Branding

Pliers of doomSo, in a rush to put up even more ramblings onto  the Internet, it’s time for another race report. This time from Brands where we headed a couple of weeks ago. For some time now I’ve been wanting to get my Brands lap time down to 50 seconds. The fastest last year was 51.5 seconds but that was rather  deranged by a wet race 2 and only completing 200 metres of race 1.

As you can probably tell, thanks to Bryant Photography for the photo at the top of the page. As you can also tell, if you look a little harder, there seems to be a pair of pliers on the right hand side of the photo. No-one knows where these came from. I suspect they’re the Brands version of  the Google black helicopters. Continue reading “Branding”

Soaked and battered in Oulton Park

12961343_1153906321310726_91914925239327310_oThe new race year started with a rare trip to Oulton Park. We don’t go very often because you can only run a single day meeting at Oulton (something to do with the locals being able to hear a circuit five miles away when all 15 of them are going to church). Although scheduled to be on the longest version of the circuit we were on the Island circuit instead due to some uncompleted works.

Continue reading “Soaked and battered in Oulton Park”

2016, and all that

Another year, another season. So, right  at the start of the year, it’s time to tell you what I’ve been up to and, more importantly, what I plan on being up to. I’ve got a bit less time than I had in that having been “retired” since last January I’ve now actually gone and got a real job again. (Well, real-ish, if you count being an academic as actually working…) It’s only 80% of my time though, so there is at least Fridays. Continue reading “2016, and all that”

Out with a whimper

Cracked discWe left it at the end of the RGB season and looking forward to the Birkett. Before that, though, I went off on the usual checklist of things to look at. In the process of checking the brakes I found this cracked brake disc. Luckily, I’ve got some spares so it was easy to replace but it’s a bit alarming really…

Continue reading “Out with a whimper”

Season’s End

Ducted sidepodsAs I’d escaped from the West Country unscathed I finally had a bit of time to actually do something constructive to the car. I’ve been playing around with suspension settings a lot lately and I think I’m getting a bit more on top of the car’s handling. There were a couple of other things that I’d wanted to do for a while and I’d now put them into effect. Continue reading “Season’s End”

West country madness

Castle CombeSo, finally in this sequence of race reports we head west to Castle Combe. I wasn’t able to test before this meeting and we also had two races in one day so it was going to be quite fraught. We last raced at Combe in 2007 so my memories of the circuit were quite poor. Very fast and very little run off is what I remember. Continue reading “West country madness”

The cones hotline

At speed with coneDespite the optimistic title of a recent rare report, I’ve still not got up to date. I’m only two meetings behind though, so bear with me.

Next up was Silverstone International. This is the “back half” of the GP circuit and is a meeting run out of the “Wing” that is used for the F1 meetings. It might well be a great venue for F1 but it’s nigh on useless for club motorsport. For a start it’s a prodigious distance from the main gate and there is, to put it mildly, not enough space. Remember that there’s many more of the entire 750 club than a full F1 grid of, yawn, 20 cars. Continue reading “The cones hotline”