OV9

Beany wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 6:01 pm That's a bit shit, but at least you've managed to agree a way forward, and hopefully get to have some real time in it next round.

Must be frustrating as fuck though.

All of what Beany said.

dan wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 3:12 pm Shitshow is how it was.

I did a three quarters of a lap in qualy before a brake line came loose and left me with no brakes into the final corner.

Fixed that and then the boiled itself after 6 laps in the race so I’ve not even driven.

The whole car was extensively rebuilt by an F1 mechanic over the winter and delivered to me last Friday to run the engine in I’d built. I spent the entire week putting shit right to just get it to run on Thursday but one of the things I didn’t get time to put right, but noticed, was the header tank being plumbed in to the wrong side of the coolant flow. It worked fine on Thursday but 6 laps sat half a second behind another car today was enough to boil it.

Just logged on to see how things went. Sorry you had a shit day, you must have been absolutely buzzing as well.

Onwards and upwards though, well done for even getting in to that position in the first place.

Feck

+1 to what Beany said, and

Ascender wrote: Sat Jul 16, 2022 9:39 pm well done for even getting in to that position in the first place.

Here’s the moment the brake pedal went to the floor about to start my first qualy lap, it’s quite exciting at 120mph when you need to shed 30mph by the apex

I'm guessing the soundtrack to that was fearful prrping noises

A much more satisfying update this time.

After the last fiasco I set aside a few days to work through as many of the issues as I could. I remade and rerouted all of the brake lines, repacked the middle silencer which was completely empty and a load of other random jobs in order to do a test at donington prior to yesterdays race.

Before and after of the brake lines - this is the fitting that came loose and lost the brake pedal at 120mph at combe...



Much better



Unfortunately the test lasted until I got to the end of the pitlane and a driveshaft snapped. So back to the workshop to replace the driveshafts. Turns out the splined ends of the shafts had been welded on and had snapped cleanly off where the weld was.





Which now meant our only chance to test before the race was last friday, with the race being on sunday (yesterday).

Thankfully the test went well, the car ran reliably but triggered the noise meters almost immediately so we were consigned to short shifting and using part throttle past the noise meters. Despite that I did a 1.14.9 which felt quite quick but I still had no idea how that would compare to the rest.

Fast forward to race day and I start the qualifying session, the plan is to do 15 minutes and then hand the car over to its owner for him to finish the session. There are 30 cars on track so getting a clear lap is hard, I do 10 laps in total but spend 7 of them slowing down to find some space. My first flying lap is a 13 which is encouraging, my second is a 12.6 and my third is a 1.12.3 - at which point its time for me to come in and hand the car over. Here's the 12.3...



I felt like there was still some time left in the car but was very happy to have done a couple of quick laps and brought the car back in one piece. I jump out in the pits to be told we're running 7th :brum

The owner goes out and does 4 laps but comes back in when he sees a black and white flag. It turns out it wasn't for us, but we call the session there as he's done enough laps to qualify (have to do a minimum of 3).

Nobody goes faster, so it turns out we're 7th for the race. It also turns out that my fastest sectors would have done an 11.1 which would have put us on the second row right behind a mosler and a 991 gt3 cup car....next time.

The race goes well, the owner starts and hands over to me with 25 minutes to go. I come out of the pits into a bit of traffic, have a bit of a dice with a very fast M3 but manage to pass him in the final chicane and then I have a clear track to start pumping in laps. I do a 13 on my first clear flying lap and am just getting warmed up when they red flag it because a porsche has been into the barrier and caused a load of damage.

Still, I had an absolute blast, the car stayed in one piece and we're competitive....what more could you ask for!

I missed this first time around. Good to hear it all came together eventually

Nice

Donno is a great track. Looks quick.

Another race, Silverstone National this time.

It feels like we've turned a corner (no pun intended) with the car now, after a quick spanner check last week we did a test on friday and everything went well. The car is running an old Stack ST8100 dash which has just about everything you can think of data logged, but its also been on the car for 20 odd years so the data is there for every time its ever been out and once again it was several seconds quicker than its ever been, dipping into the 59's. There was definitely a bit of time to come as the brake pedal was a bit soft as the fronts needed a bleed.

