Just a few short weeks after our first meeting of
the season we found ourselves back at Brands Hatch for round 2 of the
2011 Quaife Intermarque Championship. It's a miracle we made it there
at all as Ross' 206 was missing the complete rear end of the car from
the roll hoop backwards just 1 week before the meeting as we looked to
avoid all the scrutineering problems of the last meeting. A big effort
though and the rear of the spaceframe has been completely redesigned and
built in this final week along with the new rear firewall as well as new
fuel and brakes lines, a new smaller fuel tank safely located inside a
separate sealed box and far too many other little jobs necessary to complete
the car!
Paul models his new pit bike!
There was therefore much relief in the Loram pit when the car
passed straight through scrutineering at the dreadfully early time of
7:30am! Luckily for us the Avon Tyres Lorry arrived nice and early which
let us get some nice new tyres for our shiny new wheels, all on the car
ready for qualifying at 9am, quite easily the earliest Ross has ever had
to drive a race car!
It's fair to say that qualifying was a complete disaster and
after the week we'd had to get the car ready it was obviously pretty disappointing.
The slightest touch of the brakes caused massive vibrations that made
simply holding onto the steering wheel a bit of a job while a dreadful
imbalance in the car was making left handers extremely challenging. To
make matters worse, just as Ross was thinking of attempting a half decent
lap to make a few places on the grid one of the Tiger cars lost an engine,
the resulting oil on the track certainly giving Ross and the other drivers
something to think about as they made their way into clearways! With all
this going on 26 and a number of other cars made their way into the pits,
once there the team set about trying to find the cause of the problems.
Change everything!
We found one of our new wheels to be slightly out of balance
but suspected this wasn't enough to cause the severity of the problem
we had. We then noticed several small cracks in the front brake discs,
almost certainly the cause of the problem but rather irritatingly we could
do nothing to fix it without any spare discs. With a resigned shrug of
the shoulders we accepted we'd have to live with it for the rest of the
day and began looking for the cause of our handling imbalance. This turned
out to be a pretty easy (if slightly embarrassing) fix. In our rush to
get the car ready we had mounted the Panhard rod where we wanted it whilst
the car was in the air with the wheels hanging down. Obviously with the
car on the ground the location was miles away from where we wanted it,
fortunately we had enough adjustment to get it somewhere close, at least
that was one problem fixed!
"Don't take a picture now,
you can see my bald spot!"
Onto the races then and Ross would start from way down in 16th
after the qualifying problems but determined to 'have a go'. With a bit
more experience of rolling starts '26 was off to a decent start, passing
a few Tigers and completing lap 1 in 13th before moving past fellow HR
class runner Philip Blackford into Paddock at the start of lap 2 for 12th
and then upto 11th later on in the lap. The balance of the car was much
better although we had shifted it a little more towards a tail happy on
power setup through right handers which was costing some time onto the
main straight but still much better than practice as the stopwatch proved
with a 53.303 on lap 3, some half a second faster than our best effort
at the last meeting. The brakes were still proving to be a huge problem
though, shaking both car and driver to pieces every time they were leaned
on. Still, not to worry, there was a race on here!!! In a repeat of the
last meeting Ross was now chasing Jezz Hobbs in his Caterham for 9th place.
After a few laps of close racing the pair encountered oil on the track
at Graham Hill Bend which just about gave Ross the chance to slide through
on the inside on lap 8. It was a quiet run to the end of the 14 minute
race from here with a couple retirements promoting 26 to 7th place at
the flag. (3rd in class behind Daniel Smith and Philip Young who were
4th and 6th overall)
A better result than expected from the first race then. Once
back in the pits the team also discovered the cause of Ross' 'understeer'
in the last 2 laps....a front right puncture! The first new tyres we have
for years and we get a puncture, typical! With no spare of the same compound
we had to go back to our old A10's on the front for race 2, bad because
they're knackered, worse because it also meant putting the old heavy wheels
on and making the steering even heavier.
Uh-oh! (Thanks to smiffyman for the pic)
Race 2 however brought with it the chance to start in 7th place
in front of some of the quick guys who'd suffered problems in race 1.
A clean start saw Ross come out of the hairpin in 7th place but he was
soon diving for the grass at Graham Hill bend, narrowly avoiding the spinning
Philip Young but taking 6th place in the process. It was good work undone
on lap 2 though as Ross got caught out with the different tyre compounds
on each end of the car as he turned into the hairpin and ended up doing
a 'wall of death' around the outside, just about getting away with dropping
a few wheels in the kitty litter around the exit and rejoining a few seconds
and a few places further down the pack in 9th. That was about it for action
in race 2 with Ross having a steady run to the end in 9th (2nd in class)
whilst hoping that nothing would shake it's way loose or break altogether!
(Thankfully it didn't!)
Up at the sharp end Keith White continued his perfect start to
the season with another win to go with his win from race one and 2 wins
from the first meeting. Surely Chris Brockhurst will get the rub of the
green sooner or later though and take a win with his new Tigra. Chris
Ayling is another driver looking for a change of luck after another 2
DNF's this meeting, a puncture in race 1 and a blown engine in race 2.
We've been there and we can sympathise!
Ice cream time!
Our next meeting is the televised Mallory Park event on May 30th,
another new track for us but we'll be doing our best to put on a good
show! New brakes discs will be going on the car before then (and spares
in the van!) while we'll also look to take a little more weight out of
the car, although we'll be hard pressed to match the 45kgs we removed
between the first and second meetings!
See you at Mallory! Or if you can't be there, see us on TV!!!
