Both the Monoposto Racing Club and MSV F3 Cup have announced their (provision) 2012 racing calenders now. I’ve combined the two below, and we’re pleased to see that no rounds clash with each other (i.e. same date, different circuits).
It’s a long old season though – 18 rounds for F3 Cup, and at the time of writing it’s not clear whether all or only ~16 rounds will count towards the final tally.
As you may be aware, we’re racing in the MSV F3 Cup Championship next year with a 2007 Dallara F307. With a new car comes a new livery, and whilst I’ve come up with a few designs I like, I thought opening it up to the world would be a good thing!!!
There aren’t many rules. Don’t be rude. Don’t be silly. And our main colour is red (indeed, both Omicron cars in Monoposto are entirely red, with flourescent flashes on the wings, mirrors etc). So download the image below and colour it in. When you’re done, email it to livery@dallara307.com along with some details, and I’ll take a look.
More
No CommentsThe penultimate meeting of the year was at Anglesey, on the International configuration rather than the usual Coastal circuit we have used in the past. The weather was very windy all weekend, which made predicting the tyres required very difficult, and had an impact on the driving of the car.
The week leading up to this race was quite stressful and difficult – first of all our Race Truck developed a fault on the way to a test session at Silverstone that wasn’t fixed in time, and Tony Bishop, our other driver, had to pull out of the meeting due to personal reasons at the very last minute. We had already loaded up the van and trailer to take both of Tony’s cars to the circuit, but we needed it to take my own car, so there was some hasty unloading and reloading to do on the Thursday.
More No CommentsI haven’t written much recently, have I. Well, hopefully this will change all that… Since Oulton Park, where I crashed and the cheating Formula Renault was disqualified, we’ve been busy repairing the cars and getting the F304 out to Brands Indy for an MSV F3 Cup round there in the middle of July. There were various problems with the car, ranging from the configuration of the dashboard and datalogger, to suspension settings that weren’t ideal for Tony’s driving style. Whilst Tony was learning the car, we weren’t too worried when he qualified at the back of the grid, and both races were wet which meant he took the safe option of keeping it on the track rather than trying to go as fast as he could. Sadly, there was a technical problem with the car that caused Tony to retire from the race.
Since then, we’ve been through the car, fixed the various issues and softened the suspension. We won’t really know how it goes until Tony drives the car at Silverstone (on the Grand Prix Arena circuit in preparation for the non-championship race there at the end of September) and races at Anglesey on the 10th September.
Meanwhile, my car needed some serious repair work after I hit the wall at over 60mph and decelerated at over 12g. Some new wishbones were made for us by MyRaceSpares.com and we raided our small selection of spares too to get remaining wishbones, pushrods, trackrods and driveshafts. A new front wing was ordered, and new rear wing endplates were made to my specification locally. There was also some bodywork damage that was dealt with by our local carbon expert, and some repainting required which was done in-house. But would the car be any good? Would I have lost my nerve? Would Malcolm Scott be able to capitalise on my misfortune and his resultant victory? Who could tell…
More No CommentsOur race weekend began on Friday with some testing. Tony was out all day, usually on old rubber and initially with restricted revs to help run the engine in a bit, and learnt a lot about the car and the track. I went out in the afternoon to find a setup that worked, as I’d never ‘clicked’ with Oulton before. Concentrating on wings and dampers really helped, so my best time was a 1m37.4, considerably faster than Kourosh Khani in the Younes Amiere Formula Renault (prepared for this race by Ross Cunrow) despite then testing without the BARC-spec engine restrictor required in Monoposto. Indeed, I have encouraged them to test with and without the restrictor, and then supply all the data to the club to assist with the equalisation process.
Tony’s day nearly turned for the worse when a fuel rail bracket failed, causing a fairly massive fuel leak. Tony immediately pitted and switched off, and no fire occurred. The manufacturer got a new one to us overnight to fix the car, so everything was okay.
More No CommentsFor the first time since 2008, Monoposto returned to Cadwell Park for the sixth and seventh round of the 2011 championship. Last time we were there, I had a decent lead in the championship over Nick Anstruther and Richard Purcell, and in torrentially wet conditions secured pole position in my Reynard 883, and during the race was ~4 seconds per lap quicker than the rest. However, whilst lapping someone, I put my left wheels onto a river running along the track, lost control, and crashed into the barriers. This brought out the red flags, which awarded my the championship, so it was rather bittersweet.
This time the weather behaved itself mostly, and a good couple of races were had, but the event remained bittersweet in the end.
Our first job was testing. Yet again, I sat out testing from a driving point of view, and concentrated on running my talented team-mate Tony Bishop in his Omicron prepared Dallara F397. He had never visited Cadwell before, so it was important to get some track time to learn the track, scrub in tyres, and find a good setup for the meeting…
More Comments Off
