Racing News

23-Sep-08

Setting records for the Britcar 24hrs

For the 3rd year running we finish inside the top 8 taking another class win in the Honda Civic and first FWD car home in a staggering 6th overall, although we did reach 3rd overall! We are now firmly established as the most consistently successful team and car combination in the Britcar 24 hour records.

Best of all it means both Jonathan Ridley-Holloway and Paul Collis have now had consecutive top 8 results proving it wasn’t just lucky runs in the past. Nice work fellas ,-)

Paul took the race start and I jumped in after him around 2 hours 35 minutes later. I was very surprised at the start of my stint in the dark when I couldn’t drop below 2.14 without pushing the tyres very hard… a normal new tyres, no curbs, full tank of fuel lap is comfortable around 2.12 and quicker if you lean on the tyres more. Needless to say I was concerned because the car felt fine... Was it a bad set of tyres, had I suddenly forgotten how to drive in the dark? .. all these things started going through my mind but I couldn’t go faster and wasn’t about to start using curbs to get the time down.

As the stint went on I noticed I was changing up gears later and later but in very slow deterioration but no other issues to suggest where the power loss was. Eventually the car began to sound rough and finally I couldn’t even get to 6th gear on the straights. Dirty fuel had hit us. After only 65 laps I stopped for fuel and the team changed the injectors. I was very disappointed and we had lost touch with class leaders Barwell Motorsport which, IF fog was coming would be a real problem.

The fuel issue hit us a few more times in the race and we had one unscheduled stop to change injectors. We estimated around 4 laps was lost to this problem and its solution during the race.

For my part the second night stint was particularly strong. I knew I had to drive for 3 hours so tyre conservation was paramount but I needed to know if it was me or the car that was slow in the first stint so posted my fastest lap of the race at 2.10.4 in the dark with no curb usage and from there settled into a rhythm of tyre and car preservation. By the end of my stint we were 3rd overall and the car felt simply perfect!!!

The biggest killer of our results was on a routine brake pad change that took us out of the top 3 with a seized brake pad retaining bolt that required a make shift solution, loosing around 6 laps taking us out of overall podium contention.

My team mates Paul Collis and Jonathan Ridley-Holloway were as always brilliant, which considering I was responsible for coaching them makes me feal very proud of their ability. We all drove at between 8 and 9/10tenths for 24hours and stayed out of any significant trouble despite virtually no safety car periods after the start.

With future plans uncertain I would be delighted to discuss new projects with anyone who wants to gain success in endurance racing. Please contact me on +44 (0) 7813 774339 for more information.