So, in a rush to put up even more ramblings onto the Internet, it’s time for another race report. This time from Brands where we headed a couple of weeks ago. For some time now I’ve been wanting to get my Brands lap time down to 50 seconds. The fastest last year was 51.5 seconds but that was rather deranged by a wet race 2 and only completing 200 metres of race 1.
As you can probably tell, thanks to Bryant Photography for the photo at the top of the page. As you can also tell, if you look a little harder, there seems to be a pair of pliers on the right hand side of the photo. No-one knows where these came from. I suspect they’re the Brands version of the Google black helicopters.
On to the race meeting. For a nice change, we had the garages at Brands and so I’d booked one for the test day. In my continuing efforts to not completely impoverish myself with racing I’d booked half a day testing so I was only going to get a couple of sessions on track. All the same, it’s be nice to see how the car was going after the recent performance improvements. The first session saw the time down to 51.1 and much damper twiddling. The second session saw me down to 50.7 and convinced that I could go quicker if I could actually string a lap together.
So, the afternoon was spent chilling out, fiddling with the car and watching the other guys on circuit. The RGB cars look and sound absolutely fantastic on circuit but I must admit I’m starting to wonder about the sheer speed we’re now managing to go at. It’s hard to see how we’re going to carry on like this. I was looking back at at my first race meeting here, which was actually my first ever meeting, the pole time (in an old class A and therefore much powerful) car was 51.9 seconds. I managed a measly 63.1 to put it in perspective although I was rather quicker in the race. This race we were expecting the pole time to be around 48 seconds which is truly amazing.
Come race day and qualifying was the usual Brands melée. It’s such a short circuit that by the time you’ve got round the stragglers are still in the assembly area. As such, I didn’t try to get out too quickly and ended up stranded in the assembly area behind Sian who was having trouble with her parking brake.
Come results time most people were actually slower in quali than they had been on the test day. I was a mite faster though, probably because I’d put this year’s set of tyres on rather than the ones that are two years old. The lap time was 50.5 seconds which made me 9th in both races.
Come race 1 I made a merely half useful start and I then screwed up at Druids letting Paul go round the outside. I then spent the race doing pretty well but not quite in touch with Paul, Dan and Olli in front but reasonably clear of Charlie behind. And there it finished. I ended up 6th as a result of some shenanigans at the front. It hadn’t been a hugely good race but it was quite fun. Fastest lap according to the timekeepers was 50.1 but my logs say it was 50.04 so I’m choosing to believe the latter. Still not below 50 seconds though…
Here’s the video:
So, after a pleasant evening in the paddock spent, as usual, chin wagging and drinking the Sunday dawned. It was another nice day and hopefully I could be a bit more on it today. However, it was not to be.
As before I got a not good start and a few people got past, including Colin who made a rocket start, and ended up battling with some of the faster class F cars. That was fun but I then made a dreadful cockup at Surtees/Maclaren and ended up taking too much kerb and oh so nearly bashed into the back of Austen as he braked and, as a consequence ran wide and lost about 5 seconds. At RGB speed 5 seconds is a lot of traffic and from having been running in a lowly 12th place I was now in a distant 18th.
And then the red flags went out and the chap I was behind stood on the anchors and, for the second time that day, I oh so nearly rear-
ended someone. So much for all the discussion about not braking when red flags appear but slowing down gradually.
The red flag was due to Sian having stuffed her car into the welcoming and fulsome Paddock Hill gravel. We reformed and I made yet another not very good start and finished the first lap back in 17th place although I’m not sure where I started for the second part of the race. After that it was quite fun. It took a while getting past the same chap who’d stood on the brakes in front of me in the first part of the race as he was driving a very wide car, not entirely fairly in my rather biased view. However, I did manage to get past after a decent run out of Graham Hill and also passed a collection of other cars. As usual, starting from further back than one should be tends to lead to a great fun race. Annoyingly I’d just got to the back of Doug and I’m sure (he says with his fingers crossed) that I’d have got him but then the chequered flag appeared. I finished the race in 13th place overall but I’d had fun. Here’s the video. Note that I haven’t processed the data into it this time as, frankly, I ran out of enthusiasm. Look out for the point where my GoPro housing got cracked, presumably by a stone. I guess that’ll be why we all wear these horribly expensive helmets:
So, the next meeting is at Croft. I’ve got a few maintenance things to do to the car such as changing the oil. I’ve also got a couple of suspension notions…