BTCC Round 3 Report - So close at Wet Snetterton - 15 / 05 / 07

Snetterton, round 3 of this years BTCC and a 600+ mile round trip for our band of south west drivers, enough miles to convince us to head up on Friday afternoon and after picking up a hitchhiker in Totnes (that’d be Mike) we were on our way ;-)

Charles’ weather forecasts were looking ominously correct as we arrived at Snetterton on Friday night to be greeted by rain and floods, after surveying the situation we decided to go to bed and hope for better weather in the morning……which we got!

Also arriving at various points of the night were Mike and Wayne as well as the Guys and James Matthews who were mad enough to drive through the night before arriving at 3am and then sleeping in their cars! Quite quite mad but committed to the cause! ;-)

With the gates open I managed to successfully navigate Dads van through the mirage of posts to the pitting area (I was saving my crashes for later) where we managed to get setup right beside the track, bizarrely enough all the longest travellers for this meeting were the first ones there.

The doody Loram pit.....oh, that's Doody / Loram pit....

After setting up and tying the gazebo down to prevent it reverting into ‘Kite-mode’ we headed out on track for the first practice run where the car was absolutely awful with the rear end sliding all over the place. Having had the car for a few meetings now though I’m getting more of an idea of what to adjust and after a few runs and some changes to the set-up it was going much better, down from scary late 16 second laps to 15.1’s, much more like it and not a million miles away from the top guys early afternoon pace. It only got worse from there though, although heading out for one run with 3 wheel nuts didn’t help much, needless to say the Cyclone was well crash tested with only the new endbell mounted fan breaking as the car went hard into the tyre barrier.

Wayne gets a feel for the track on Saturday

We decided the lack of performance was down to the by now pretty knackered tyres on the car which were fairly badly grained which we thought was odd having not noticed graining on the Sorex tyres before….”Look at these tyres” we said throwing one of the old tyres at Bobby….”Why you running CS22’s?” Bobby responded as he looked at the tyre….”….you’re joking….”

Sadly he wasn’t, I had in fact spent all day testing on the wrong tyres! Can you believe that! Nearly 5pm and I’d been on the wrong tyres all day, and 22’s! No wonder they’d grained! Still, at least everyone had a good laugh at my expense (I admit, gaff of the season so far)

Bobby and the Guys in what is a pretty cool gazebo type thing

After fitting some SOREX 32’s to the car I kept my head low and headed to the rostrum convinced the car would now be useless. Thankfully the car was better than before, maybe the back end was a bit too stuck now but the laptimes were better with late 14’s, just as well as there wasn’t really anymore time for another run. Phew!

Elsewhere Mike had found some speed towards the end of the day although still wanted more, Wayne had his Cyclone going well with his new shell and from a promising first run of the day Sean declared he’d just gotten worse all day. Not getting worse though was Jamie who was flying once more with his Mi3 and Jason was looking pretty handy with his 19T Cyclone when I saw him in morning practice too.

Sean comes over to the pink side... (Photo nicked from www.telsshells.com - thanks Terry!)

With pretty much everyone camping at the track on Saturday night we had a pretty good laugh (although we didn’t need to know quite so much about your toilet habits Jason) before getting some sleep.

Sunday morning dawned pleasantly bright so we set out for a practice run before the track got too busy. With the car deemed okay but the driver not awake enough to drive it properly we waited for the drivers briefing and round 1 of qualifying.

With the skies now darkening it was a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’ it was going to rain and we prayed for a dry qualifying run before the rain came down. Of course the worse case scenario would be that it would stay dry for the earlier qualifying heats and then rain before we got to set a time, a scenario that was looking more possible with every passing minute.

True to his word Jon was pushing the meeting through as quickly as he could and before long myself, Wayne, Jamie and Sean were out for round 1 with black skies and spots of rain in the air, just hang on a minute!

From 7th I could overtake some cars and get up into 3rd on track and have a relatively clear run, the only problem was with the rain clearly on it’s way we all knew this was the only meaningful qualifier of the day and that really cranked the pressure up! I had a few slower laps mid race after having a quick roll on the infield but I sorted myself out and tidied up the end of the race although I lost a little time trying to lap some cars. Still, it was a fairly decent run for 20 laps in 309 seconds, meanwhile Jamie stormed to the win with a very quick 20 lapper with Wayne in fifth with 20 laps in 312 seconds.

Battle of the pink in qualifying! (Photo nicked from www.telsshells.com - thanks Terry!)

Up next were the top heat of stock qualifiers and fortunately the rain pretty much held off for their run although it was soon coming down harder and it was evident to everyone that qualifying was effectively over. That was good news for some of our drivers with Mike and Jamie taking 5th and 6th in the ‘A’ while I was left kicking myself for making those mid race mistakes as I was 11th overall missing the ‘A’ Final by 2 tenths of a second. Bugger! Still, on the bright side I was 28th and laps down at Stafford so it’s defiantly going in the right direction. Just a couple places back we had Wayne in 14th and Sean just missed the ‘B’s as he would line up pole in the ‘C’s

Doody deep in concentration (Photo nicked from www.telsshells.com - thanks Terry!)

