And in particular, “where the heck have you been?”
Well, I’ve been busy. I realise that’s not a good excuse but I really have, honest. I’ve just finished teaching a 4 week long class to a set of Masters students (and writing the exam they have to take) and I’ve been trying to concentrate on getting my thesis written. Problem is, I keep thinking of more things that ought to be in there so I’m actually going backwards on that one.
In the meantime, though, a few interesting things have indeed happened. Most importantly it was what is hopefully the Fury’s swansong in that we went to the Birkett. For those of you that have forgotten this is the annual 750 Motor Club’s Holly Birkett 6 hour relay race. Holly Birkett, curiously a chap, was one of the founders of the club and he came up with this race format 60 years ago. Essentially, it’s a relay race for teams of up to 6 cars which takes place over six hours, on this occasion on the Silverstone “Bridge” circuit, which is what was the GP circuit, barring one small change before they added the new “Arena” circuit this year. There is one theory that this will have been the last event on the Bridge circuit. That seems a great shame as Bridge is a great corner, swooping down and under the eponymous bridge and them up to Priory.
All the same, I’d never been anywhere near the GP circuit before so I booked the test day on the friday, in exchange for an alarmingly large quantity of your Earth pounds, so that I could have a go. The only problem, which we weren’t told of before the day, was that the test day was being run on the pukka (old) GP circuit meaning a really rather tight chicane at Club. The Birkett itself would use the cut-through which meant that Club, and the new pit straight past the new, massive, humongous, pits complex would be a lot faster during the race itself. Ho hum.
You can see the difference on this track map from the logger. The black line is the race day route, and the blue one the test day route. This made a huge difference in the times. My fastest time in this sector with and without the cut-through differed by 3.8 seconds.
Test day dawned gloomy and, as we’d decided to kip in our own bed, we set off for Silverstone to find it raining half way there. Oh good. Still, the forecast was good.
In the first session it was pretty damp on the track, although it wasn’t actually raining. So, I set to learning the circuit and at the end my FL was down to 2:13.9. Not brilliant but a start. Adrian was actually hugely pleased when he went faster in his session, which was just after mine. I claim this is because it was drying out. I’m sticking to this…
By the time the next session had come around, about 3 hours later, it was indeed a lot quicker at which point I managed to get a 2:10.9 in. That seemed to say that I now knew the circuit and there didn’t seem to be much point risking the car any more. So, i got the car scrutineered and settled down for the usual evening of RGB chat and gossip. Hopefully, the weather would be OK on the following day, the forecast was OK apart from a dodgy bit mid afternoon. They did reckon that it was going to chuck it down overnight though.
And so it did. I woke up in the night to the sound of rain hammering down on the roof of the motorhome. Still, hopefully it would stop. Surely it couldn’t be as wet as it was last year?
In the morning it was pretty cold but it was indeed not raining any more. Problem is, the track was very wet and I was due out in the first qualifying session. As that would be the first time I’d seen the real track, with the Club cut-through, it seemed to be a good idea to push a bit just to see. We lined up, on all odd places, on the Club straight (now renamed the Wellington straight in honour of the aircraft that operated from Silverstone in WWII). That bit wasn’t without tribulations as the instructions that had carefully been posted in the finals were completely wrong and, in trying to get to the right place some of seemed to drive around a large part of the Silverstone environs. Phil reckoned that he’d got as far as Northampton and who am I to disagree with him? It was nice to see that as all of us “A” cars were lined up on the Wellington straight that a bunch of B and C cars drove down the middle of the two lines of A cars and up to the barriers. Apparently they thought that they should go out in an earlier session. Nice to note that they were all Stock Hatches. Plus ça change…
Out on the circuit for qualifying then and it was mega-slippy. As if often the case at Silverstone the worst bit was the slight kink on the pits straight that is Woodcote. It’s flat in the dry but in the wet it’s “oh cripes, I’ve overcooked it, I’m going to be in the wall in front of everyone”. In fact at the race last year some wazzock in a Radical managed to spin here and total the car on the very first lap—of a six hour race…
The qualifying times are not actually important at the Birkett as grid slots are determined by the handicappers. The only reason for qualifying is that MSA regs say you have to do at least three laps before a race. So, at the end my time was a deeply unimpressive 2:42.40 but it didn’t affect our 8th place (out of 60!) grid slot.
