Well, it was time to be back at Silverstone again for the club’s annual festival meeting, which essentially means that all the club formulae are represented which means loads and loads of cars and only one race each. Unless, of course, you’re an RGBer and you’ve been let into Bikesports for a cheap(er) race than usual. I didn’t have time to do any testing, so that would have to do for me.
Of course, I was hoping that the car was going to work after sorting the cam position sensor at Mallory and, subsequently, fixing the clutch. I didn’t have time to do any running before getting to the circuit so when we got there on a fine Friday afternoon I took the car for a run down the old runway (which is inside the national circuit) to see if it worked right. Luckily, it seemed to do so. Even better, I managed to get the car scrutineered on the Friday evening so I could have a bit of a lie in on Saturday morning.
I didn’t manage to do so, of course, because I never do on race days. I got up, checked a few things and essentially waited around for qualifying which was a joint session between us and Bikesports. I had worried that we were going to get mugged by hordes of Radicals but that turned out not to be the case, oddly enough. The problem was that this was my first time out on this circuit since I fitted the CBR1000 so I was pretty much at sea with respect to gearing and braking. So, I was going to have to re-learn that as well as putting in a half-way decent time.
In the event, it wasn’t too bad, even though qualifying was marred by a large number of yellow flags and, right at the end, by Phil blowing up in spectacular fashion and dumping a prodigious quantity of oil in the circuit. When I hit it, at Copse, I thought I was going to be in Silverstone village before I stopped but I slowed once I got away from the most liquid of the oil.
FL, though, was 1:04.73 which wasn’t too bad. It was good enough for 9th, out of 16, on the Bikesports/RGB grid and 8th, out of 23, on the RGB grid. Also 3rd in class for RGB, and directly behind Duncan on the grid. That was good, normally he was out of sight.
The bikesports race was next and we formed up on the grid. A novelty for us was the green flag lap, as the Bikesports boys are on slicks they need it. Come the start and I got my now trademark useless start and Bob Mortimer came past me like I was standing still. That was annoying, especially as his lap time was about 3 seconds slower than mine! Still, I managed to squeeze by into Becketts, admittedly with a rather forceful move. Actually, Bob’s slowly getting faster and faster which is nice to see. He’d done some mods to the induction for this meeting and it looks as though it’s paying off.
Once the race was properly underway I was in position behind Duncan who was crawling all over Steve in front of him. We stayed in that situation for a while and I managed to work out how to go a bit quicker (I was still in getting up to speed with the CBR1000 mode). In fact, my FL was a 1:48.4 at about this point. In the process, I got closer and closer to Duncan and started making a few attempts to get past him. Mind you, he’s a hard but fair man and I was clearly going to have to try harder. However, perhaps provoked by me dodging around behind him, he spun on the exit of Luffield; most likely on the cement dust/oil mixture that was on much of the circuit after one or other of the Formula Vees, who were on before us, had dumped oil all round the circuit. I’ve never seen the attraction of Formula Vees, becaus they’re essentially VW Beetles and use the same deeply, deeply naff suspension system. I’m even less enamoured now.
Still, I was past Duncan, although later in the paddock it was clear that he’d been having clutch problems which were doubtless part of the reason I’d got past him. Then Steve was in front of me. I’d surely never be able to pass him? However on the penultimate lap he seemed to be slowing a bit and I got closer and closer on the last lap, going round Luffield, the last corner, I was really close to the back of him, hoping for a dodge to the inside at Woodcote and he suddenly practically stopped! I oh so nearly ran into the back of him but managed to dodge right and crossed the line 5th overall! Coo, that had been real fun.
I’ve realised that a real attraction of Silverstone for me, even though it’s not a fun place in many ways, is Copse corner. This is really, really, quick and is a real adrenalin fix as you go round it. I approach it in 6th, doing about 122mph, and then it’s a surprisingly light dab on the brakes, down two gears and hard on the throttle before you get to the apex. If you get the line right and take lots of kerb on the inside the car just hunkers down onto the (progressive rate) bump stops and blasts up the hill towards the Maggotts kink. Great stuff…
Lots of people came up in the paddock afterwards and congratulated me on the drive. From inside the cockpit it had seemed business as usual, but I guess it was better from the outside.
Later on we lined up for the RGB race proper. This time I got another lousy start, although that was probably a good thing. As we approached Becketts on the first lap I was quite wide, looking to pass a bunch of people as they all tripped over each other. I saw Duncan spinning and putting his arm up to try and warn people but to no great avail as David hit him quite hard. I avoided the mélée by going even wider, even though that meant bouncing over the huge Becketts kerb but it seemed likely that they were going to red flag it. On the way past after they’d stopped it, it was clear that Andy had piled into David quite hard after the initial accident and there was a lot of oil on the track. Hmm, that’s a shame.
This is my video of the first start, although you can’t really see that much about what happened:
Still, the restart came and we set off. Pretty rapidly I was into 4th place but not really making any progress towards the leaders, who I could see in front of me. Then my palm display fell off the dash! I could feel it swinging about on the cable and at an appropriate point I managed to grab it and lob it into the passenger side of the car. That meant, though, that I was driving blind with only the shift lights and an oil pressure warning light. I don’t work well like this although the lap times weren’t too bad. FL was 1:04.7. I couldn’t catch up the leaders though and, to be honest, I had a pretty lonely race which happens sometimes.
However, I crossed the line in 4th place overall, 2nd in class B. This would, of course, all be pretty good for my championship standings if I hadn’t missed 4 races this season with the catalyst problems and the cam position sensor problems. I bet the competition’s going to be tougher in B next year too…
I’ve got a couple more videos that I’ll show you when I’ve processed them. In the meantime, it’ll be back to the Spectre. Loads of people came up to me in the paddock asking about the Spectre. It seems that lots of people are watching to see what happens. Sorry people, you’ll have to wait until the next time…