Rockingham 8th June

Rockingham 8th June

I nearly didn’t make it there at all as the clutch on my Vito van bust 15 miles short of the circuit. Did you know that you can be towing two tons of stuff, and still start a diesel on the starter motor whilst in first gear? No I didn’t either, but I do now! My Vito gearbox hates me…..I got there but was a tad stressed. At least the sun was shining brightly, perhaps a good omen for things to come?

This event Glenn was unavailable to drive so I had pulled in another friend called Matthew Truelove, who is the most experienced non professional driver I have ever met, something like over 50,000 track miles to his credit. A very, very good driver.

Today we decided to do some extra prep on the car and so bleed the brakes a little more.

Video system was working perfectly at home until the final fix so instead of getting video shots like this to show you lots of track action……

....we had to make manage with a camcorder strapped to the roll cage. Once we get the idea of how to get the film onto a computer from this camcorder, I can put up a link as we did catch some good dicing, until the disc filled up! My system is now on its way back to the factory to be replaced as it completely dead. What is so difficult about recording a race on video?

Rockingham is a great venue to drive. The paddock is massive and being only 10 years old as a facility, it is all in great condition still. The stands are huge, but being just a clubbie event they are 99.9% empty! The circuit we are on is one I have never driven before. I have been reading up on it so have got some pointers. Lots of twiddly corners and then turns 4 and 1 of the oval circuit which, being banked, is treated as a straight in regards to WOT all the way. I think this is the only UK circuit that is anti clockwise and as a result our lap timing beacon is on the wrong side of the car and won’t give us any times in the car all day. This is really annoying as will be seen later.

As Matthew is similar in build to Glenn the plan is to simply get Matthew to go first as Glenn would so that our pit stops work the same as normal.

Today we have another MX5 in our class. Another car being a refugee from the MAX5 series. They are running identical tyres to us and the only difference in the engines is that we have a theoretically better exhaust manifold and have played around with the air box to get more air flow. Whether it works or not is another matter, but we have played around with the air box! Also running for the first time 99 octane fuel. It doesn’t smell like ordinary petrol but it is pump fuel (Tesco sell it) so is legit.

Matthew takes to the car really quickly and looking at the pit board of our class competitors I can see he is at least getting us a class pole. That’ll do nicely.

My turn. Matthew brings the car in and we change over whilst checking tyre pressures. Matthew adjusts them down a bit to a pre agreed setting. All is going well. Off I trot to pit exit and up the banking down to turn 2 which is a bumpy hairpin as you come off the banking onto the infield part of the circuit whilst turning 180 degrees. Short straight to turn 3 which is a 90 degree right hander leading up hill to turn 4 a more open 90 degree right hander. Turns 5 and 6 are a couple of weird left hand corners that can trick you into a million different lines and I struggled all day to work out the best way to tackle this series of corners. I need more track time to suss it. Anyway I didn’t drop the car on my first lap (or at all) whilst I relayed the visual input of what was unravelling in front of me with what I had read and so was expecting in my mind. Turn 7 is an 80’ish degree left hander, quite open and fast leading onto one of the two longer straights within the infield course. Slightly down hill you have time to snatch 4th gear before weighing on the anchors for turn 8 being a 180 hairpin leading onto the other longer straight! Wide open exit here so use all the road and slightly uphill which is bad for us as no real power in our engine compared to everyone else.

Now for turn 9, my books said turn right but that car in front seems to be turning left at the end of this straight. Hmmm better slow up a bit earlier and sure enough the track has been altered so its a left hand entry into a vicious chicane and not the open 90 degree right hander as the book says and how the MSA blue book says! Ok I know now, just as well a car was ahead of me else it could have been really embarrassing!

I finish the qualifying session and when the times are published we see we are 8th out of 21 starters. This is much better than expected and Matthew has set the time which bodes well for the race.

However the car is making a bit of an exhaust noise so up on jacks to find that the exhaust has split at the base of the down pipe. We haven’t got any means to repair this so just splint it with long Allen keys held in place by lock wire so that if it does separate it should at least keep the pipe off the tarmac. A proper fudge up but it works.

On the grid in front of us are primarily Jaguars. Clearly the “straight” is sufficient for them to unleash their power and they are very fast on this section of the track. On pole is a Triumph TR7 V8 and between the two of us are 4 Jaguar XJS variants, a Sierra Cosworth, and a Rover Tomcat (turbo charged 1600cc). Behind us there are 4 Porsche 944 turbos, more Jaguars, Alfas, a lone Toyota Supra and a Davrian Mk1 (a nice little car I think).

The lights go out and as usual Matthew suffers a lack of grunt and cars sweep past him down to turn one. However after that it is a different story and by the end of the first lap he is back up to grid position and by the end of his session he has got us up to 4th overall and first in class. He has had a monster battle with a nicely prepped 944 Turbo but each time he eventually gets past, the power of the Porsche allows the place to be retaken as soon as a straight appears. But it is nose to tail for 20 minutes for Matthew, good exciting stuff (and caught on video for once) so the pressure is on me not to throw it away in my stint.

A good changeover sees me on track and pretty much circulating in my own space with not a lot going on around me. Unlike at Snetterton where this was really boring, here at Rockingham I am quite happy to just be plodding on round trying to get the best line and stay on the black stuff.

On the front “straight” I am using 5th gear down to turn one. I am only doing 160 kph in this gear and as rpm seem low start to vary the gear selection and sure enough if I hold 4th gear and go to the rev limiter I gain 10kph on this part of the circuit and my lap times immediately drop by over a second per lap. Damn I need the lap timer working in the car to see this more quickly! Very annoying.

After a while I catch up a gaggle of cars one being the Davrian Imp. I am no faster on the “straight” but I feel I can out brake them in to turn 1. I wait for their brake lights to time my braking……”Oh sh*t!” that car has no brake lights and I over shoot my braking point by a country mile. I lock up the front left and I can visualise by bollocking from the clerk of the course for t boning another car as the Davrian begins to turn in. I reduce brake pedal pressure and try and turn the car into the turn and amazingly (as for sure I did not expect to succeed with this corner) the car slows and turns sufficiently to hit the apex spot on! I am sure the other cars about me gave me room seeing me coming with loads of tyre smoke, but I am very grateful to have made that corner. But of course Matthew points out if I can brake that late once I should be able to do it again and again? No thank you.

For the last 4 laps I have a great tussle with another 944 turbo and get ahead of it with a lap to go (a back marker helped here unwittingly) and manage to hold it behind me to the flag.

A good eventful race with no major incidents. Phew, sorry I mean excellent! And we finish 5th overall and 1st in class. A good result. Thank you to Matthew for driving so well (b****d was quicker than me!) and to Neil for taking all the pictures.

Now, to just get the Vito sorted so I can drive home, but that is another story.