Snetterton 26th May.

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erictharg
Posts: 680
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 7:50 pm

Snetterton 26th May.

Post by erictharg »

Anyone at a loose end this Sunday I'm racing at Snetterton. It's our first 45 minute race with the Roadsports series so hopefully some cars to race against...
erictharg
Posts: 680
Joined: Thu Jan 29, 2009 7:50 pm

Re: Snetterton 26th May. Race Report

Post by erictharg »

Well - that is a first! First time ever I've been at Snetterton and not been cold! Great sunny day (as you all hopefully enjoyed here in the UK) always makes racing better. This was the first of our 45 minute races, with the 750MC Roadsports series. The SR&GT crew generally prefer the longer races. Maybe its because we are mainly old farts who favour endurance over sprint performance. The Roadsports are road based cars ranging through MX5's. MR2's, Elise. Boxster, 924S , RX8's etc. Gives a similar spread of speed to SR&GT.
We had a good turn out with the 917, Europa, Allard, Kougar, Taydec, Mamba 23 & GT40 as well as my Eleven.
I'd not done anything to the car since Brands other than new rear shoes and yet another revision of silencer to try and keep the noise down. Practice was fine, other than an alarming tendency to dart to one side under braking for the first few corners. Initially worrying but stopped after a couple of laps. Didn't get a clean run through Coram but good enough to end up 21st out of 31 cars. Makes a nice change not to be at the back! Best lap of 1:35 something.
A check once back in the pits revealed the cause for the brakes misbehaving. A blob of grease from the king pins had obviously made its way onto the disc temporarily causing loss of braking on that side, but then quickly burning off. Cleaned off all the excess to ensure it does not happen again. One to watch for. I know the king pin bushes are getting to the point where they really need replacing, and I'd like to do something better for the lower trunnion than the Westfield brass sleeve.
No incidents during practice but a couple of our guys were complaining about some the Roadsports guys doing some silly dives up the inside. Just no point during practice.
Brimmed the tank, and pretty confident I could do the 45 mins on one tanks as I'd gone beyond halfway last year in the 90 min race at Spa.
The race start went pretty well again - I'm getting better at it. Made up several places but then ended up boxed in on the inside leading up to the first corner. Made up a couple more places in the traffic jam from Riches up to the new hairpin. Then things started to settle down. Had a good tussle for a few laps with a Kermit green RX8 - very evenly matched. As the race evolved many (but not all) of the faster cars I'd passed at the start passed me - but not easily! Pitted at about 25 mins for the compulsory 1 minute stop. Resumed with no problems. In the closing laps I had an MR2 and an Elise trying to pass me. They got past but almost immediately the MR2 slowed (weaving - low on fuel?) so I overtook him and then the Elise spun coming out of the chicane, so I got that place back too. Kept them both behind until the end. Ha ha. Or if you are under 30 years old, lol.
Car ran fine. I'm amazed how that little A Series keeps taking the punishment, although I'm very careful on the rev limit. Never more than 7000, and on a longer race like this usually shifting at 6600 - 6700. The revised brakes were great - no noticeable change in pedal through the race. The little 450 section second had crossplies continue to work fine - nobody was noticeably faster through the bends. It was great to be sitting behind a modern car on sticky rubber going through Coram (long sweeping top gear bend) wishing he'd get out of the way because he's holding me up! Some of my SR&GT colleagues were not so lucky. Ken's Mamba 23 was bumped by a Roadsports car and spun. Then later lost all gears apart from 5th. Graham's lovely 917 also got bumped by a Roadsports car, causing him to spin and break a lower rear joint when going over the kerb. The Kougar pulled off with a mechanical problem. The Taydec had both rear wheel bearings fail. John Plant's Allard won overall but there was some question over his pit stop with him "allegedly" taking off after only 30 seconds. Got cautioned, and I don't think it made any difference to the result (he was easily the fastest car there), but disappointing behaviour. Both the "bumps" were totally unecessary wild dives up the inside - very annoying. Worse still, neither of the culprits came over to apologise to our guys.
I don't have the overall results, but will update with them once published. Felt like a good race, having the unusual experience of actually overtaking slower cars for once! Best lap 1:34 something.
One other interesting outcome was that the cars were all weighed after the race. I'd previously reckoned my car to be 530kg without driver and a full tank of fuel. On the Snetterton scales (no doubt more accurate than my 4 sets of bathroom scales!) the total weight with near empty tank and driver was 560kg. I'm about 74kg, maybe 2kg for clothes / shoes and allowing another 10 kg for fuel means the car actually weighs around 494kg. That means that my current 121 hp puts me almost bang on the limit for power to weight (4.08 kg/hp vs minimum of 4.00, 123.5 hp max). The good news is that my search for more power is unnecessary if I want to stay in class D (saves a lot of money). The bad news is that the driver is now the biggest factor in improving speed! So, the A Series stays for the foreseeable future - its all I need. An LSD would help, as mentioned after Brands. But £550 for maybe 0.5 seconds?
When taking the car off the trailer I noticed a lot of oil on the underside. I'd used maybe a half pint of engine oil through the race, so need to track to leak down. Otherwise set for Donington (Grands Prix circuit) on the 30th of June. Another 45 minute race. Let's just hope that some of the Roadsports guys are better behaved.
Hope to see some of you there.
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