Clutching at straws

Well, I’ve just got back from a very mixed race weekend at Cadwell Park. Weather wise it was a glorious weekend, almost too hot. However, the on-track aspect left a lot to be desired and I need to buck my ideas up. (Thanks to Austen for the photo.)

As the car had been rendered rather second hand after the previous race meeting, I decided to test at Cadwell as I wanted to try and get into a groove. To summarise the test day, I was too slow; way too slow. Last year my fastest lap around here was 1:36.2. This year, the fastest I managed in testing was 1:38.2. Admittedly some of that was probably because it was so hot, some because the track had various re surfaced bits but the biggest effect was that the circuit had decided that putting us out with a collection of Stock Hatches and Locosts as the thing to do. I’m planning on a letter of complaint to the circuit about this as it essentially wastes my cash. The fastest RGB times are as fast as 1:34ish; the fastest Locosts and Stock Hatches are about 13 seconds slower than this. The end result of this is that testing was screwed up for both us and them. I’m not impressed.

But then, I also wasn’t impressed by the Stock Hatch driver who managed to roll his car at Barn on the out-lap. That is, on the second corner after leaving the assembly area, and before he’d even reached the start/finish line. Inevitably, he red-flagged the session, costing us all a load of cash. To be honest, if I knew who he was I’d include his name here so that googlers might find him. Perhaps luckily for him, I don’t know who he was. I do know that when the truck brought him back to the paddock he was studiously looking the other way. Quite a few of his Stock Hatch colleagues were monumentally annoyed with him…

As it was, I spent most of the test day twiddling with dampers. It was interesting to see that the car really responded to changes in the settings, although I didn’t really diverge the bump and rebound settings at all so as to avoid confusing myself too much. Mind you, I’m still not convinced that I shouldn’t have just left the old dampers on. I may even re-instate them for the next race meeting which is at Pembrey. (Yes, you’re right, that’s a really long drive!)

Back in the Lincolnshire countryside the first race day dawned nice and sunny again. Hopefully, without all those pesky slow cars on track qualifying wouldn’t be such a disaster. It was better—the fastest time was 1:37.4—but not as much as I would have liked. I ended up qualifying 5th and 6th for the two races, 3rd and 4th in class. Could be better, could be worse.

So, we lined up at the start. As usual, I was wondering about how on earth I could manage to get a better start and, true to form, I got a completely lousy one. I was 7th at the end of the first lap which actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it could have been as I’d been able to get past both Doug and Al on that first lap, drivers who’d passed me in the fracas of my awful start.

After that I was stuck behind Gary and not really making much headway, although no fault of his as he was driving in an exemplary fashion. Cadwell is pretty much an “overtaking by consent” place because of the narrowness of the track. As such, you really rely on the other drivers playing fair and Gary was doing exactly that.

And then, there was a truly horrible noise emanating from somewhere in the car. I slowed and left the circuit, although in retrospect I don’t really know why I didn’t just stop at the side of the circuit.

Back in the paddock it was clear what the noise was in that the reverse sprocket on the nose of the diff had machined a slot, as you can see, in the reverse motor assembly. In the process it had also destroyed a good deal of the rest of the assembly. I’ll have to re-build all that now; sigh.

What wasn’t clear, was how this  had happened as the reverse unit seemed firmly bolted into the chassis. Further investigation, though, showed that the front diff mountings had sheared away from the rest of the chassis. I wonder whether this was an un-noticed consequence of the Brands accident? That meant that the diff could tilt in the chassis and hence the fracas. So, I cleaned it all up and got Andy to braze the mountings back together. To be honest, brazing is Andy’s weapon of choice in these circumstances but I’m not at all sure that it’s the right thing really. However, it did work and we got the car back together, albeit reverse-less, without too much problem.

That evening, we held the annual RGB marshalls BBQ. That is, we RGBers pay for the BBQ and we invite all the marshalls to come for free. This year we were helped by John Cutmore’s Dad providing all the meat and bread for us. John’s a class A driver at the moment and his Dad is a fixture of the paddock and a great supporter of RGB. John, unfortunately, didn’t get to partake of the BBQ because he was changing the engine in his Spire. All the same, it’s a measure of the spirit in the RGB paddock that about 60 people paid £5 and, in all, we probably had about 75 people at the BBQ. A great time, essentially, was had by all.

In fact, the best aspect of the evening was that Cadwell Park is right next door to Jeremy Phillips’ (that is, the J15 designer) house. He came over to the circuit both days driving the prototype J15 with his wife, Stella, in the passenger seat. I spent a while in the day looking at the car reminding myself just how gorgeous it is. Later in the evening Anthea left the BBQ to go and have a look and returned sitting in the passenger seat with Stella driving. For some reason that I just cannot fathom she  turned down the chance to drive it herself. For some other unfathomable reason I didn’t take a photograph of them. We’re obviously both stupid…

Come the following day and the weather still seemed OK. I got the car finished off and went for a blast up the entry road and it seemed to work fine. So, hopefully if I could only get it off the line I was in for a better race after two DNFs.

As it happened, I didn’t. Bollocks.

In fact, I got a worse start than usual in that I completely stalled it. In fact, I got overtaken by the ambulance in the run to the first corner. He even told me where to pass him before Coppice.

After that it was the depressingly usual charge back through the field. This is much harder at Cadwell because of the narrowness of the track. Everything was going fine until I caught up with Neil in his BDN. This is very quick in a straight line which meant that I couldn’t outdrag him and he succeeded in keeping me behind him into the various corners.

While I was driving around (and this is probably one reason why I’m not a better race driver than I am) I was thinking that I ought to modify the clutch so that the pedal was lighter and went further. That way, perhaps, I could feel it biting better. I had hoped that I could do this by just buying a master cylinder with a smaller diameter but, it turns out, they don’t exist. So, I’m left thinking that I either need to use a different sort of master cylinder all together, or modify the pedal to use a different ratio somehow.

Back at the race, I carried on harrying Neil, up  until the last lap. I knew that I was considerably faster than him and tried my hardest on this lap. I had thought that there was a small chance into Barn where Neil didn’t seem to be blocking me. I hadn’t tried to dive up the inside as on a normal race lap as he’d probably just have outdragged me on the exit anyway as my speed would have been hugely compromised. However, on the last lap that might not be the case as the start finish line was only half way to the next corner, Coppice.

So, I made a superhuman effort, and Neil, as he had on all previous laps, was rather slow out of the hairpin anyway. In that position I got right up alongside him into Barn. In fact, the video and the subsequent rubber evidence shows that the nose of my car was probably about 400mm or so behind his: the diameter of a tyre. However, he obviously didn’t see me and turned straight into me and there was a thump. I recovered all right and made it to the line. However, I could see Neil spinning in my mirrors.

I can’t admit to feeling good about this, but I’ve showed the video to many people, including other racers in different formulae, and they’re unanimous in that it was a fair, although tough, move. See what you think, here’s the last lap:

Luckily Neil was very good about things later and we shook hands on it. I’m still not exactly happy about it though. Although I’ve been punted off I don’t think I’ve ever done this to another racer.

So, I need to check the car over and find a way of making the clutch easier to use. Hopefully, I’ll also put in some time on the J15 which must be feeling a bit unloved at the moment.