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BTCC Round 1 Report - 'C' at Stafford - 11 / 04 / 07

This years BTCC got underway with round 1 at Stafford last weekend. With a new car and lots of other new equipment we were eager to see how we’d fare against some top competition in this packed meeting. Also as so many of our south west drivers were racing i've decided to make these meeting reports as more of a general overview of how we all got on instead of just going on about my days racing ;-) Enjoy! :)


Stafford in all its glory

Arriving trackside at 11:30 Saturday morning we ran into the first of many hitches of the day when we found the pit area full at the track, meaning we had to leave the van outside and carry all the gear down the lane to the track, fortunately we did end up pitted right alongside the track next to Mike Doody and fairly close to the others TRAK members who seemingly had all arrived before us! ;-) After a few hellos and a nervous look at the laptimes going in by the well sorted competition we borrowed some tyres off Mike (the first of many thanks to Mike this weekend!) and the Cyclone hit the track for the first time.

I've even got tyre warmers this season

Nervous was not the word! Down the straight for the first time then and into the fast right hand sweeper which I’m assured is a flat out affair with a stock motor, hmm, maybe not with a new car though on lap 1 so a lift off the throttle and woah! Spin out and enter the corner backwards! Hmm, that was odd, let’s get it back facing the right way then and have a go at turn 2, here we go...woah! Backwards again! Hmm, after a few laps of playing spinning top I decided to end that little experiment and remove the one-way from the front of the car, it was only then that Mike had another good thought of altering the throttle trim forwards a bit so the car wasn’t trying to throw itself into the surrounding fields at every available opportunity! Of course, so simple! And now the car was better, although still not good. The rest of the afternoon was spent making many many changes to the car, a spool and a diff were tried in the front next, then all the wishbones were swapped over for different ones, shock locations were changed and general teething problems were ironed out and things started to get better and the laptimes came down mid 19’s to mid 18’s which wasn’t dreadful but nothing to write home about either as a general understeer in the car just stopped me going any faster.

New shell, same paintjob! Getting to grips with the new Cyclone (Thanks to Terry Atkinson for the great pics - www.telsshells.com

Meanwhile things were going well for the other south west drivers present, Mike Doody looked comfortably fast in the 17’s and was putting many of the 19T superstock runners to shame with his 27T stock. Jason and Jamie Guy were going well, in fact according to the computer Jason clocked a 16.04 second lap at some point in the afternoon, amazing pace or a missed section of track, you be the judge! ;-) That aside though he was looking good while his Dad Sean was having some problems with his rear diff coming undone. Wayne was looking smooth between wild fits of interference and Mike Belcher looked pretty good on the big Stafford track. Up in 19T Paul Rose and Hopkins were settling in nicely while James was scaring the bejesus out of everyone with his range of ballistic brushless motors.

Wayne was preapred for rain with his electrics box as he called it, I still insist it's tupperware!

With time on saturday rapidly running out we went out to try a final few changes only to encounter a load of interference which was a bit worrying as quite a few others were having the same problem. So, with practice over it was time to head to the campsite and with Mike & Wayne in hot pursuit I successfully managed to navigate us all out of Stafford, over and then under the M6 and back onto the road we had come in on earlier that day, all the time getting us nowhere nearer the campsite! Fortunately it was still relatively early and armed with directions from the local pub we eventually made it to Dunston Heath Farm where we'd be staying the night.

Whilst Mike and Wayne prepared their cars for the following day we clearly had different priorities in mind...

Raceday After a fairly decent nights sleep Sunday dawned too early and too cold but at least it wasn't raining so it was off to the track, arriving at 6:45am. With practice being run in heat order we had a rush on to get out for our allotted practice and once out there I wished I wasn't, on the bright side I may have set a new record for amount of spins completed in one lap! After a few laps of that I sheepishly parked it and thought I’d go back to the pits trying to avoid anyone I knew and hoping nobody had seen it...."ROSS! Get the TC3 out!".... Thanks Bobby, noted ;)

We sure were pitted close to the track on Sunday!

With no chance to try the car again before heat 1 we had to just go off our best guess and undid some of the changes we'd made at the end of Saturday. With that done it was time for the drivers briefing and then we were into the busiest race meeting I’ve been at in a long time, 2 minutes between heats, no gaps between round, straight through. It's the only way to run it :) Off the line in the first round of qualifiers then, down the straight and the car's shaking all over the track, round the back of the circuit and the steering is twitching, throttle is doing it's own thing and the car generally has a mind of it's own, damm interference. Round 1 over then and the provisional qualifying sheet made depressing reading...47th and stone last - Ross Loram - 1 lap. Wayne was another experiencing interference problems but he at least managed to wobble round for 5 minutes to post some sort of time. Up at the sharp end Mike Doody was 7th fastest and joining him in the hunt for 'A' final places were Jason and Jamie who were sitting around 10th-12th overall.

The Doody pit

Onto round 2 and it was still a pretty cold morning in Stafford, certainly not t-shirt time yet! With my old motor back in the car the interference was cured and I could go about putting a time in, a slow 16:306 to be precise as the car refused to take the corners in anything but a frustratingly increasing amount of understeer. Still, it was a run in at least and jumped me up to 26th. Meanwhile Mike was flying round with his Cyclone to go 3rd overall with an incredible 18 laps in 316 seconds...I didn't know wether to shake his hand or knock him off the rostrum.....I’ll get to the rostrum in time next meeting ;-) The Guy family all recorded 17 lap runs to keep themselves in the top 20.

