Using the green bits at Cadwell Park

Well, that wasn’t quite what I intended…

Much like last time out at Brands I came to Cadwell wanting to get under the 1:40 barrier which I’d never managed before. I wasn’t testing this time though, although I had signed up for the Allcomers/Hot hatch race on the Saturday to try and get at least a little testing in. Hence, we got to Cadwell on the Friday evening and set up in a surprisingly empty paddock.

In the morning I got signed on and scrutineered; the nice thing about doing the allcomers races is that you can get scrutineered for the whole weekend in one go. On this occasion this meant that Sunday morning was going to include at least a little bit more of a lie-in. All assuming, of course, I emerged unscathed from the Allcomers race.

The big problem was the weather which looked pretty poor for the whole weekend. When it came to the allcomers qualifying it was clearly going to take place in a monsoon. So, I bolted on the cut A048 “wets” that we’re now allowed to use, shown here in their pristine state. After the usual bout of softening dampers and ‘bars we set off into pouring rain.

I have to admit that I had a great time! These wets really do seem to clearly standing water much better than the unmodified A048s so I’m well pleased. The big problem with them, though, is that deciding which set of tyres to put on is a real pain.

However, I trundled round, passing many people and being passed at high speed by those with proper wets. I think the Radical here is in the latter category but he was clearly not enjoying himself as I shot past him. (This bit of the video is on the way down to Park corner.)

When the results came out I was 12th on the grid out of 27 so that was quite decent. The time was a rather irrelevant 2:04.48.

The race itself wasn’t really as much fun. I got stuck behind a gaggle of tintops at the beginning. It took me a while to get past them as they were all pretty quick in a straight line. That meant that I had to get a decent tow fromm one of them and get them under braking into somewhere like Park.  That was slightly alarming as you never know whether they’ve actually seen you or not, and the metal things really do tower alarmingly over the top of a little plastic Fisher Fury.

I ended up 5th behind three much faster cars and, annoyingly, Colin Chapman. 🙂 The time was 1:41.67 which was also not really clever. Although the race had been dry I’d actually left the wets on as a bit of an experiment. I felt that although they were OK that they were actually slower than the uncut tyres. The time seems to bear that out.

RGB race day, and we had two races, dawned looking pretty much as gloomy as the day before. However, the forecast was for better weather at least in the morning. So, I put the proper tyres on and sorted the car for qualifying. When I did get out it seemed to be going pretty well. I managed to get a couple of laps below the magic 1:40, although only by a couple of tenths. The big problem is that Cadwell is a long circuit and it’s reallly easy to mess up the lap, or have it messed up by a backmarker. What’s more, we only got 9 flying laps in in our qualifying session. The annoying thing is that although the logger says that my fastest lap is now 1:39.82 the fastest theoretical lap is actually 1:38.2. Now, if I could actually manage to string those 5 fast sectors together then things would be going well.

Come the race, though, and it was all a bit academic. I was a meagre 10th on the grid, 7th in class and just at the side of Steve Robinson (class A Genesis). When the lights went out Steve set off really quickly. I also got a decent start and actually got past Richard who had been directly in front of me on the run down to Coppice. However, in front of me Steve and Henry had had a coming together and I backed right off. Richard shot past me again right into a horrible melĂ©e. There were cars all over the place and Richard’s wheel, liberated from its attachments, even went bouncing past as you might be able to see on the video frame here. Miraculously, I avoided the carnage—Richard later congratulated me on doing so, I did wonder if by getting past him I’d actually unsighted him from Henry and Steve coming together—and the race was, inevitably, red-flagged.

Back on the grid and there was now a big hole in front of me. The start was great and I was right up behind Colin. What’s more, I seemed to have the legs on him and eventually got past him at Park. I then even managed to catch up with Al in front and was thinking about how to get past. Then I had a stupid lapse of concentration (the story of my racing career really) and ended up coming out of Mansfield in the wrong gear. The end result was that Colin managed to barge past me on the way into the mountain.

However, I was still with him and caught right up again on the bottom straight.

And then it all went wrong.

On the exit of Coppice I ran wide and onto the grass, spun round, went back across the track and hit the barriers fairly hard going backwards. First the first time ever my helmet did something as it hit the helmet pad fairly hard. The crash was at 1.7g according to the logger. Not huge but enough to make me bite my lip in the process.

Oh well, and things had been going so well.

Back in the paddock I got some sterling help from people like Colin and Dave Hackett. As it turned out the damage was actually mostly bodywork, or so it seemed. So, with the liberal application of gaffa tape, resin and CSM I was ready to go out again. The only problem was that the steering wheel was no longer straight. So, the suspension must have been knocked awry, at least to some extent. All the same, I went for it..

The race was actually faily uneventful. The car was clearly sick and I couldn’t even get out of 4th gear on the bottom straight. I presume this is because the car was running rather a lot of toe somewhere. Still it was still going, albeit slowly. In my mirrors I could see Rob Grant getting closer and closer and I could see that he was fancying his chances. However, I managed to hold him off. I had thought I was quite a way away from him but this last photo shows that I was probably fooling myself!

Oh well. I’ve now got a lot of repairs to do. The only problem is, there isn’t enough time to do them…

One thought on “Using the green bits at Cadwell Park”

  1. Colin is complaining that he can’t leave comments. However, it seems to work fine for me.

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