ZEN Performance

What a month!

Paul worked his ***** off fine tuning the car for Castle Combe and it was truly flying, until the unfortunate incident with the rod through the block

The car was stripped down, checked and cleaned the following week, with help from Sam @ TSL, Michael Latimer, Andy T, Fred Walton, Roy Kunz @ Pro-Valeting and of course Tim @ ZEN. The short motor was built up by the end of the week and then we escaped to Scooby Shootout for some R & R. This time last week the bonnet, bumper and engine bay were painted. All the engine bay wiring, hoses and oil lines were fabricated last week and the the long engine was finally put in to the car on Friday night and ran for the first time at 2am Saturday morning. This weekend was a herculean effort from a huge team of people - those already mentioned above, plus Pat Herborn, Moray, Steven Darley, David Wallis and John Felstead. Big thanks to all our supplier / sponsors too - Matt & Olly @ RCMS, Mark @ Lateral Performance, Andy @ AET Turbos Motorsport and Neil @ Eclipse Motor Bodies in particular for getting us all the parts we needed at short notice. Also thanks to our customers, some for showing patience and allowing us a couple of days grace on their jobs and others that graciously deferred their booked slots to a later date to give us a fighting chance of being ready.

The car was 'run in' at about 11pm on Saturday night (about 20 miles max on the engine, some running up to temperature and a couple of oil changes). Paul literally checked the map (no actual mapping done) and we packed up and went to bed at 2:30am! Up at 5:30 am and off to Silverstone.

We were simply glad to be at Silverstone because at the beginning of the week it didn't seem possible. We had three missions for the day:
1. Take the car home in one piece!
2. Score some points
3. Show everyone that we have a sh*t hot car

We succeeded on all counts. John drove his socks off and like he said - not bad at all for an old timer! John is an experienced track monkey but hasn't driven to win / for times for 10 years. We really cannot thank him enough for agreeing to drive late on Thursday night!

Sunday was a fabulous day for Time Attack. All of the cars looked and sounded awesome and the performances were blisteringly quick. The top 10 in the Pro-Class were all within 1 second of each other. Our 4th place was just 0.6 seconds off the top spot (amazing drive from Clive Seddon) and achingly close to the Lotus in 3rd.

Be rest assured, we are still in this to win it. I do believe the points table will make good reading when it gets updated.
But for now, once again THANKS to everyone mentioned here I think this is evidence that Subaru community can pull together and work as a fantastic team. We rock!

Liz @ ZEN
Paul, Tim and crew

Phil

You guys are amazing !

I did come over but you were all beaving away and decided that I would just get in the way

Fanatastic turn around and a great result

Keep it going

dynamix

iTrader: (3)

Well Done Paul, John and Liz - all three boxes ticked there

ps - Liz you didnt sound too tired on the phone a few mins ago

ZEN Performance

What my best telephone voice?

Thanks Duncan and Phil

what would scooby do

Some pics:

F1 CJE UK

iTrader: (8)

good work guys well done what lap time did you end up achieving and what circuit layout was it

dynamix

iTrader: (3)

It was on the national circuit.

I think JF pedalled a 1 min 2 or 3 - great time.

Neil..

iTrader: (35)

Great job as usual by Zen, and a great team effort by all the 22b crew, and of course by John (The pilot)




Excellent to see it in action, and I am just glad I could help in any way possible...

Neil...

Moley

iTrader: (9)

The facelifted front looks good

Andy T

Congrats to the Zen team and everybody else who had a hand in helping turn the car around, just glad I could help and give a hand.
I have not been so nervous watching a race since I was working in F1.

ZEN Performance

National Circuit
John's times: 1.02.110 and 2nd best time 1.02.292 (and other 1.02s in the qualifying)

Top 3:
Clive Seddon Evo 1.01.455
Olly Clark Impreza 1.01.670
Steve Guglielmi Lotus 1.01.759

F1 CJE UK

iTrader: (8)

good lap times then....

goes to show how dam fast them BTCC cars are tho with less than 1/2 the power

Fastest Laps - National
2006 - Gordon SHEDDEN - Honda Integra - Team Halfords - 1:00.859
2005 - Jason PLATO - Seat Toledo Cupra R - Seat Sport UK - 1:00.927

what makes the btcc car so much faster is it all down to £££ and the tyres they have

ZEN Performance

With a driver with the experience of Shedden or Plato, our car could do a comparable time to those above. With slicks as per touring cars, we could go faster again (slicks would give us approx. 2 seconds per lap over the Toyo R888s we run).

Touring cars are also lighter and of course, the works teams have huge budgets.