Sean wasn't fearing the kerbs in qualifying! (Thanks to Terry Atkinson for the great pics - www.telsshells.com

For round 3 we'd adjusted the set-up and rebuilt a new motor for the car but it was clear from lap 1 the dreaded interference was back which meant no improvement and a couple places slid down the leaderboard to 28th overall which would place me 8th in the 'C' final, not quite what I had in mind for the weekend I’m prepared to admit but that's racing. Having an even worse time of it than me was the interference ridden Wayne who would line up 4th in the 'D' but during the last qualifier he had at least managed to solve his interference by holding his aerial at a different angle, just a shame his last run had already been ruined by that point. Mike Belcher would start the finals 6th in the 'E' and we had a recipe for disaster in the 'B' with Jason, Jamie and Sean Guy lining up in 4th, 5th and 10th places respectively. The star of qualifying had to be Mike though who took 4th place on the 'A' final grid, hope to see you there soon dude ;-) In 19T Les and James Bell were 2nd and 6th in the 'D', Les lining up 5th in the GTR-E class in which he was also racing. Fellow GTR-E driver Tim Walden shared his plan with us before the finals about how he was going to avoid Les driving into him.... stay on the Apex's!

Wayne on his way to the 'D' Final win (Thanks to Terry Atkinson for the great pics - www.telsshells.com

With the finals posted, the cars prepared and the Cadburys Crème Eggs eaten it was race time. Mike Belcher got off to a bad start with a snapped a wishbone in the 'E' but Wayne got things back on track as he stormed to the first leg win in the 'D' before it was my turn to get roughed up in the 'C' final. Up to 3rd or 4th place early on I got driven straight through at the end of lap 1 but managed to pick up some places during the rest of the race and come home 4th but the car was missing some speed down the straights and still understeering though the corners. I took my marshal post for the 'Guy Family final' in which the increasingly impressive Jamie took 3rd with Jason 5th and Sean 8th. Now we had the big race, the 'A' final and I thought I’d take a wander round to watch the race with Charles who admitted he didn't breathe when Mike was racing, studying him for a few moments he appeared to be right. Mike was driving well and running in a clear 4th and began piling the pressure on Rob West in 3rd as I assured Charles that leaning from side to side would in no way aid the performance of Mikes car, he wasn't having any of it though and was practically at a 45degree angle as Mike looked down the inside of Rob into the hairpin ;-) Unfortunately a late roll cost some time and dropped him to 6th but still a great result.

Mike piles the pressure on Rob West for 3rd during the 27T 'A' Final (Thanks to Terry Atkinson for the great pics - www.telsshells.com

The second leg of finals then and Mike Belcher started things off with 5th in the 'E' before Wayne had quite possibly the most incident packed final of the day, eventually finishing the leg 2nd to win the 'D' Final overall. We'd made some changes to the car for the second leg of the 'C' final and I managed to dodge some first lap incidents but got spun at the end of lap 1 and dropped back down the order again. Like in race 1 I picked up some places as the race went on and the car was a little faster this time although still not good. Running third on the last lap I nearly got 2nd from Graham Liddell as he slowed with motor problems but it wasn't to be so it was 3rd in the leg and third overall, at least it was an improvement on the grid position.

Me on the way to 3rd in the 'C', but you can tell the car has too much understeer by the angle of the front wheel! (Thanks to Terry Atkinson for the great pics - www.telsshells.com

The stock 'B' final proved to be very entertaining as Sean moved from 8th on the grid to 3rd on lap 1 and held firm under pressure for most of the ace before eventually losing out with a late roll finishing the leg 8th for 9th overall in the 'B'. Jason came home 5th as in leg 1 and Jamie went home with the bragging rights after a second place in leg 2 was enough to give him second overall in the 'B' Mike had some dreadful luck in his 'A' Final second leg and despite being very fast could only manage 8th but it looks good for the rest of the season. One final note on the finals, thanks to Kris Kennedy for the fantastic commentary, it really makes the race, and I was crying with laughter with the ‘James Matthews with his ill handling shed’ comment! ;-)

Cars pose with trophies ;-)

With the racing over it was raffle time and after all the more minor prizes were taken (including 2 for Les! Lucky sod!) it was our very own James Matthews who won the grand prize, a 4 channel helicopter! Nice one……, just don’t fly it too close to me please ;-) With everyone else either gone or packing up me and Mike hit the deserted track to try out each others cars. I’ve got to say whenever I’ve driven Mikes cars in the past they’ve frightened the life out of me but not this time, the handling was awesome which has really pleased me, I’ve just got to get mine going like that now…well it is the same car afterall!

The huge crowd wait with baited breathe as Ross tests Mikes Cyclone.....either that or they were watching the excellent mod 'A' Final with Olly Jefferies crawling all over Chris Graingers rear bumper for most of the 5 minutes ;-)

The next round of the BTCC is April 29th at Aldershot, I’m looking forward to it already and with a few tweaks and a bit of testing at Kerswell beforehand we’ll be looking to at least make the ‘B’ and if I’m honest I’m still ever hopeful of sneaking it into the ‘A’ although that’s probably a bit of a stretch so early on. Still, good company, good fun, I’d be looking forward to it even if I wasn’t racing

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