August 24, 2009 blog

Brands Hatch race report…

Well it was a strange format for the race this weekend, we had the 2 rounds on the Sunday, but the qualifying was Saturday evening. The car felt good in qualifying, and I managed to record a time only 2 seconds behind ‘John Brabbin’ and just 7 seconds adrift from ‘Tim Sweet’ so I was very happy with this, and was looking forward to the race.

Unfortunately I received bad news in the morning when I awoke, one of the other class ‘d’ drivers had pulled their back, and it was causing them a lot of pain, so reluctantly he was going home and not racing.

This news meant that there were only 3 drivers in class ‘d’ and as this was a trophy round (they were giving trophies for the first 3 places in each class) I was sure to receive a trophy.

The first race I started well, but towards the end of the race the rear of the car started to get a little more lively, and was unnerving going through ‘Surtees’ and into ‘Mclaren’, and one time I did slide onto the grass, but no damage done from what I could see.

The second race there was incident involving a few cars in front of me and I had to pick my way through the bits of cars that came together on ‘Paddock hill bend’, I think about 6 cars were involved in the incident and as a result did not finish, after this incident my car did not feel right, but it could of been a continuance from the previous race, as my tyres were sticky, but it felt like I had no grip at the rear, and this shows in my times, I was nearly 5 seconds a lap slower on the second race.

So the jobs this week are to replace the catalytic converter on the car with a bypass tube, and also maybe replace the exhaust system if I find a lighter one. Also I need to check out the rear hub as there was a humming noise coming from the rear when I went around ‘Mclaren’, although this could of been from the tyre contact on the track. Also I am going to look at lightening the bonnet and boot, this may involve removing the hinges and mounting them on pins, but I need to think of security.

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