Made it over...

[stace]

Last I saw of Andy the passenger door had just been ripped off after Dave had a big shunt at Bovington
Brave indeed
And then he spun it off the track at high speed in Avon park and went down a bank
even braver co pilot!
I think that killed the car

I think the "what if" of the Bovington shunt scared me the most. If that control arm had snapped half a second after it would have been the concrete earth filled thingys we hit, and not the soft soil bank. We all learnt quite a bit that day. Oh, and my pants are still wet now from that bloody water splash

[stace]

Found some nearly new recaro spg's for the Porsche today. Should have them tomorrow afternoon. Is it wrong to get excited about this sort of thing?

[stace]

Did my second ever race on the Silverstone National on Sunday. I did a brief report on Northloop Forum which I visit loads and thought I'd copy it over. I know you guys probably prefer the rally stuff to the roundy roundy of circuit stuff but it's bloody good fun.

Bit of background info. The 306 belongs to a mate of mine and race is a 45 min race with a minimum 1 min 50 sec driver change. 4 classes. B,C,D and E and is based on power to weight ratio. We are in the "up to 125bhp per ton" class D.

Anyways. Here it is



Very brief trip report


Set off on Saturday avo to Silverstone diverting via Mallory to pick up Slator's go pro from Mr Jebson. We had a good chat for half hour about the race and he gave me some stuff to think about how to approach the race. Thanks Andy :thumb:


Arrived at Silverstone





Found Chris and we went and signed on. Chris wanted to see if we could get the car though scrutineering on the Saturday as we were first on in quali and it was going to be a bit rushed. Chris knew the chief scrute' and we got that out of the way nicely :thumb:


There was some racing on so we decided to visit the corners and look at turn in points and stuff. A quick look through the weekend's program while visiting Copse confirmed the organisers have good taste :wave:





We went back and set up the pit area for Sunday and Chris showed me the pit board he'd bought :lol:




Simon rocked up and we made our way to the Premier Inn (via the petrol station, then back to Silverstone for my car keys which just happened to be in my bag the whole time) to meet Chris's mate Matt who was spannering for us on Sunday. Matt is a very experienced racer and was very useful to have around for the weekend with his wealth of knowledge. He was also a right laugh :thumb:


We got to the circuit for 7 ish and set about tyre pressures and final checks. I went out first in quali and set a 1.13.50. With it being a short lap it was very busy with 32 cars out and getting a clear run was proving difficult. Chris went out and suffered similar but still managed to shave .8 of a second off my time which gave us class D pole :thumb:


Both of us felt there was plenty of time to be found. Chris sent the gps data back to Nige who analised it and had it back to us in no time. We were fairly closely matched and it showed I was losing the bulk of my time at Copse. Apex speed was good but I wasn't early enough on the power on the exit losing me mph down to Becketts. Isn't tech just amazing :thumb:


By this time more help was arriving. Chris had organised for some of his Help for Heroes 4x4 Rally mates to come and cater for us. They were brilliant. Within minutes of arriving they had sausage sandwiches on the go which were simply epic :veryhappy:


Crossle, Faff and Floyd arrived and we decided to go and watch some racing from the grandstand at Brooklands. This was a right laugh. Some of the BMW racing was proper close but for a change for them it was quite well behaved with little contact. This may have given Crossle a false sense of optimism mind :lol:


It was then time for our race. This pic is from the holding area. By far for me the most nervous time. Worse than actually being on the grid waiting strangely :fish:


I won't go into massive detail about the race itself as the video will show what happened but in brief I got away very slowly and was swamped initially. I then got stuck in to passing the people who had come past. Straight away I felt a lot more comfortable being in close quarters with other cars than at Brands. This meant I could get cracking with the racing :racing:


There were loads of yellow flagged areas on my stint (nearly got caught out passing a Clio in the Class above into Brooklands but spotted the waved yellows just in time :whistle meaning I couldn't take massive amounts off my quali lap time. In hindsight I probably slowed too much for those areas and it made catching the white 106 Gti in our class who had come past me at the start quite tricky. As soon as the yellows cleared I was on him and we had a great ding dong battle.


When I handed over to Chris we were running second in class and I was slowly catching the MR2 in 1st. They then changed driver too and Chris set about chasing it down. As you can imagine, he sliced through the traffic with ease (and skids. Check out his out lap followed by a close call at Copse two laps after while passing back markers) and caught the MR2 in no time. He was just thinking about how he was going to send one round the outside of him with the arse wagging when the fella spun half way round Brooklands. We were now leading our class D :thumb:


After this the big lad settled in to a nice rhythm and brought it home for the win :veryhappy:





Massive thanks again to Chris for sorting all this out for me :veryhappy: The red rocket is so lovely to drive and feels like you can place it pretty much anywhere. Despite the back of the car being quite "waggy", it always feels like its with you and makes for a great race car :thumb:


Another big thanks to Simon who was with us the whole weekend sorting the ipad timing/pit board for us with Matt and genrally keeping us entertained :thumb: (sorry again about the key thing)

[stace]

Here is the video from my stint. Nearly got caught out with waved yellows here and there and lost too much time at Copse slowing down too much when they were recovering a car. Steep learning curve and all that.
https://vimeo.com/42184594

[The Slug]

Hi Stace, love the report and only down the road from me. Dont forget we are always looking for reports etc for the newsletter, and as we have said before its the members not the cars that make up the club so happy to receive any article, not just ones with Strats in them....

Send articles to newsletter@stratosec.com

Thanks

[stace]

Thanks chap. Next round is Cadwell Park so that should be fun. I'll do something similar and send it you

I've actually lapped Cadwell quite a bit before (hadn't driven Silverstone at all before quali) so I should be more on the pace too

[SUSIT]

Found some nearly new recaro spg's for the Porsche today. Should have them tomorrow afternoon. Is it wrong to get excited about this sort of thing?

Hi there
not at all, I have run a 944S2 as my daily driver for 3 years and what a lovely car, have to say I am not so keen on the rear shape of the 968 and it weighs more than the 44 lol

Tell Dave Steve Struthers sends his best wishes

cheers

[stace]

The 968 certainly weighs more with me in it

It's such a lovely thing to drive. I've yet to properly set up the suspension how I want it but it might get a run out at Blyton next week and that will give me a chance to play around with the damper settings.

I'll tell Dave you said hello

[stace]

Did another race at Cadwell with my friend in the 306. Went well. We won our class again and it was pretty exciting towards the end. I had to make the car pretty wide in places....

Anyway. Chris is selling the 306 so I've bought this instead.


It's an ex-challenge series car. 215 bhp supercharged engine. AP brakes. S/Devices full cage. Carbon seats. Proper shizzle. It needs a small amount of work but we'll have it out racing in the same series next year. I'll post up some video from a test when we manage one

[stace]

In other news. My Dad moved to Chesterfield a few months ago. Turns out it's a couple of roads along from a Stratos owner by the name of Chris....

Small world