At last!

I and a floating collection of mostly like-minded nutters have been competing the annual 750 Motor Club 6 hour “Birkett” relay race for some years now. If you’ve never seen it and you’re a petrolhead you ought to make yourself go along one year as there’s really nothing like it in club racing. Essentially you’ve got 70-ish cars on the Silverstone GP track each of which is a representative of a team of up to 6 cars. That means that there’s something like 400 race cars in the paddock taking part in the same race which is verging on the awe-inspiring.

Before lurching into full on rambling, here’s a gratuitous photo from the meeting at Cadwell Park as reported on here.

The Birkett is an endurance race and as such strategy is everything. Most teams have a non-driving team manager who makes a series of decisions throughout the day, trying to maximise the on-track time and praying that the cars don’t break. It’s a handicap race in that every team, other than the “scratch” expected fastest team, has a number of laps added to their total on the day. Ideally, you’d all finish on the same number of laps but incidents and breaksdowns, as well as just being able to get through the traffic in a faster car like an RGB car, all take their toll. What’s more, if you go quicker then expected the timekeepers start taking laps off your handicap.

Traditionally we do quite well on the road. Last time I raced, in 2012, we finished 8th on the road “scratch” position. However, we were 42nd on handicap which is pretty pathetic. On that occasion, mind you, our performance was marred by it having been wet at one point and RGB cars don’t cope too well with the wet.

We had thought about making a determined attack on a better position this year, but decided that we ought to just have fun instead and stuck to our usual strategy of being experienced at the Birkett and having a great time. I was, though, very impressed this year by the team of Morgans next to us in the garages. Not only did  they turn up with the most astonishing spread of food, including bottles of champagne and a Foreman grill for cooking the inevitable bacon butties, but their team manager was walking around in a linen suit with a white shirt and tie. The DMs added a further frisson of individuality to the ensemble; I was well impressed.

All the same, most of us turned up on the Thursday evening intending to do a bit of testing. There were five of us in team RGB’argy this year: me, Dan, Colin, Adrian and Duncan. In addition Jonathan was, as for the last few years, our team manager. All the drivers were there on the test day and we spent most of it sitting looking at the pouring rain declaring “after you, Sir” with some vehemence. At one point, I did decide that I ought to find out whether my extremely ancient RGB cut A048 wets worked at all and was moderately happy with progress; at least I didn’t fall off.

The big problem was that the steering wheel did. Fall off that is.

Turned out that the nuts on the little bolts that hold the steering wheel on to the removable column adaptor had all been getting loose. Heaven knows why I hadn’t spotted it but they all let go at once and I was left to crawl back to the garages with one bolt in place with a nut mostly on it, and two bolts just loosely inserted with no nuts. Luckily I managed to hold things together and crawled back to the pits. In retrospect, I’ve no real idea why this happened; they must have been steadily loosening for some reason and then fallen off… Luckily I didn’t damage anything. I think I’ll put those nuts and bolts onto the mental list of things I use to check off as I’m doing a bolt check.

So, the test day was, literally, a damp squib. However, I thought things could go fairly well on the next day itself and, as they  say, retired to bed.

One of the things that I’ve observed over the years I’ve been motor racing is that weather forecasts have got better. (And, as the Met Office have just bought an even bigger super-duper-computer they’re probably going to get better still.) Five days before the meeting the Met Office web site, which is by far the best place to get UK weather forecasts here, was reporting that it was going to be wet on the Friday and dry on the Saturday. And so it turned out to be; on race morning it was bloody cold but, advantageously for us people on the world’s worst wet weather tyres, it was dry and looked pretty much like staying that way.

So, after much setting up and arguing with the selfish gits who decided to park their cars all over the shop in the paddock we get set up for qualifying. This is a slightly different deal at the Birkett as the grid positions are pre-determined. What’s more, it doesn’t really matter for a race of 6 hours in length. As such, qualifying is just a chance to see the track again and get in the 3 laps that are required by regulations. It was still early, though, and the track was also still a bit damp from the autumn dew and it was clearly not a time for making a big deal of it. When my turn came (each of the cars in the team join in with different short sessions) I did my laps in a very tentative manner, as revealed by the fastest lap time of 2:58.53. I did think, as I was trundling around, that the car was making a slightly odd noise but I put it down to the fact that I wasn’t doing 11000+ RPM as I as being so careful on the greasy track.

we all qualified, then, and it was time for the race to start at 1145. Duncan was the first out, as he was the only one brave enough to do the start. Mind you, this year it was an “idiot-proof rolling start” and so it proved to be as everyone got away well albeit a mite early. Duncan then starting putting in some decent laps, possibly because he, along with Adrian in our team, had bought some slicks especially for this occasion. I was due out in a while and I was eventually pushed into the “hare” position; that’s where you sit in the car with your belts and helmet on waiting to go. I started the engine to get it warmed up and immediately noticed that it didn’t sound at all good. Some quick investigation showed that the header for number 1 cylinder had just come to bits. Here there is significant kudos, and my profound thanks, to David Constable-Berry who’s the son of another RGB racer, Neil. David’s actually in the middle of his Motorsport Engineering degree, currently working on his industrial placement year with AP Racing, and is just so enthusiastic about helping in the paddock… It was David who noticed what the problem was, and then got stuck in taking it to bits.

So, armed with the two separate parts of the header I set off to find a welder. I managed that quite quickly (my thanks to Paul Nightingale at Spire) but there was a wee snag in that he hadn’t got a welding mask with him. Luckily, I managed to find that with the Saker boys elsewhere in the paddock and I managed to weld it up. It’s quite the worst piece of welding I’ve ever done and I was a bit wary about whether it was going to hold but beggars can’t be choosers.

With the part back on the car and it now mostly not leaking I queued up again and eventually got out on track. Here’s some edited highlights. (Actually not edited that much, feel free to look  at the idiot driver at 20:25 and the rather surprising nutmeg move at 25:04.)

I did 17 laps in a session that lasted 48 minutes (there were safety cars!) and the fastest lap was 2:19.35. Compare that with the fastest lap that I did with the J15 in 2012 of 2:23.04. The new car does seem to be working now.

Back in the garage it was just refueling time, both of the car and me as 48 mins in a race car is seriously tiring. Then it was back to the hare position and I waiting again for my time. I was actually scheduled to be the last man on track and it was getting pretty gloomy by now. According to the GPS logs I set off at 17:07. I had a hoot, although unfortunately I don’t have any video. This time the fastest lap was 2:17.65 which is definitely worth a cheer. After 36 mins, and 13 laps, I saw the chequered flag for the first time at the Birkett. It was actually a bit of a surprise and I kept my foot down for a short while until I was actually sure that was it. I’m pretty sure that I was the first person past the black and white and I was the first down the pit lane which is a bit of experience at the Birkett as everyone else lines up to clap and cheer all the cars back into the paddock.

So, that was the end of my umpteenth Birkett and it’s now time for the winter rest and rebuild. When we got the results later that same evening our team was, amazingly, 5th on the road, 4th overall on handicap and first in class! Hence the trophy here. Worse, though, was that if I’d been 10 seconds further down the road and not been the first person to see the chequered flag that would have meant we’d have got another lap in and, hence, we would have been 3rd overall on handicap. Oh well…