Waterlogged

So, it was time for another race. I decided that I could take the weekend off finishing my thesis (which I have since finished, yay!) and make the loooong drive to Pembrey for two RGB races. Problem with Pembrey is that it’s  a long way and it has a bad habit of raining. Rain as in absolutely pouring down, not that sort of pathetic English rain but the full-on Welsh variety.

I didn’t have time for any testing, so set off around lunchtime for Pembrey. We thought  we’d go for an hour or so and then stop for lunch. However, our best laid plans soon ground to a halt when we discovered that Cambridgeshire was essentially closed on account of a stretch of the A14 having been closed. The queues were horrific, not just on the A14 but on just about every other road as people tried to find a way round the blockage. Apparently, this was not caused by an accident, but was planned work. Good that it was planned on a Friday, what better time can there have been?

As it was we eventually, after about 2 hours of faffing about, went down the M11 and round the M25. Oh joy… When we finally got to Pembrey the journey had taken nearly 9 hours, getting on for twice the time it should have taken.

The weather had been nice on the way down and when we got there there were lots of stories from the RGBers who had been testing about what a nice day it had been. Problem was, the weather forecast for the rest of the weekend was a good deal less good than it had been on the Friday.

On the Saturday morning it was very overcast and then it started to rain. I’d taken the precaution of bringing the awning with us so we put it up and shoved the car underneath. A wise precaution, as it turned out, because it then rained and rained and rained. For the rest of Saturday.

So, I did what I hadn’t done at Silverstone and made an attempt at putting the car onto some sort of wet settings. I disconnected the ARBs, softened the dampers and pumped up the tyres a bit. (There’s three schools of thought about tyres in the wet: pump them up, leave them alone and let them down. I’m in the first camp but, frankly, anything could be the right answer. I do know that an RGB car on A048s is a huge handful in the wet, as our appalling laptimes show in the Birkett when it rains, which it always does.)

So, out on the circuit in the wet and it was clear that taking off the ARBs, and so on, had transformed the car from how it was at Silverstone where it was, frankly, undriveable. Here I could at least lean on it a bit. Of course, I didn’t know what gear to use anywhere, or any of that practical stuff, but at least I could have a bit of a go. Mind you, I wasn’t exactly successful. I pootled around for a few laps looking for the grip, slowly got a bit faster but, unfortunately, on my one real attempt at getting a good time ran spectacularly wide at Hatchetts, the hairpin just after the start/finish line. Still, I ended up 10th (5th in class) in the first race and 8th (5th again) in the second. My two best times were only 0.06sec different, mainly because my one attempt at a decent time had been stymied.

So, later on Saturday it was still raining and we went down the assembly area equipped with umbrellas. In the assembly area the Palm display gave up the ghost with water in the works. Not surprising really, as it isn’t intended to operate in pouring rain. I keep trying to think of an easy way of protecting it from the elements. So, the only intruments I had were a neutral light and a shift light. Ho hum… 🙂 At the start I got away moderatedly, although with a little too much wheelspin. Down towards Hatchetts and there was a wall of grey in front of me with a couple of rain lights almost visible. (Oddly, they’re much more visible on the video than they were for real. I suspect the camera can see them a bit better, possibly because the camera is better at detecting the infra-red and that penetrates the wall of water more effectively. (Try it, you’ll find your digital camera is good at seeing the light from the front of your infra-red remote control, even though you can’t see it at all…)

Why am I mentioning the video and not putting it here? Well, I got this new camera you see which is all-in-one and does HD. However, it generates truly vast H264 encoded files, the one for this Saturday’s race is 1.7Gb, the 18min race on Sunday is 2.5Gb. I’m having a bit of trouble working out the best way of processing them. And, of course, on my ancient PC it takes truly ages to process them. However, I’m getting there and might well include them in a future post. As it is, this text has been sitting here as a draft for a week so it’d be nice to post it.

Once the melee had cleared, I was stuck behind Lee Baverstock. He was doing a sterling job keeping his car on the road but it looked a real handful. So much so that I deliberately didn’t make a couple of moves as I thought he might come unstuck. Finally, though, I got a bit of a run on him out of the hilariously misnamed hairpin. He very generously left me enough space at the fast kink on the back straight, which I don’t think has a name, and Honda so we didn’t come together. Perhaps as a consequence he ran wide at Honda and got slightly onto the grass and I got past.

After that it was a chance to get my head down and try to make up some space on the cars I could see in front. I was actually quicker than the two guys in front but didn’t manage to make up the space to them. All the same, the car seemed to be going quite well which was a nice change. And, my home-made exhaust didn’t fall apart either. I finished 8th (5th in class) which wasn’t too shabby I suppose. The problem is, there’s a huge gulf at the moment between me and the podium.

After the race I took the chance to inspect the sprocket to look for any impending problems. Luckily, it all looked completely unmarked. However, both track outings had been in the wet which means that there was nothing like the load on the transmission than would normally be the case.

It was still raining though. However, the forecast looked a little better for the following day and, after a mountain of chips in the paddock cafe, we retired to bed.

Well, it still looked a bit gloomy in the morning but about 10 minutes before I got out of bed it did actually stop raining. And, as the day went on it got dryer although not exactly like the warm and balmy weekend we’d spent here last year. (I remember Anthea and I cycled to the beach and sat in the sunshine eating an ice-cream there. It didn’t seem like beach weather today.)

To make up for the lack of videos, here’s another of Afghan Dan’s photos. This one really emphasises the stunning ugliness of the roll cage. But, I’ve been thinking about that and have some ideas of what to do with my acres of time over the winter. <cough>

I got a so-so start in the race, I didn’t lose any places but there was a slightly large gap between me and the people in front as we headed down to Hatchetts. For various reasons there were three bikesports cars in our race, gumming up the works, and there was the almost inevitable coming together at Hatchetts. Luckily, hugely so, the rest of us got round without actually banging into each other but in the process the position you were in on the track had a huge effect on whether you were going to come out in front of nearby racers. As it was I got a bit held up and after the excitement had died down I was behind Austen. The problem was, I had done no testing and this was the first time the track was dry. As such I didn’t really have a clue how to drive the circuit. I spent a good while working out what gearing to use, all the time dodging around behind Austen trying to get past. Eventually, though, I managed to get a better exit out of Honda and out-braked him into Hatchetts. I must say he did exactly what the Blue Book says he should and didn’t lurch into me or try to block me as you see all the time in dire race series like the BTCC. Then he was behind me and I was trying to get away. After a couple of laps I did so, and then he hit some problem which meant he developed a partial misfire. So, that’s the way it was at the flag.

I finished 6th, 4th in class so that wasn’t too bad. Not a wonderful race, but not bad… There’s a bit of a gulf between the front runners and me though. (And, thankfully also between me and Dan because he’d never let me live it down if he was to beat me.) I was about a second slower, in fastest lap terms, than Al who was nearest in front of me. To be honest, I’ve known for years that I just have to test to get up to speed. So, I’ve booked some testing for the final outing of the season and for the traditional Birkett season finale.

More to the point, perhaps, how was the sprocket? Well, after I got home (a journey that only took about 6 hours) I shoved my hand in the back of the car and had a grope at the sprocket in my best James Herriot fashion. Unfortunately, there was just the teeniest amount of wear on the aluminium. Rats, I’ll have to take it apart again; more details in the next exciting installment…