With the track now damp we ran the second and third qualifiers purely to get the car better set-up for the finals and after ditching the anti-roll bars it proved to be much better although Jamie was looking mighty quick in the tricky conditions it had to be said.

With the finals almost upon us then the rain began to get worse and people began producing all sorts of weird and wonderful waterproofing techniques to try and keep their electrics dry, personally I went for a good old fashioned underbody and some creative use of tape while others attacked their cars with blu-tac and some shoved all the electrics into sealed plastic boxes and then stuck those to the chassis, not pretty but very effective.

Not being out until the ‘B’ Final we were able to watch some of the earlier finals, the GTR-E’s looked hilarious fun in the wet conditions, drifting around the sweeping Snetterton track before Mike Belcher took to the track for the stock ‘D’ Final where he did well to take a 3rd place. Up next was the stock ‘C’ Final but Sean had a nightmare in this race from the very start as he spun the car whilst pulling away from pole and had to fight a very loose car the whole race.

Mike Belcher on his way to a trophy! (Photo nicked from www.telsshells.com - thanks Terry!)

Not feeling very confident after watching Seans race I took to the track for my final and managed to get away well from pole although I ran a little wide out of turn 1 and lost the lead to Chris Hughes. We had some good side by side racing for lap 1 but he began to pull away a little after that, to be honest I was driving like a bit of a girl being afraid of throwing the car into the barriers again and dropping to the back of the field. Still, after a few laps to build some confidence I started to get quicker and around mid race I think I was slowly starting to catch Chris again and was fancying my chances of making a bit of a race out of it in the final few laps but I had a spin at around 4 minutes whilst trying to lap a backmarker which meant it was second place. I’m not sure why but none of the backmarkers wanted to move over in the final, a problem both me and Chris had. Personally I leap out of the way if I’m being lapped, I thought that’s what you were supposed to do… Anyway, on with the race and Chris had a bit of a half spin on the last lap so I could close back up again but it wasn’t enough and I finished a second or so behind him, both of us being well clear of the fight for 3rd. I have to say I really enjoyed the race and the car was fun to drive even if it had a bit too much understeer, saying that I still got it into a few fun slides and it’s good that the cars starting to feel familiar now, it has been feeling like a borrowed car but now it feels like mine! ;-) Wayne had a more eventful race getting wiped out at the first corner before fighting back to 3rd but then slipping back to 4th at the end of the race to finish where he started.

Me and Jamie earlier on in the day (Photo nicked from www.telsshells.com - thanks Terry!)

With the rain worsening we took up our marshal spots for the ‘A’ Final and got absolutely drenched. Still the local drivers were coming good on lap 1 as Mike and Jamie moved up to 3rd and 4th at one point I believe. Jamie moved on to take second spot while Mike was clearly fighting an ill handling car in these conditions but nonetheless got round to finish 8th. Meanwhile up at the front Jamie was going well but came under pressure from the 3rd place car, fighting him off for many laps before finally losing out and having to settle for 3rd which is still a bloody good result, I’m most jealous you sod ;-)

The finals were a touch damp... (Photo nicked from www.telsshells.com - thanks Terry!)

As we approached the end of the first round of finals it really began to chuck it down so a vote was called to decide whether to carry on and run the second leg of finals or to give results for leg 2 based on your qualifying positions. Myself and Mike decided we’d take the qualifying results option as that would leave us with good results and we didn’t much fancy risking expensive electrics in such dodgy conditions. Wayne however was well up for it having prepped his wet car and looked decidedly peeved as I waved my hand in the air to place a vote for the qualifying positions option! ;-) As it was the majority went for not running the second leg of the finals and giving results based on qualifying positions, a decision which I think most agreed with as we watched the ‘A’ mod run their first leg of finals. Huddled under umbrellas we watched as one by one each of the 6 cars which started the race began to stop, the electrics crying foul as they were subjected to the most horrendous conditions I’ve seen since me and Mike raced at a near swimming pool like car park in Totnes one night a few years back! Eventually all but one car was eliminated, however in a bizarre twist Brian was so many laps ahead when he broke down that he actually won the race despite not finishing….if that makes any sense at all ;-)

Jason discovers my Umbrella has a clip missing....

....but appears pleased to have fixed the problem ;-)

So with the racing over it was trophy time as we stood in front of race control in the pouring rain. Needless to say James Matthews won a prize in the raffle (it’s rigged! Lol) although this time it was just a camber gauge and not a helicopter like at Stafford! I’ll win it one week ;-)

'A' Final mod winner despite his break down! (Photo nicked from www.telsshells.com - thanks Terry!)

After packing up all our soaked gear it was time to make the 5 or 6 hour journey home. And over the following few days the car’s been stripped and cleaned, the gazebo’s been aired, this websites been updated (obviously) everything’s been unpacked and preparations are underway for Broxtowe (yep, it’s Broxtowe next Mike, not Eastbourne, we got that a bit wrong ;-)

It’s a lot of work this RC racing…….it’s just as well we love it

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