In just over a week we’ll be setting up camp in the wonderfully archaic paddock of Mallory Park for our second meeting of the year, rounds 5 and 6 of the 2009 Monoposto Racing Club championship.
For various reasons we were not able to attend the Anglesey meeting (rounds 3 and 4) – the event coincided with the anniversary of the death of my brother, and it would have been unfair on my parents to race on the same date when they worry enough as it is. But we’ve also had a few car problems (that we probably could have solved if we’d needed to) relating to the clutch release cylinder and the fuelling.
We’ve changed our clutch to a Superclutch one from the original AP clutch, which we hope will improve our starts and low speed driving in the paddock or assembly area. But the slave cylinder piston, which was seized when we bought the car (another example of the standard the car had been kept by the previous owner), was quite heavily scored. Whilst we sleeved it for Snetterton, it seems the fix was only a short term on. A proper fix has now been achieved by having the piston hard chromed and ground so the o-rings have a lovely surface to seal on. Fitting better sizes of o-rings should also help!
The fuelling is, we think, related to the high g-forces the car generates. At 2.5g, a figure we saw regularly at Snetterton, the fuel in the float chambers is assuming angles they were not designed to cope with, and we believe it’s causing the car to run lean. This usually manifests itself as a misfire out of the corner which isn’t good for corner exit speed. A number of fixes have been employed, but we won’t know how well they improve the situation until practice at Mallory.
Our wings have been fixed properly – the rear element that had been araldited badly has now been reskinned and cored, whilst the other element was a ‘fake’ (not a Dallara item) and was deemed too rubbish to repair… Great!
Anyway, I gather Anglesey was exciting, with Neil Harrison taking a pole position, two wins and a new lap record (this despite a gearbox bearing failure in Saturday practice that required the use of the track’s kitchen oven to repair), whilst Jeremy Timms had a pole, a second and a DNF. So, because I got one of the fastest lap points at Snetterton, Neil now leads the championship by one point from Jeremy Timms.
Mallory is where we hope to get our championship back on track. It’s a much bumpier circuit that I’ve yet to really gel with. Gerrards, a very fast 120° corner that goes on for about 10 seconds, makes up about 30% of the total track, so being quick through there is critical. But there is also the slowest corner in UK motorsport at the other end of the circuit, and getting good drive out of there is also important. As such traction, grip and braking are tested to an extreme that other tracks don’t always manage, despite Mallory only being 1.35 miles in length…
Jeremy Timms went very well last year in his 397 (the only time I was lapped in the Reynard), whilst Neil had a relatively poor weekend. Whilst Snetterton only increased my confidence of going well this year, I have to accept that Mallory is not my strength, and getting any result is going to be difficult – but I will be trying, and I secretly plan on beating on of the other Dallaras if I possibly can.
We are also hoping to improve the cooling on the car, as it is over-cooled at the moment. All this does is sap power from the drivetrain, and freeing up a horsepower or two can only be a good thing, even though Mallory doesn’t require a high top speed (perhaps the Vauxhall engines’ better mid-range torque will prove to be important in Neil’s and Jeremy’s cars).
As ever we’ll have onboard footage, plenty of photographs and a report of the weekend the following week. But right now I’m in a play (opening night tonight), so my evenings are entirely filled with acting related stuff… I don’t think anyone could ever accuse me of having too few hobbies!
More after Mallory! I can’t wait…