After last year’s dismal first lap—I think I started in about 6th or 7th place and finished the first lap in about 20th due to all the heavy cars in the teeming rain zooming past our light cars skittering about on top of the puddles in our A048 wellies—I didn’t really want to do the start again and so Derek did it. I settled in for 30 minutes in the “hare” position, meaning I was strapped in, ready to go out at a moment’s notice.
However, after just nine minutes after the start, Derek approached down the pitlane. He’d had a coming together with a Scooby (one problem with light, low, fast cars is that people driving heavy turbo nutter barges don’t see you coming) and bits of bodywork were flapping about alarmingly. So, I zoomed out of the pits, got the car slightly sideways in the pit exit lane, and set off.
It was the usual Birkett fare; loads of slower cars and the odd quicker one. Great fun though and the lap times started to come down. Problem is, that quicker cars like ours find it harder to hit their handicap time because you’re always slowed alarmingly by slower cars which are still lapping at their predicted times. This is obviously a message to muscle past. However, this is supposed to be a fun event.
As it was I did 17 laps in this session which took me 37 minutes so I was pretty worn out at the end. (Heaven knows how GP drivers do 2 hours around Monaco.) Problem is we were behind schedule given the early change and when I finished we were in 16th position on scratch.
Now, the problem was that Adrian had had a problem on the test day. One of his driveshaft CV joints had exploded. That meant that we got him qualified in my car by dint of talking nicely to the CoC. However, he was now waiting for a new part to arrive at the circuit by courier. It did so and he fitted it in about 15 mins, finished scrutineering (the scrutes had done everything other that the left rear corner!) and eventually he was raring to go. He got out at some point and I was again in Hare position. However, after only a short period the chaps on the pitwall realised that Adrian had gone missing and I was flagged out urgently. Mind you, the pitlane crew were not exactly as motivated as me, as you can see in the video here. This video is some of this bits from this session when I set my FL of the day at 2:07.90. In fact, that was to remain as the team’s fastest lap which is at least something to write home about. In fact, towards the end of this video you can see me catch up with Austen in the white Fury. I seemed to wake him up because I couldn’t then get rid of him and we were in close proximity at the end of my session, 39 mins and 17 laps after I started. He said afterwards that he was really disappointed when he saw my hand go up! Problem is, the video seems to have been affected deleteriously by the low sun and what appears to be some of Austen’s bacon fat.
And what about Adrian? Well, we found out later that the CV joint had failed after just a couple of laps.
So, I’d now done 34 laps and been on track for about 76 mins. As I was supposed to have been on track for about 60 mins in the entire race I could have a rest. Worse, it was starting to rain and we were sliding down the leader board. I ended up being in hare position again and was flagged out at 1510 to do a shorter session. It was now very slippery although it had actually stopped raining hard. The problem was that at this time of year, and this time of day, the circuit wasn’t exactly drying quickly. I spent another 30 mins on track, and did another 10 laps. In that time my lap times started at about 2:41 and fell to 2:38, so that was still way outside our best time and nothing like what we should have been doing.
However, it was still great fun and I finished the day having done about 1hr 40 mins in the car at full-bore race speeds and done 44 laps. I was, to put it mildly, completely knackered. But, a great time was had by all as you can tell from the smiles in the team photo at the top of the page. We ended the day in 18th position on scratch and waaaaay down on handicap. We were 6 laps down on out handicapped target which is just not good enough. Next year, we’re going to need a better strategy.
So, that’s the Fury done. What about the J15, you ask. Well, it’s coming soon. Here’s a photo to help you.