Last weekend it was time, yet again, for the club’s August bank holiday meeting at Silverstone. This is the one meeting of the year when all the racing formulae are at the same meeting so it’s very busy, and bustling. I’d decided not to test as I know the circuit rather well. However, after swapping the clutch I thought it’d be useful to do the Allcomers race which was absolutely first thing on the Saturday morning, so as to check that everything was working.
So, we got up to Silverstone early-ish on the Friday and I went for a drive down one of the old runways to see if I could get the thing off the line with any degree of alacrity. The answer was no, it was horrible. If anything worse than it had been at Pembrey. What was worse, as I was driving back to the bus the clutch starting slipping and then I had no drive at all; I could put it in gear, let the clutch out, and the car didn’t move at all. Sod it…
So, I took the thing apart again, groaning inwardly about getting RTV all over the place again… I assumed that I was going to find something broken but that wasn’t the case. Luckily, I got Andy to have a quick look and he noticed that the release bearing in the pressure plate had been dislodged. In fact, the more I thought about it, I don’t remember making sure that it was properly home when I took the clutch apart in the garage. I put it all back together again and it certainly seemed to do something. However, by now it was pitch dark so I covered the car up and retired for the night.
The next morning looked pretty bright, although the forecast did talk about the possibility of showers later. However, I prepped the car—I’d scrutineered at the end of Friday—and tried out the clutch. Interestingly it felt very different. However, it could just be that it felt like what it had been before the Pembrey race after I’d moved the actuation point. All the same, it was off for the Allcomers qualifying. As usual, this was a mixed affair with all sorts of different cars out there. My original plan had been to get to the assembly area late so I could push the clutch on the exit but it was not to be. However, out on circuit the car seemed to be going well. FL before this meeting was a 1:04.49. The circuit is now a little different from last time as the GP circuit now goes down the National straight. In fact, that straight has been renamed as the Wellington Straight in homage to the Wellington bombers that were based at the Silverstone airfield in WWII. Nice touch that. I actually think the circuit is now very slightly slower as the wide exit to Becketts is now ruined by a load of astroturf! As such I reckon that times this year are a tenth or so slower than last year.
I ended up 8th in the Allcomers quali with a rather poor time of 1:05.38. However, I don’t think I’d got a clear lap because of all the slower cars on the circuit so perhaps that was OK. Interesting, there were three RGB cars, including me, all at the front of the “non slicks and wings” grouping.
Later on it was time for the RGB qualifying. That went rather better in that the FL was 1:04.48. That’s right, 0.01 seconds faster than last year. However, conditions were very different. Down the end of the Wellington straight I was 5mph slower than last year, and not all of that can have been due to the remodelled circuit at Becketts. All the same, I was 8th, again. This time 2nd in class.
Come the Allcomers race and it was going to be good to see if the clutch worked. I was spectacularly careful with it at the start and got away fairly slowly. However, it didn’t bang in and out in the way it did at Pembrey, and indeed while testing it out on the runway on the Friday evening. Does that mean that I was just driving it differently, or could the release bearing have become dislodged inside the engine? Seems very odd… A couple of people got past me at the start, including Dan!, but I quickly got past to my alotted place and after that it was really a Saturday afternoon drive. I kept getting closer and closer to the slick-shod people in front only to fall back when catching up with back markers. As I’ve come to expect these guys often don’t watch their mirrors and both someone in a Mini (a real one) and a Lotus Europa tried to kill me by ignoring my presence. In fact, the Lotus also had a go at the leader who was coming past at the same time as pulling in front of me. Oh well.
So, coming up to the RGB race, as you’d have expected, it started to rain. I trundled over to the assembly area and it promptly decided to throw it down big time. However, it looked as though it was going to stop just as quickly so I decided to leave the suspension alone which might not have been a sound choice. However, it meant I stayed dry under the umbrella! I reckon the J15 is going to be easier to adjust in a rush which will be good, assuming I ever finish it.
We got a green flag lap because of the conditions and, at the start, I was very careful again with the clutch but got away reasonably. However, at Copse Gary spun, see the photo taken by Austen’s friend Dan (a different one) on the left (as was the photo at the top). Luckily we all avoided him and set off on a very wet and greasy track. In the first couple of laps I passed a couple of class A cars (David Wale and Doug Carter) at Copse, I suspect the extra power only makes things difficult, and set off after the leaders who’d got away a bit. In retrospect this bit would have been a lot easier if I’d just softened the dampers. However, I was caught by Al (class C) who was having a storming drive. We actually had quite a good dice, each giving the other room to make a mistake which was rather important here. He got past after I screwed things up monumentally at Luffield on one lap but I stayed with him all the way to the end. In the later stages Tony (the silver car in the photo) started to catch up alarmingly. In particular, he seemed to much quicker at Becketts which necessitated some Olympian levels of blocking from me on the straight. I still don’t know what he was doing!
However, that’s how it finished. I ended up 5th on the road and 2nd in class. So, quite a good race really. To show you how different driving in the wet is, the traces on the right show the throttle position and speed traces around the fastest laps in qualifying and the race itself. As you can see there’s a considerable difference in both speed and how brutal I am with the throttle.
And, here’s a video of some bits of the race:
I had thought that the best bit was that the car was undamaged. However, since then I’ve been looking at the logs and have noticed that the oil pressure was a bit down. This is very odd and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a consequence of fiddling with the clutch as taking the clutch out requires disconnection of the pressure sender. I hope it’s that as I don’t think I can face swapping an engine from the J15 to the Fury before Snetterton…