Overdoing it…

Well, it was time for another race at Pembrey, only the second time I’ve ever been to the circuit. As such I signed up for the test day. That was to turn out to be a waste of money.

Before going on about that though, I suggest you go off to the 750 Motor Club web site. On the front page, at the time of writing, you can see the TV programme on the second Brands meeting earlier this year in which I feature a fair bit.

So, we set off on Thursday and took a frankly sub-optimal route to Pembrey, arriving at about 1800. Still, we weren’t getting rained on although the forecast was a bit mixed.

First session out on the test day was a bit tricky as I was finding my feet. I could remember which way the corners went but not how to drive it. Apart from the fact that I could remember it was tricky. All the same it was going OK. Come the second session I put in a super-smooth, and slow, lap right at the beginning to try and fix the circuit in my head and, while rounding the Hairpin, which isn’t a hairpin at all, something went BANG and the car started making the same gruesome noises that it had at Cadwell. At least this time I knew what it was. I pulled into the paddock and after a cursory look indeed, the diff mountings had come loose again. The brazing done at Cadwell had come adrift.

After a short discussion with Anthea about just going home and getting the J15 finished we decided to have a try for a better solution. After discussing things with the locals we found a chap up the road who could apparently weld. To cut a long story we went up there and, indeed, he could fix it back together for me. Hopefully doing a rather better job.

However, while we were at Jones the Welders it started to rain. Back to the circuit and it was still pouring and I put everything else back together. Yet again, I was going to have to leave the reverser out because it was, again, knackered. Luckily, by the time the penultimate session of the day appeared I’d got the car done and I went out on a drying track to really learn the place again. FL was 1:03.3 which wasn’t too bad (and a mile under the class B record which was clearly due for a pasting this weekend). In the last session of the day the car was finally going quite well and I was down to 1:02.9. Now we had to wait for qualifying.

Come qualifying I managed to get near the front of the queue and managed to get a couple of half decent laps in with the fastest being 1:02.65. That meant I was 5th and 6th on the grid for the race, 3rd and 4th in class respectively. Not wonderful but OK. The thing was, was I going to be able to get the car off the line. Since the Cadwell race I had modified the clutch so as to lower the actuation point for the master cylinder. That meant that the clutch was much easier; I might be able to feel the bite and slip better.

Or then again, as it turned out, I wasn’t. Yet again at the start I got passed by a stack of people. Most importantly including Gary. Then, after passing the other people who’d got past me I was stuck behind Gary. His class A car was very difficult to pass. I did get up the inside of him once but I ran wide at the next corner and he snuck past again. It was good racing though, “hard but fair” as Gary put it later. The problem was, while we were holding each other up the rest of the class B battle got away from me and I ended up 4th in class.

The next race was a similar result really. Again, Gary got past at the start after I made a lousy start again. Again, I was stuck behind him. This time I got a decent run at him at Hatchetts, which is a hairpin, but I skated past in a cloud of tyre smoke. Unfortunately in the process Lee got past as well. So, this time Gary was keeping two class B cars behind him. That was how it finished and I was again 4th in class. To be honest, I’d made far, far, too many silly errors trying to get past Gary and Lee. In the process, though, and after one error had put me back a bit I put in a 1:02.71 which turned out to be the fastest lap  of  the race so at least I get another point for that.

Next race is at Silverstone although there’s a conference that I’m presenting a paper at, and some holiday, and continued work on my PhD on this project, in the way so heaven knows whether I’ll be able to sort the car at all. At the moment I’m minded to strip the clutch to see if there’s any reason why I can’t seem to get away smoothly. I’m beginning to think that there’s something wrong in there. Perhaps I’ll buy a Barnett clutch for it to see if it likes it; Lee speaks highly of his.