Jun 2024
25June
Mallory Crash
I'm sorry to report that I had a substantial accident at Mallory Park on Sunday, whilst trying to win the only run off of the day. I slid off the track with a cone wedged beneath the nose of the car, and hit the armco behind some tyres, head on, at around 30mph. The ECU recorded a 3G peak, however the GPS module only generates a G force value 10 times a second, and from where I was sat it was a much more substantial impact. I am told that it was around 13G if I indeed stopped from 30mph in 100 miliseconds.I am very fortunate to be surrounded by family and friends, and was driven home by Ant Brown, with trailer and car behind, to be dropped off on my driveway. I am very indebted to Ant to offer that service to me. Thank you.
Thanks also to the medics and recovery team for getting me looked after. I spent around 45 minutes in the medical centre before I was allowed to leave.
I am very battered, and covered in bruises, from the harnesses and of course the metal chassis that provided me with protection. My hips and groin have huge blue/black bruises, and my back is killing me. I jumped out of the car as soon as it stopped, and rolled onto the floor, breathless, and in agony. First on the scene was Steve Miles, who ran across from his car, and shouted for medical assistance. Thank you Steve.
The front wing is totally destroyed, as is the bonnet, nose cone, the wing mounts, and both brake lines. The FIA crash box is also badly damaged where it hit the solid surface behind the tyre walls. There was very little energy absorbed by the tyres.
So while I am recovering, I have cancelled all future events, and wont be doing any more British Sprint rounds this year. This takes the pressure off me, and lets me reflect on what I want to do in the future.
20June
Printed parts arrived
The K&N filter supports turned out really good, I'm very pleased with the results. The channel for the cable tie to pass through, was left full of nylon powder, which took some effort to remove. My fault, next time I'll add slots to allow the material to be removed more easily. They're now fitted to the car, and the filter is cable tied to it. I think they look great.
The 36 and 37 tooth trigger wheels have also arrived. The dowel pins are far easier to fit from the inside ff the ring, and the chamfer on the outside end of the hole, removes the risk of them from falling out :D
18June
Graham Hill Sprint onboard in 4k
Here is my fastest run from Sunday.I am still waiting for the 36 and 37 tooth wheel speed trigger rings to appear from 3D.People. Sadly they had a printer failure this week, so the printed parts are still awaiting despatch. I am hoping to run the 30 dowell-pin and a 36 at Mallory Park.
16June
Owen Motoring Club - Graham Hill Sprint 60th Anniversary
It was the figure of eight layout on Sunday, and with all the heavy rain on Saturday, I was very pleased to find the weather cooperated. We had no rain, and blue skies at one point, and the track was green to start with but soon came in as the temperatures rose. In practice I was miles off the pace, I just couldnt get the Avons to work. And at lunch, when I fitted the two year old Pirellis, the car was 2.6s faster, and I was FTD on the first run off, 0.6s ahead of Steve Potter in the Empire, we were both in the 53's. On the second and final run, I really pushed the car very hard, and improved again to set a 52.95s time, but Steven had a better first lap and pipped me with a 52.76s, so took the win and FTD by just 0.19s. Well deserved too. We had a great day, spurring each other on to go faster, and such was our pace, we were 5 seconds faster than the third place car.
The car had wool tufts stuck on to the floor and side pod that houses the intercooler, and I was filming the air flow. Henry, the student at Oxford Brookes Uni, who is writing his dissertation on my car, has peformed CFD on a digital computer model of my car, and in the meeting we agreed that we wanted to correlate the results against real evidence. One of his recommendations was to modify the side pod, which I did, and that, coupled with me finding and unblocking two water spray nozzles, lead to air charge temperatures never seen before. They were typically up to 15C lower than the data from the same event the year earlier, even on a warmer day, which is effectively a 6% increase in power output. Thanks Henry :D
I was also trialling a different torque clamp % in traction control, which worked, and there were several other changes, all of which added to the performance. I was 5mph faster on the finish line speed trap than last year, reaching 120mph, even with steeper wing angles, so that just goes to show the continued increase in performance this year.
13June
Escort RSR printed trigger disk
I've sent the STEP file off to have a pair of these trigger wheels printed for an Escort RSR that needs wheel speed pickups. We were considering radially mounted dowel pins, but in the end decided on axial, due to the placing of the proximity sensor. The car runs a Motec M150 ECU, and we've gone for 20 dowel pins.
