This seasons the team decided to move away from the Semsec championship at Lidden Hill and to start racing in the MSV Team and Trackday Trophies. So at the begining of the season we got the car power tested and weighed, we put out 97 bhp/Tone so that puts us in class D in the team trophy and class E in the Track Day, both classes being a max of 100 bhp/tone.
We have been a little disappointed so far with the turn out for the class, with only having a few people to race. But at the end of the day it is more about teaching the students in the team how to run a car.
So far this year we have taken away two 1st place trophies, two 2nd place trophies and a 3rd place trophy.
At the first three races this year (Snetterton 300, Donington Park and Cadwell Park) we didn't have much to overcome except various weather conditions and the obvious racing. Brands Hatch GP weekend however this all changed. The weekend started off with a test day on the Indie Circuit. Which we had our driver Dan Gill testing the Fiesta, for four sessions in the day. Then Jon Nicholls driving our project Audi A8 for two sessions, this was the first time this audi had been properly driven round a track. The first session with the Audi went well except for leading us to believe there may be a charging issue with the car, weather this be an alternator issue or the battery struggling to store power. After the session we checked the charging system and the alternator seemed to be fine, so we suspected the battery to be the issue. So for the second session we needed to connect the external battery via the anderson connector to help it start up. A few minuets before the end of the session as the audi came behind the pits coming round on to Clearways one of the oil cooler hoses gave way a emptied about 5 litres of transmission oil over the track. This made the car lose drive and Jon managed to coast the Audi back into the pits where the team was waiting to work out why he had came in early. Luckily this was the last session of the day and this event promptly ended the session, much to the disappointment of the other teams testing that day.
The team worked quickly to stop the leak and to recover the Audi back to the paddock.
The fiesta however was as good as gold all day and only started to show a minimal amount of play in one rear wheel bearing by the end of the day and picked up a few flies and some tyre rubber that the team needed to clear off for the following race day.
The next day (Saturday) was the Trackday Trophy on the GP circuit with Dan and Jon sharing the seat. Between them we managed to qualify 2nd in class, the team decided that Dan should start the race as he had the fastest qualifying time. Unfortunately Dan got squeezed by a BMW onto the grass and then hit in the front right wing before we had even crossed the start line. The grid was of 45 novice drivers and 6 went off before the first corner and another 4 by the end of the first lap. In desperation to continue Dan was still driving as fast as he dared despite the fact he was talking to Dan Whitby on the comms telling him how he had been hit and the steering was not straight, he managed to stay in front of another car for over half a lap. As soon as he had stopped in the pits the team had the car in the air and was assessing the damage it didn't take me (Dave Guilfoyle) long to notice we had a very bent track rod on the right which along with bent wing and punctured bumper meant the end of our race! Luckily rim and tyre was fine along with the chassis and all other major suspension components. I got the car back to the Paddock to start the work, unfortunately we had left our spare track rods back in the workshop. So me and Jon Nicholls went back to the workshop to pick up the spares we needed while the rest of the team started to repair the wing and bumper. By the time we got back to the Paddock it was very dark, but within a small matter of time the new track rod was on and the car was back in one piece ready to be put on the flat patch and re setup, luckily as it was very wet, dark and windy by this point the car setup was pretty much spot on first time and the team managed to get some sleep before doing the Team Trophy the next day with driver Rupert Hinde and Jon Nicholls.
The following day was the Team Trophy race, Rupert Hinde and Jon Nicholls Shared the car for this. Rupert was informed about the previous days racing incident, despite this after qualifying he commented that the car felt as good as it ever had. The Hinde, Nicholls partnership managed to take the 2nd place trophy.
Since then we have not taken on any more damage but have had to do lots of routine maintenance to the car in the workshop, as well as multiple test days and another round of the MSV at Silverstone National.
Addition to the car maintenance, repairs, test days and racing the team has had many interesting opportunities during the season. One thing almost all the team members have got to do on multiple occasions is scrutineering at Brands Hatch for the MSV, some events include the Aston Martin Centenary race, British GT and DTM. Some Members of the Team and become quite competent aiding the scrutineers and have been offered to be trainees.
A major highlight certainly for me was the day spent helping out Team Surtees, we was asked by Jon Surtees (the only man to hold a world championship on two and four wheels) to aid running three of the Team Surtees F1 cars from the 70's. The three cars that where there was the TS7 from 1970, this was the first car the team produced. The TS19, this was the car that was sponsored by durex and raced in the 76,77 and 78 seasons. The TS14 from 1972 and a formula 2 car TS15. on this day we aided the team in unloading and seting up, engine warm up, straping the drivers in and then load up at the end of the day. We also got to spend quite a bit of time talking the the man himself and finding out about what life used to be like as a motorsport legend.
We also got to be a test class for a up and coming motorsport setup activity day at BR racing. They have a variety of Ford made two seater rally style buggies with a 1.7l engine from a Ford Puma. On this day the team got to experiance a badly setup car around a half concrete and gravel and half muddy grass track. At this point we was split into two teams, one led by myself and one led by Dan Whitby. Then we had to set the buggies up to a neutral setup. This was then taken out by a pro driver, we had three attempts to make the buggy faster than the other teams by using setup alone, only going off driver comments. The team led by Dan had the misfortune brake two buggies, this ment that my team won by default. At the end of the day we was aloud to each go for a hot lap in the good setup buggy, i was feeling quietly comfortable about this as i have had lots of experiance driving vehicles on this kind of terrain and i have driven a rally car on a gravel circuit previously. Once we had each finished our lap times where revealed I had the fastest lap time closely followed by Dan.
Aswell as all this we have also managed to get the cars out to a couple of shows like the one at The Brooklands Museum, where we had both tin top cars aswell as the colleges Forumla Ford and Van Dieman single seater.
From this point on the team are going to try and post blogs about each round we do and about some of the maintenance we do on the cars as well as bits about the addition things the team get asked to do like scrutineering and supporting Team Surtees the the Henry Surtees Foundation fund raiser.
Thanks for reading
David Guilfoyle
Team Manager/No.1 Mechanic
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