Great write up Duncan, car is looking lovely as always. Pity about the issues, I am sure all will be good by Croft and Phil wil fly!!!

Good luck,
Lee.

 

A fab weekend up in Norfolk racing in Time Attack at Snetterton. We were ultra prepared for this round and with Phil Glew driving for me it was important to have a trouble free day to get some good set up time early on and blitz it in quali and the final.

The day was running exactly as I dreamed and no issues at all presented themselves... This gave us our first real opportunity to set the suspension, brake balance, diff control up for how Phil felt (and the stopwatch showed) was quickest.

The car never missed a beat all day, not one drop of oil, water but LOTS of drops of fuel used

The car kept getting quicker and quicker all morning in warmup with tweaks done to the suspension and damper set up running on Avon tyres for the first time.

We were asked to race in the bike versus car challenge around the track and we were over the moon to repeat my win against the bike there two years ago with a stunning 7 second margin this time around !! and this was only on cal 3

Qualifying came and we were bang on the pace with a 1.13.1 first hot lap just 8 thousands of a second quicker than gareth Lloyd. We knew he would try again and history has showed us that P1 doesn't always stay that way.... so we waited in the pitlane and went out late in the session and Phil banged in a 1.12.8 to take P1 and 50 points. Great session and really exciting.

Time for the final and we made a couple of tweaks to the set up hoping they would improve things and Phil took a 1.12.9 first flyer lap to take P1 slot. I called him back into the pits to wait, let things cool down and see what everyone else did. Scuffman in the lotus then put in a 1.12.1 and we knew that we had to turn it up. So it was the full 2 bar plus nitrous and out Phil went to try... unfortunately it wasn't to be though and we couldn't better the time. However fantastic weekend and we are over the moon with P1 quali and P2 in the final.

We are on the right tracks and competitive.

Thanks to sponsors and supporters: BC Racing, D2 Brakes, Hardrace, HKS Europe, Owen Developments, Triton Motorsport, Syvecs, Avon Tyres, ABW and Sunoco. Thanks for the support guys !

Also massive thanks to Tony Chambers, Rebecca Deller, Viv Gulliver and Daz Davies for their help, support and company for the weekend.

Last of thanks thanks to Phil Glew for showing me how fast the car I built is

 

Nice one Duncan.

 

Your engine build is still working superbly and sounding sweet Paul - It had almost everything yesterday, will try and push a little more from it for next time but it is walking a tightrope lol.

 

Well done Duncan the car is stunning, great result for the team.

 

Great job yesterday looked and went stunning.

 

Keep up the good work Duncan.

 

Well done Duncan.

 

Cheers guys - will have some in car footage soon from the final. Should be interesting

Photos to follow shortly

 

Looking at the timesheets and we were recorded as quickest just after the bridge in the braking zone at 154.2mph. I think the D2 brakes are working just great for Phil to have the confidence to do that. Anyone that has driven snetterton will know just how big your gonads have to be to do that and still make the corner

 

Great results and write up, look forward to seeing videos mate.

Any pictures of the engine set up? or you not keen on showing that?

 

Not keeping it a secret ... what do you want a pic of ?

 

Any vids of on the day Duncan?

 

Nothing in particular, just curious to see what a properly used/purposeful engine bay looks like and everybody likes to see engine pictures

 

If that's your thing then go to one of the time attack rounds and have a walk round the pit lane and in the garages there is a real art to the cars but really its all about the subarus.

 

Lots of hoses, 2 huge intercooler pipes, a bloody great big filter and a dirty alternator. That just about all I saw of it at Croft :P


RCM is a very pretty engine bay and luckily the prettiness is backup on track

 

That's quite difficult when I'm 3500miles away

 

pretty much sums it up Function over form in my engine bay I can't afford to replace things that are still working on the basis that they might be dirty and I wont paint stuff for the hell of it either. It either works or it doesn't IMO.

All of the original ancilliaries are still in use along with a lot of other original and unreplaced standard parts that have never broken such as inlet, risers, throttle body, alternator, power steering, gearbox, driveshafts, front and centre diff, suspension wishbones, subframes, hubs, diff carriers, fuel tank, propshaft, wheel bearings and I am sure lots of other things that I cant think of...

Anything that is replaced is replaced because it needs to because it is either dangerous, slowing the car down, breaks or makes life easier for me to repair or maintain/improve it. Even then it has to compete for the budget and make its case for being purchased. Sure, if I had an unlimited budget then a lot of time would be spent to bling stuff up, but every penny of the racing budget has to be fully justified when I am trying to compete at pro level with a budget less than a lot of the club challenge cars. You only have to wander down the pitlane or paddock to see this

I think we do amazingly well for what we spend ... it is about getting value for money rather than chequebook racing

 

Yeah will be some in car footage from the final shortly courtesy of Togethia Media

 

Pretty much covers what I was hoping to see. I wasn't sure if everything would be replaced or just things that are likely to fail and necessary to keep the car running perfectly

 

Oh i tell a lie, i replaced a wheel nearing after my crash at oulton park in 2008.

there are prettier engine bays and rcms gobstoppers are the best of the best but beauty is in function a lot of the time for me. I do almost all the work myself aside from the full engine build and have a team of one or two friends that helps at TA events

 

Get a link to vids when they up mate. What would say would be best material to make a ta splitter and how far back would you go?

 

People make them out of ply, ally, signwriting board or carbon.. Mine is carbon but initial development ones were out of signwriting laminate. Main thing is for it to be able to take the weight of you standing on it (at least)