On Wednesday, I arrived at Silverstone after a fairly grueling 8 hour drive from Edinburgh and safely unloaded everything ready for testing on Thursday. This was a significant improvement on last year, when I had to dismantle a rear hub and weld new wheel studs before I'd even finished setting up!
Thursday dawned grey and miserable and track conditions were challenging to say the least - very poor visibility (even with my new clear visor!) and bambi-on-ice levels of grip. The car felt mostly OK, but I knew quite quickly that I'd been too conservative with my ratio choices, and the gearbox was being a bit reluctant to find 3rd on downshifts. I knew that Thursday's conditions weren't likely to be repeated for Friday testing or the race weekend, so I didn't worry too much about making lots of changes.
Fairly quickly, any Thursday testing strategy I might have had was out of the window anyway, as Ross Howe, with whom I was doing mutual support, managed to get a bit too friendly with the pit wall and totally wipe out two corners of his car. So most of the rest of the day was spent on the big team effort to get that put straight again.
By the final session, my gearbox troubles had worsened - jumping out of both 1st and 3rd as well as grinding going into them either up of down the box. It had the symptoms of a linkage problem, so after checking the external linkage, I opened up the bearing carrier hoping for a simple adjustment to rectify the situation. I found the pinion nut locked and split-pinned 20mm from where it should be (must've been a error on my part when I changed the ratios), which allowed the shaft to float back and forth by 20mm
. Unfortunately, further inspection found that this had damaged the pinion bearing, allowing scary amounts of lateral play. On the advice of some more experienced guys, I decided there was no option but to rip the whole box out and get JP Race to fit new bearings.
So after quite a late night on Thursday, I started Friday morning with the gearbox in the boot of the Land Rover, waiting for the JP guys to turn up to work at 8am. They were absolutely magic, put my job to the front of the queue, and had a fully serviced box ready for me by 9.30. After another couple of hours spannering, I was finally ready to head out for testing, but was devastated to find that 3rd gear still didn't want to play properly. No choice to rip the box apart again. This time I found the spacer ring at the end of the pinion shaft was cracked. Back to JP who relieved my of £100 for what is effectively a big washer, and I bolted it all back together, but *still* no joy.
In desperation I changed the dog ring and third gear ratio, very conscious of time ticking away and very keen to get at least *some* running in the final session of the day. Sadly, brain-fade caused me to bolt it all up without taking it out of 1st/reverse, and it all had to come apart *again*. By this stage, the clock was really ticking, and my aspirations were paired back to simply getting a lap or two to test the box. After a last minute frantic panic, I suited up and got started, only to see the checkered flag come out, just as I exited the pit garage. I'd missed the final session by 20 seconds.
Another late night followed after making a couple of mods requested by the scrutineers and final set-up for qualifying, but it was an uneasy night's sleep knowing I was going into quali with a gearbox that I didn't trust, a set-up that hadn't been optimised, and worrying lack of practice.
I was therefore massively relieved to find that not only did I have four working forward gears, but also that the set-up wasn't massively far off. Inexperience led me to not properly use the tow of other cars on the straight to extract the best time, but I was still pretty happy to qualify sixth in my group. I may have got up to 5th with a more canny drive, but the 4 quick boys at the front were largely untouchable.
Strategy for the heat was simply to survive - I needed to make 9th or better to pass straight through to the semis, but decided that I wasn't going to take any silly risks - just do enough to get through. As it turned out, I got a poor-ish start and lost a couple of places. I quickly gained one back , but found myself stuck behind a slower car defending well. My no-risk strategy led me to decline the handful of half-chances I had and settle for a P7 finish.
With confidence growing and lap-times improving, I decided on some set-up changes and stiffened the whole car up - more pre-load on springs front and back, a couple of clicks on the dampers and a little more anti-rollbar.
Unfortunately, they all had to be reversed at the last second, as the rain started coming down while I waited in the assembly area for the semis.
The other consequence of the last minute shower was the not everyone on the grid had chance to properly change for wet set-up, which was probably no small contributor to the carnage that happened at the first corner. I got an OK start, but arrived at turn 1 to find multiple accidents happening all around me. I ran wide to avoid, but there was a car spinning in my direction and I found myself running wider and wider and wider to dodge being collected. There's a big run-off area at Copse, and I pretty much used all of it. No damage, thankfully, but I had to watch most of the field come streaming past.
I fairly quickly regained a few of places but then found myself behind the same strongly-defending car from my heat. Caution and indecision meant I squandered the couple of chances I had, and other recovering cars were quickly on my gearbox, and my focus had to turn to defence. I think I lost another 2 places to finish 21st, three places behind the cut for the final.
So, overall it has been intense. Lots and lots of hours of frantic spannering outside the comfort zone of my own garage, and constantly playing catch-up on seat-time to get my driving up to scratch. I don't remember the last time my adrenaline/cortisol levels have been held so high for so long!
I'm pretty proud of my mechanical efforts to actually manage to get a working and semi-competitive car to the grid, but a bit disappointed with my performance as a driver - a bit more practice and a bit more bravery would have seen a significantly better result. Still - WHT is an endurance challenge, especially when you're without team support, the result wasn't awful, and simply surviving must be considered a victory of sorts
Roll on next year!!
