A fortnight after the disappointment of Thruxton (where I cleverly turned pole position into a second place via 29th position and the lead, in the space of a dozen laps) we set off for Anglesey, the farthest track from us in the UK.
Another circuit that we haven’t been to with the Dallara that both Timms and Harrison have been to several times with theirs. Thus we arrived with a realistic frame of mind, hoping for a win but knowing that I would be very difficult to actually achieve. The usual preparation showed nothing that was unduly concerning, other than a slight bulge in the floor and plank possibly caused by the Thruxton kerb launching incident (although the bulge might have been there before and I just hadn’t noticed it!). We tried to rectify it as well as we could, but it’s still there, so we have to run a slightly higher ride height than we’d like.
Saturday morning was very hot and very sunny, and not just by usual Welsh standards! This made everything uncomfortable, especially sitting in the assembly area with helmet, multiple Nomex layers and no shade (until Martin leant over me to cast his shadow). Once we were released though it was just a case of relearning the track (it was much as I remember it from 2008), finding traffic-free laps and working out hot to get the best out of the car. My dash was giving me laptimes and delta times, and the pitwall crew (Emma and Martin) were giving me times of the fastest other driver. The end result was pole position from Jeremy Timms by 8 tenths of a second. On the final lap the car suddenly lost power, which I thought was the car running out of fuel, but it turned out to be a wire that had broken on the high pressure injection pump inside the fuel tank – this was fixed quite easily and all was okay.
Once the car was checked over, we set about trying to improve the car for the race. I was running near maximum downforce, but Jeremy was running a little bit less. More downforce means more grip in the corners (assuming the corner speed is high enough to generate any aerodynamic load), but more drag on the straights. With Anglesey being such a low speed circuit (the lowest average speed of any circuit recently used by Monoposto) I felt that drag was of no concern, but despite that I lowered the wing angle a little bit to provide a straight line speed boost that might come in useful. Jeremy did the reverse and added some wing, so we probably ended up very similar.
I lined up on the grid ready for the start. Anglesey doesn’t use a staggered grid, but each row is side-by-side. Thus pole position has little advantage other than the inside line into the first corner. The red lights came on, the revs rose, the lights went out and we were off. My start wasn’t great but wasn’t bad. Jeremy’s was pretty much the same, with both of us bogging down a little bit and having to slip the clutch a little bit. The net result was Jeremy taking the lead into the first corner by a nose and me slotting into 2nd behind him.
I tracked him everywhere, clearly quicker over parts of the lap and slower at other points. The tight, twisty nature of the circuit means there aren’t many passing places – braking for the BookaTrack Banking hairpin and for the corner at the end of the back ‘straight’ being the only meaningful places. I couldn’t get close enough out of the Turn 1 to get a move into the hairpin, but on lap 5 I got a good exit from the hairpin and was able to get alongside and outbrake Jeremy at the end of the back straight. Jeremy didn’t give up easily, and tried to stay around the outside of the following few corners, but in the end the inside lines gave me enough advantage to get ahead.
Anglesey is hard on tyres, with a very abrasive track surface and some tricky corners, so the left front tyre takes a real pounding. Church corner, a long right hander that is flat in qualifying, is the hardest on that tyre, and in race conditions managing it through there is key – lifting is important to take a little bit of load off the tyre, and later in the race staying flat becomes impossible as the tyres go off. Indeed, Jeremy and I were struggling with graining after a few laps.
Jeremy stuck with me, clearly able to pump in the same lap times as me whilst we both nursed our tyres. Very soon slower cars became a concern, but the blue flags were being heeded and finding gaps wasn’t too much of a problem. A few laps after my overtake, I passed Lenny Coleman between the Hairpin and Church, and Jeremy tried to stick with me and go around the outside of Lenny. It’s hard to know exactly what happened, but Lenny appears not to have seen Jeremy, and pushed him onto the grass. Of course, I saw this in my mirrors, and thought that he was unlikely to recover – at least not without losing a lot of time, so I was able to relax my pace quite a lot and bring the car home.
