Broke it again

Another race weekend at Snetterton, with an annoying final result. Oh well… Back to the beginning, though. The schedule was for there to be an RGB race on the Sunday only. However, the club had opened up the Bikesports race to us and, dutifully, a whole stack of us had signed up only for the race to be over-subscribed. That meant that there was now a non-championship RGB race and a championship one. The qualifying for the former was to be run with the Bikesports chaps.

The biggest problem was that the qualifying sessions were numbers 1 and 3, meaning that there was precious little time to even refuel between them. So, I decided to compromise the non-championship time slightly by brimming the tank and just going straight from the track to the assembly area. I arranged for Anthea to take the type pressure kit down to the assembly area so that I could at least check that.

Before coming to this meeting, my fastest lap around Snetterton was 1:16.52 which was in qualifying back in March. However, I hadn’t had the benefit of a day’s testing and in the non-championship quali I only managed 1:17.99, not helped by some awful driving from some of the Bikesports chaps. I reckon that the track wasn’t really that quick, though, which explains some of the difference.

It was a little better in the RGB quali proper, especially as there were no longer any Bikesports cars to trip over or jump out of the way of. This time my FL was 1:17.13 which was a bit better.

When the results came out I was 2nd on the grid, and class, for the non-championship race (that’s the FRONT ROW!) and 6th on the grid, 4th in class for the real race. That’s actually a bit down on my usual grid position, but perfectly acceptable.

The issue now was whether I was going to get the thing off the line. I’d done all that work on the clutch before the Silverstone race but hadn’t really tried that hard, especially as the RGB race was wet. So, I was with some trepidation that I lined up on the front row with Duncan. However, when the lights went out I got the best start I’d had for ages. I was still second though, but at least I hadn’t lost any places. I don’t entirely know what was happening behind as Duncan and I were stuck together and we didn’t see anyone else the entire race apart from one unfortunate back marker. At the end of the first lap we were about 2 seconds ahead of Tony and that gap stretched out to 9 seconds at the end; an age in racing terms. Along the way we had a most entertaining battle. My problem was that when I got in Duncan’s tow on the back straight then I’d have been able to slipstream past were it not for the fact that I was hitting the rev-limiter. So, I just couldn’t get past. I did get a decent run at him along the start-finish straight on one lap, 7:20 into the video below, but he closed the door fairly but firmly. Later I did get another run up that straight and got past into Riches, much to Duncan’s surprise. However, he slipstreamed past easily on the straight. Mind you, looking at the video, perhaps I should have stayed off the brakes for a few tenths longer…

And that’s how it finished! Our fastest laps were only 0.07 seconds apart. Mind you, I slowed slightly at the end as the oil temperature was getting rather high and the oil pressure was dropping in sympathy. I might try some different oil before the next race in fact.

Here’s the video:

The RGB race was almost the same, in retrospect. This time I started 6th and got a pretty good start. Once we’d got past the first corner there was Duncan and myself representing class B and John and Paul representing class A in a small group that got away from the rest. We actually stayed as a group of four for a while until Paul got past John and they pulled away. Then it was back to me and Duncan doing our stuff. What’s more, the rest of the field had disappeared backwards, I still don’t know where they were. Again, the gap behind me was about 2 seconds at the end of the first lap and just grew from there.

However, it didn’t grow until the end of the race, unfortunately. As I exited the Russell chicane on lap 8 there was a bang from the back of the car and all of a sudden it felt very wrong. I pulled into the pitlane and stopped and on a cursory inspection it was clear that the rear lower left wishbone had just fallen apart. You can see what it looks like in the photo at the top of this post. Also, here’s the video of the complete race:

So, I’ve now got to fix this, I’ll probably just remake it, before the next race. Actually, remaking it is quite easy. The tedious bit is re-aligning everything. Ho hum…