10June
Photos from Pembrey
So there was a photographer at Pembrey afterall. At £12 an medium resolution image though, and £24 for the hi-res version, I stopped at just the two mediums.
On this picture you can see the cold air intake ahead of the exhaust, and how parallel the floor sits against the ground. The wire ropes on the side pods were added for Mallory, and prevent the floor from being pulled downwards by the low pressure underneath the floor section as the vehicle speed and downforce both increase.
This morning I entered the Llandow sprint in August. After an hour they'd reached 60 entries. I've never been before with the Mygale, I did make a few visits in the Fiesta which could take the kerbs, something I'm not going to tackle with the single seater. There is no overnight camping at the track, and the local caravan park does accomodate cars with trailers, but they want you to book two nights accomodation, so I think I'll be driving down to S.Wales early on a Sunday morning, to keep the costs down. At least the traffic should be ok at that time of the day.
06June
VVT Fail
Entirely my fault, when you're sat in the queue for the start line, and nearly stall the engine, the oil pressure dips, and this causes a VVT Failure. The Dash4Pro dashboard flashed up "LIMP VVT" which is what I'd programmed it to do, but I hadnt tested it since doing so. As soon as I saw the message flash up, I knew I had to power the ECU off and on again, which resets the trip and the ECU is then taken out of limp mode. Brilliant.05June
Class record run from Saturday at Pembrey
Two class records in one run, and a second quicker than I went last year.The ferry is now booked for the N.Ireland trip in August. There is a 15% discount code for motorsport competitors, which brought the pair of crossings with the van and trailer down to a modest £372.12p, which would be even less if I'd not booked a seat in the Hygge lounge, which is an extra 'tenna' each way.
04June
HSA Class Record
I just realised last night when I was checking the records on the HSA Speed Championship, that my best time on Saturday was quicker than the 'Above 2.0' class record held by Terry Holmes in the Lola V8, so I'm now the HSA record holder with my 94.17s time; Thats a score of 12 points for the HSA championship too. Nice.In the HSA Championship I run in the Above 2.0 class, and in the British Sprint we have our own 1600T class, which Pete and I battle over. Pete's set some incredibly quick times over the years, and I've set a few myself, but not as many as I need to to win a championship. Must try even harder :D
I was running ExtraBoost on the run offs again at the weekend, and with the >25C ambient air temperatures the charge temperatures were quite respectable peaking around 54C, even with the additional boost. I did have some Gear Shift settings to try, to reduce the wheel spin between up-shifts, but didnt want to take any risks with zero testing, so I left everything as it.
On Saturday the car used 8.248L of fuel, and on Sunday, 8.678L, making a total of 16.91L used.
03June
Taking the Championship Lead
After posting some good results over the weekend, with a pair of second places on Saturday plus setting a new class record, then a 3rd and 4th on Sunday, where the tyres really struggled when I hit a patch of oil spoiling the first runoff, I am now 12 points ahead of second place, which is a great place to be.
The weather was perfect all weekend, but the track temperatures were very high Sunday, and with the track having such an abrasive surface, which itself introduces heat in to the rubber, the Ultrasofts and the Avon HC3's simply got worse the harder you worked them. Supersofts or even Softs would probably have worked far better.
The car was flawless all weekend. And I have a new cold air intake setup, which was met with intense scrutiny by rivals, one even said 'yes but it looks f*cking ugly'; the ambient air temperatures were far lower than I would have had with the airbox sat above the engine, and this paid dividends with the power output. On saturday evening I added additional heat insulation to the filter duct work, which made another differnce to the air temperatures on Sunday. And whilst upgrading the insulation on Saturday evening, I spotted a tiny droplet of pink antifreeze on the surface of one of the black silicon hoses that supply cooling water to the turbo, so I removed the end of the hose and shortened it by an inch, to ensure it didnt burst when the engine was hot.
During the almost spin on Sunday when I hit the oil patch on the first run off, I captured some very useful traction control data, which will allow me to tweak it to make it try and catch the spin earlier, should it happen again.
9.5 hours driving on the return trip to the circuit, no dramas, a first in class trophy for Saturday, and the championship lead. All in all, a great result.