Going into silverstone I wondered just how competitive we'd be. Donington was good for us as its got plenty of corners and allowed us to use our strengths, but I didn't expect us to be anywhere near the front this time as the national circuit is just 3 long straights and 4 corners. Prior to the weekend I removed the gurney strip from the wing though, we'd talked about it and decided it was worth a try as the car felt like the balance was too far towards the rear.

Turns out that was a master stroke as its put almost 10mph on our terminal speed and all of a sudden we can out drag just about everything bar the mosler. The ginetta G55 that would reel us in and pass us over 100mph is now getting overtaken by us. Its also tamed the understeer a little bit and given the car a much more neutral balance, although on cold tyres its definitely an oversteer balance which I love but the owner isn't so keen

I started the qualifying session and this time rather than hold back to find space I decided to get on it straight away and clear as many cars as I could to get a gap. Being such a short and fast track I thought i'd quickly be swallowed up by traffic if I waited - here's the first couple of laps. Note that at the end of this vid I overtake a porsche into copse. As my line is compromised on the way in I decide to run a little wide and keep up my speed so I don't hold him up on the way through. You'll see that i'm *just* over the white line with all 4 wheels....



It worked well and after a couple of laps I got myself a clear track to go for a lap and I was on a flyer when the yellow flags came out, followed by a code 60 - basically a virtual safety car where everyone drives at 60kph. Once that cleared I got two quick laps in, a 58.9 followed by a 58.6 and then came in to the pits to hand over as time was ticking on. As usual, with more laps i'd have found a little more time, but they felt like decent laps to me although I still had no idea how we'd fare against the rest. Quick laps -



I jumped out of the car to be told we're in 2nd

By the end of the session we'd dropped to 6th, but it was still an epic result. Discounting the Mosler and the spaceframe silhouette V8 volvo, that really shouldn't be racing in this series, we were within half a second of the front. So we relaxed for a few hours while we waited for the race to start feeling like absolute heroes

Sadly, an hour later when the official results were published, my transgression over the white lines had cost us our two quickest times (my two flying laps) and dropped us to 16th. Still, we were looking forward to the race as we knew we had mega pace so could have a lot of fun. We went to see race control as initially I had no idea where i'd been over track limits as I knew I hadn't been anywhere near on my quick laps, but it turns out they'd changed the rule for this weekend only so that instead of losing the lap you're on when you cross the line you just lose your quickest laps. Cheers

The race came round and I was second driver again. We got baulked by a miss shifting aston on the first lap and lost a few places but slowly gained them back to be on the back of a pack of pretty quick cars. After 15 minutes it was pitstop time, I jumped in and got a lap and a half in before another code 60 because of a car in the wall. I happened to be following the mosler at the time and as we circulated at 60kph I could see the back of the car getting hotter and hotter and hotter...and then it burst into flames. Being very close to the pit entrance I assumed the driver was going to peel off into the pits and stop near a fire extinguisher, but when he carried on I quickly realised he had no idea what was going on so pulled along side him and frantically waved for him to stop, which he did and was immediately engulfed in a huge plume of black smoke from burning carbon. Thankfully he got out fine but it was scary stuff. Shown here at 1:29:34 -



The race was red flagged of course but after the restart we were flying. The early pitstop had put us towards the back of the grid but in the first 3 laps I passed 9 cars and was having an absolute blast when the inevitable happened

I was accelerating out of luffield and pulled a gear change and momentarily the exhaust note went super loud. I immediately jumped off the throttle but when I put my foot back down it was fine, so I carried on. When I pulled the next gear, accompanied by the huge backfire from the ignition cut on the flatshift, it was immediatly obvious that something in the exhaust area had broken because it sounded like I no longer had an exhaust pipe fitted. I cruised slowly back to the pits to see what was up and it was a simple exhaust clamp, still done up as tight as it would possibly go, but red hot because of the heat of the exhaust, that had allowed the middle silencer to slide off the end of the manifold. The momentary noise i'd heard on the first gearchange was the silencer *almost* coming off, followed by it actually coming off.

Despite the early finish I was absolutely buzzing as the car was incredible. We had the pace to live with everything bar the GT1 lemans cars which is pretty amazing for a shonky old lotus.

Sadly, my gopro decided not to work during the race so all my epic overtakes only exist in my head....but my full qualy stint is here if anyones bored enough to sit through it



Next race is Cadwell Park on the 29th. We might not do that one though as its not a Slicks round, so we'd have to change to some treaded tyres.