BRCA 1/8th Circuit - Round 5 Review
1/8th On-road racer Chris Heath brings us a report from the 5th round of the BRCA series. Seems like the weather was a significant factor this week as many of you will agree!
Saturday was a strange day, first we needed to finish the running in of the C6 engine that we had started on Wednesday at our local track Tibshelf. With the constant threat of rain all day (which did not come in the end) I found myself on the track virtually all day. I used up about 3.5 litre of fuel that day, which is a huge amount of track time. At about half way through Saturday the car was at its best and then seem to go backwards with the different set-ups we put on. It was nearing the end of the day and we decided to do one more run to check if the car could do 5 minutes, as we had been advise the C6 was thirsty on fuel. Justin put me down and I did a couple of warm up laps and I was going to come in on the next lap when someone decided to stand in the middle of the track. Of course I hit him at about 60mph and complete destroyed my car!! So Justin a fun filled evening of rebuilding my car and trying to find the damaged and none damaged items.
Practice
We had a dry practice in the morning, the engine was still running good and the car set-up that Justin had put on seem to be OK. The only problem was the car kept pulling to the left and I could not solve it by adjusting the trim. In the pits we noticed the front left wheel was cracked from the impact yesterday and we had over looked it so put it down to this.
Round 1
With a new set of tyres on, but still not knowing if the car will do five minutes the first round starts. Just to make it more fun for us all it decided to start spitting with rain which definitely took the edge of the race track. Unfortunately the car was still pulling to the left so there was a bigger problem with the car than we first thought. No time to correct it as I had to go for the run, the first minute was fine, but after that the engine just kept getting leaner and leaner. I finished the five minutes with the car hardly getting into second gear but thankfully it was still enough to get into the A final 8th
Round 2
It rain heavily, with no chance of improving the time, so did not run. But with the previous runners getting a dry run it moved me down to 9th in the A final.
Round 3
It rain heavily, with no chance of improving the time, so did not run.
Round 4
Still raining but decided to check a wet weather set-up for the final as it looked like it would be wet for this.
A Final
10 minutes before the final it decided to stop raining, so now it was a frantic race for all the finalist to change the cars ready for a damp final instead, also with the possibility of turning into a dry final during the 30 minutes. As we never used to run our car in bad weather, we do not carry a great selecting of damp tyres. But now we represent brands and if you do not run in the bad weather it hurts the points to much, so have been running this year. The tyres we ran where rubbish but the best we had so had to make do. I managed to keep the car on the track for 25 minutes and had worked my way up to 4th position, from 9th on the grid. Then my front belt gave out and I had to retire the car, finishing in 6th position.
I have got to say a massive well done to all the drivers from heat 5 that managed to make it into the A final to put on a great show. For sure we had the worst weather of the day and we all held our nerve to bring in fantastic results after all was considered.
