve Miles (Van Diemen), and Steve Broughton and Matt Hillam sharing their heavily modified SBD Dallara, having received substantial aero upgrades by John Hansell over the winter. All in all, thats a lot of people trying to qualify, so lets hope the weather holds out and the event runs smoothly.Noticeable by his absense is Jeff Wiltshire, his new Zeus EVO2 MR1500T is still awaiting a ROPS certificate. He is hoping to be out at Croft in April, if all the paperwork goes through.
The full entry list can be downloaded here
Here is a posting from my Zetecinside Motorsport Facebook page. Dont forget to like the page to get updates on Facebook.
9Mar
Wets
I bought a set of Michelin tyres during the week, a set of wets, in P310 compound, in F3 sizes, which will be fitted to the Force rims when they arrive. These will be used in place of the 6 year old Dunlop wets that came with the car, so thats another set of tyres to lug around with me, and hopefully my last. They were a good price, and were fresh in 2017, at about a third of the cost of brand new tyres, it just shows its worth keeping an eye on the Race Cars Direct website for a bargain.I've fitted 3mm Tufnol Whale strips to the underside of the front wing end plates, to prevent them from grounding out and wearing the carbon away. I've stuck them on with a few spots of Sikaflex, which should keep them from falling off, but still allow me to replace them quite easily. I bought the plastic from Direct Plastics. They will even supply the material cut to shape, so I ordered the smallest sheet size, and they cut it in to 25mms strips for me.
I've finished the diffuser off, by adding a new pair of carbon end plates, to lower the sides of the diffuser closer to the ground. They are also stuck on using Sikaflex with a few M4x6mm screws to prevent them from falling off. I'll be testing at Blyton on March the 19th, with Pete, and this will be the first time both cars will be together in 2018, prior to the Castle Combe and Rockingham Sprints on the 24th and 25th. I've also got a coaching session on the 22nd at Blyton, with Triple M motorsport, that should teach me a few tricks of the trade so I can improve my times. And I'm spending time on rfactor2 on the PC, practicing the Castle Combe track, to help me learn the right lines for a single seater.
Finally this is a short video of the engine warming up last weekend.