Jeremy had other ideas! He got back on the track losing only a few seconds and gave chase. The gap was around 8 seconds. Next time around it was 5 seconds. Then 3 seconds. My pitboard was relaying this info to me, and I noticed how close the blue and white was getting to me in my mirrors. I upped my pace to match his, responding to his attempts to close on me as we both struggled with tyre wear – it’s not often a 15 minute Monoposto race is decided by tyre management!!!
The 1 minute board was shown to me, which meant it was almost certainly the last lap and I had a 2.5 second advantage, which I was able to maintain to the finish, thus winning my first race of 2010, with fastest lap to boot. Great stuff. Afterwards we were quick to congratulate each other for a very entertaining race, and I think Jeremy is enjoying having some real competition this year.
Overnight I looked at the datalogging and noticed that the water temperature had started to misbehave towards the end of the race. I made a mental note to tell Martin.
In the morning I forgot! I got in the car to take it to the assembly area and left it idling to warm up, but the dash was saying it wasn’t getting hotter… How odd. The engine cover was removed and the coolant cap was removed to check its level – but some water escaped and trickled over the engine and down the spark plug holes. We topped it up – the symptoms were one of an air lock – and put everything back together, but by this time the session had started and we were late out.
The car was misfiring a little, but I thought the water in the plug holes would clear with heat. Onto the circuit and it was really really bad – I couldn’t get any performance out of the car at all. I did a second lap in the hope it would clear, but alas it didn’t. Into the pits to get it checked and dried, which cost even more track time, but made a big difference. Whilst the misfire was still there and was still quite bad, I was fired up and ready to go. I had two laps, and threw the Dallara around like a go-kart trying to maintain corner speed so that the lack of power was less of a problem. The result was an amazing pole position again (albeit only just ahead of Jeremy), and I’m still not sure how I managed that. I was barely any slower than with a healthy car…
Into the race, and as the lights went out I made a good start but Jeremy’s was brilliant and he fired into the first turn in the lead. Further back down the grid Russ Giles and Jeremy Goodman touched, putting Russ into the wall and bringing out the safety car. I saw the flags and SC board and slowed, but a lot of people continued to race and pass me. Once they realised it was a safety car, I gradually retook my position (which upset some drivers and some of the marshals, but maybe they don’t know the safety car rules?). Anglesey was completely unprepared, and we spend about 12 minutes behind the safety car whilst they got the machinery to move the stricken Reynard. Meanwhile the safety car was driven so slowly that the single seaters were having to slip their clutches to avoid stalling, and engine temperatures were beginning to rise without cooling fans to assist. This was worrying for me, but even more so for people further back who couldn’t find any space to get air into the radiators.
Finally, the Reynard was cleared and racing was underway, but only for 4 laps. I was all over Jeremy, ducking and diving to find a way passed. The misfire was still present (albeit massively reduced), but even without it I wouldn’t have been able to find a way passed him. The result was a victory for Jeremy and second for me, but I got the fastest lap again (which was also a new lap record, beating the record time I set in the race the previous day). Again, Jeremy and I were quick to congratulate each other.
Not a back weekend in summary. 2 pole positions. 2 fastest laps (both lap records). 1 win. 1 2nd place. I leap to 2nd in the championship, now 16 points behind Jeremy with 9 races still to go, so the championship is far from settled.
We have a few things to fix – the bulge in the plank is still there, so we’ll try and fix that (or at least reduce it). There is the misfire, which is either a battery voltage problem (our Braille battery doesn’t seem to hold its charge very well, and the spare battery is slightly different and won’t fit) or a mapping problem. Maybe we should get a lambda sensor in the exhaust to check/refine the fuelling map? The camera system failed again, which I think is the new bullet camera part, so that needs to be replaced. And the tyres were pretty knackered afterwards so we’ll get a fresh set of boots for Snetterton…
