I got over to Snett with Jimmy, my mate, on Friday at around 11am. We had a couple of cars out testing until 3pm, getting some data (Ron Denis styley) and making sure the drivers were at least familiar with the circuit.
We flushed out a dodgy gearbox (changed in the evening) and managed to choose tyres for the day. We have shaved Hankooks (2011 tyres) but were allowed to run Kumho 2012 championship tyres and generally they seems like the better around winter tyre.
Friday was cold, frikkin cold. Fog and most had come down by 1pm and all cars had to run front and rear lights like nighttime until end testing. Wind was howling and temps were round 4 degrees.
Qualifying was 4pm to 5.30. Each driver had to complete 3 laps minimum (only one full lap) so we sent out the fastest first to try to get best laptimes whist sun was up, and then we settled down to get all drivers qualified and sent out best driver again to run in some more quick laps.
Hardest part of the weekend was the 5 hours in the bar of the Breckland lodge with everybody talking bollox about the next day, but too much adrenaline!
Race Day
7.30 at track for a 9am to 9pm race. Sign on and briefings done the day before, mechanics up to 4am prepping cars so all we had to do was get first drivers name to race control for each car and get the car to the assembly area by 8.40am.
It is never that easy as chaos ensued in all the excitement but we got both cars there and ready for green flag lap and rolling start. Jimmy was managing ShimmyRacing team 2 (Pencukefarm Yurts) and me Team One with in theory the faster drivers with more experience. I'll talk from now on just about my race team one,
I had set up a strategy for the race. Driver order Maxx, Ken, Clive, Paul basically in order of experience. We had 720minutes (12 hours) but had to do 10 compulsory stops of 3 minutes so race time was 690 minutes. With two cars per team it seems to me there was a certainty that to win you would need to run all the 690 minutes on track and have the faster average lap times. Two cars meant there was less chance of lost time to mechanical breakdown unless you could not be back to the pits. Our cars could go about 90-100 minutes ith out refuel so we landed a 90 minute daytime stint and then review at dusk and start to use up the spare stops we had if they hadn't been used. We would try to use spare stops later under safety car and leave one to the last 20 minutes incase of any last minute issues.
I think the race was very interesting and hopefully next year there will be more cars but with the 13 teams entered and around 25 cars it was certainly not an empty grid and racing was close and exciting. (too close once or TWICE)
We were in the mark one mx5 class (9 team entries) and there was 3 car in the mx5 mark two class and two cars both mazdas.
The mark one race turned into Shimmy Racing v BSMotorsport. In the first half of the day it was neck and neck on the track although I'm pretty sure they had done one more pitstop. They had three very experienced drivers and we had one two experienced mx5 drivers, one lotus driver and one relatively new driver.
The first 6 hours went from mist and drizzle to sunshine and temps were ok. We held 2-4 overall behind just one mark one car (BS Motorsport). Our pace looked good and at worse we were half a lap behind, and sometimes we were neck and neck. At 7 hours at one point we were 0.38 second behind.
In the dusk, drizzle and dark Team One lost some more time on track as our average laptimes came down more than theirs effectively putting us within 3 minutes on track but also one pitstop behind.
thus we were effectively 5-6 minutes behind going into the last 2-3 hours. We had the benefit of a stop to call on if we needed it to repair or swaps cars where necessary whereas they were much more likely to have to stop 11 times with any on track issues. As it was BS Motorsport didn't have any issues.
It finished with us catching a bit back and finishing 4th overall and 2nd in class about 6minutes 50 seconds behind the mark one leader. Not bad after 12 hours, 690 minutes racing and 277 laps.
We picked up a second place in class, fourth overall. Clive set fastest mark one lap of the race, Maxx was just so consistent, Ken put in loads of time and so reliable, Paul as a newcomer was brilliant in the day time and was just consistently improving through the damp and wet and dark times.
Overall real fun, great team spirit. It is amazing how the drivers are so selfless, not caring about their own time on track, just wanting to win as a team. It made making decisions about who to put out when, so easy as there were no politics to play.
I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to race, less than £1000 per driver. Start saving now!
Thanks to ONeill for turning up to watch, I think he may want some of it, and I think it will suit his drivin style. Thanks to PinkPanther for words or encouragement.
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