It's a long weekend at Kerswell - 10 / 04 / 06

It's been a long weekend, saturday was spent working on the outdoor track with a few of the other guys. The good weather making it quite a relaxing day as we worked on the tracks infield marker islands and bitched about those not in attendance (only kidding...we bitched about everyone! ;-)

Many of the local drivers were of course in Wrexham for round 1 of this years BTCC, regular updates being received throughout the day told us they were suffering with interference and getting drowned up in sheep country. Meanwhile back at Kerswell the worst of the old paint etc had been scraped off the islands before paint was applied.

Adrian, Wayne and Paul scrape on sunday afternoon while Mike gets meticulous with his painting ;-) And there's no saturday photos as I forgot my camera ;-)

Sunday morning saw us back at Kerswell for a little pre-season testing. Generally good weather and a small group of drivers (Malc, Paul, Wayne, Mike, Adrian and Chris) made for quite a pleasant morning. As expected i'm still useless at the track though, my best early morning laptime of 13.8 being proof of this. Some changes later and I was down to 13.6 although the handling was still pretty dodgy, I almost felt the need to check nobody had fitted my car with some drift tyres while I wasn't looking ;-) Different springs, shock oil, pistons, ride height and camber settings got it down to a best laptime of 13.2 but it still didn't feel right. Malc confirmed that as he took it for a spin only to encounter bag fulls of understeer every time he got to a corner, followed by a loose rear end at the hairpin.

Paul Bond looked tidy all day with his TC4 FT, his only problem being too much rear grip! Lucky sod! ;-)

This was somewhat puzzling as my TC3 is set-up nearly identical to Malcolms TC3 which was so quick here the last couple years. I'm putting it down to worn tyres and my lack of skill round this track, we'll see if I can get any quicker throughout the summer ;-) Saying that I took Malc's car for a spin (well, several near spins actually) and found it to be very very pointy. I think he'd gone a little too pointy on the setup at that stage but even just driving it for a few laps it seemed to be going round on a different surface to my car, weird.

Waynes battered looking Alfa shelled Tamiya Evo 4 was the quickest car of the day, 12.4 seconds with his 12 turn modified....sorry I meant standard 540...sorry Wayne ;-)

To end the day we had a bit of a race between five of us. The extra front droop I'd given my car made the handling quite impossible and I was busy being caught by the leader and about to be lapped when a stone jammed the steering and sent the car flat out and nose first into the barrier just past race control. Time to dig out the lexan covers for the steering rack I think! ;-)

With everything packed up we did a little more work, not a huge amount it has to be said but scarping off the remaining loose paint from the last few islands and painting while Chris attacked the grass, hedges, trees etc with a number of tools from his pickup. Chatting about the racing though while Adrian and Mike finished up the painting all the secrets started coming out as Malc revealed he used to practice weeknights at Woodlands between race meetings! Three years on and all is revealed eh mate! ;-)

Chris attacks cameraman with strimmer!

Of course while we were messing around at Kerswell the serious racing was going on at Wrexham with a number of TRAK members representing the club at BTCC Round 1. I'm delighted to say that four of our drivers made the 'B' Final with Mike Doody and Jason Guy taking 3rd and 5th in 27T while Paul Rose and Paul Hopkins took 2nd and 3rd in 19T, bragging rights remaining with Paul Rose for at least 2 weeks before they get to round 2 of the series at Bedworth ;-) Sean Guy took 3rd in the 'C' while Justin Landau had a troubled weekend with 6th in the 'C', i'm sure we'll see him doing better next time round. Also present were James Matthews who took 9th in one of the lower finals with James Bell winning the final below that. Les was completely out of luck as he didn't even get off the line in the GTRE class as a result of some soldering problems (and no I have no idea what a GTRE class car is either!)

All that remains is to say a huge well done to everyone and to wish you all luck at Bedworth in two weeks time where Wayne, Mike and Adrian will also join TRAK on tour. I wish I was going! ;-)

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