Liz

chunkb

Well done Paul,a great showing from your car,and after seeing you at Castle Combe you and your team have performed miracles,well done.

v5 man

iTrader: (4)

Fantastic work by Zen performance and all associated with them.
This was the 1st TA i`ve been to and I was very much looking to see all the big cars in action. I was desperately hoping the Zen car would be running and I wasn`t let down That car`s awesome and Im a big fan (even being an Evo owner)
It was a shame to See Steve Darley come past us with flames under his car as he was flying past us at Luffield, and I was looking to see how the Norris car would perform in the final round, then we saw it being carted away

F1 CJE UK

iTrader: (8)

give plato a call that i would love to see

well done again

Andy.F

Well done Liz and Paul, glad you got it all worked out in the end
I remember when I was once a young keen racer, now I get exhausted just reading about it

Andy

911

LOL at AndyF above.

After Shelsley Walsh know just what you mean.

Great to see the collaboration between everyone to the benefit of all.
Terrible circumstances for Steven D and brilliant for Terry..

Massive dedication and determination, still mighty impressed by John's driving and guts to jump in the car under those circumstances.

Still be nice to see it run at a twisty hillclimb!

Seems to me that Liz is a bit of a Star too holding the pack together.
Graham.

fatmanscooby

Well done Paul and Team. I was at Coombe and couldnt see you getting to Silverstone. A credit to you and the Team.

S,M,G

Good work guys, well done! Car looks very good.

Steve.

richie001

iTrader: (3)

to zen

P20SPD

iTrader: (1)

Well done Team Zen

stevebt

iTrader: (8)

well done to ZEN !!

gutted for your car steven !! hope there wasnt much damage with the fire ??

P20SPD

iTrader: (1)

Not as bad as yours, but enough.

AET-Ellie

Well done guys!!!

You didnt look too tired considering the sleep (or lack of )

Andy did see Paul yawning a few times

Cant wait for Knockhill - we'll all have to catch up on our sleep for that and TOTB6.

Ellie and Andy

wazo'swrx

iTrader: (1)

Well done to all that was involved in getting the car back on the road , Liz any sign of any grey hairs coming through yet due to the stressfull time you have had lately... . Now the cars up and running again you may now have a good night sleep . Let paul have the worry . Just a bit more tweaking and you will be back on top of the title race.....Once again from everybody..... and good luck for the next rounds...
see you soon WAZ

johnfelstead

What a great weekend.

The lead up to the 2nd Time Attack event saw a huge effort by Paul, Liz and the team at Zen Performance with some help from their friends and competitors alike to prepare the car, post its engine failure and fire just two weeks previously at Castle Combe. I was already planning to give them a helping hand for the Friday/Saturday to help finish the car off and then spend Sunday in the pits helping with running the car during the event, when I was asked to take my race kit down to drive the car.

I had already driven the car on track a couple of times previously, once during winter at Cadwell Park for a day where we spent some time working on the chassis setup to come up with a job list for Paul to tackle over the winter, and the 2nd time was for a few laps at Silverstone on the GP circuit. I was there working on the setup of one of our Can Am cars (not driving, I work as a racecar engineer) so it was a good opportunity for Paul to check the mapping prior to the first Time Attack round at Donington in a few days, plus see how the chassis changes had worked.

Paul had done a superb job on the car over the winter and completely transformed the handling; it was also giving a lot more power than at Cadwell. There was no on the limit driving at all, with Paul sat in the car with the laptop whilst I kept it flat-out down the straights or trying the throttle response mid corner. A few laps of that and it was back to my day job with Paul all checked out ready for Donington. As was seen Matt Allison did a stunning job and won the first round for the Team.

So come this weekend things were a lot more challenging for the Team, I arrived on Friday afternoon to find a great team of people getting stuck into Paul and Stevens cars, still no engine in Paul’s car although it was ready to be fitted, Stevens gearbox about half built but things were progressing well. We all worked until 2:30am then headed for home for the night. A few hours sleep for most of the team then it was back at it again. I had a bit of a lye-in as I was shattered from doing silly hours on my day job and needed some rest if I was going to drive.

All hands on deck again then and around midnight the car was ready for running the engine in, that consisted of a few laps around the estate and a couple of oil changes, then a couple of full throttle squirts to see if it felt OK under load. It sure did feel quick! Back to bed for a few hours after packing up ready for Silverstone and then before we knew it, it was time to be up and heading for the track.

I must admit I was a little apprehensive about the day, not from the driving point as I am happy about knowing my own limits and have pretty good feel for what an Impreza will do, but from being able to show the cars potential to the full and get a good result for all the effort the team had put in. The last time I pushed a car against the clock proper was in 1998, so I was curious how being more of an old git and driving for fun only since had slowed me down. The other thing is I didn’t know most of the track at all, I drove the GP circuit twice back in 1999/2000 in my then Sapphire Cossie and Westfield plus the handful of laps I did with Paul on the GP track a few weeks before, I hadn’t seen the National circuit apart from spending 3 days running some cars at the Grand Prix last year, where the National straight was our pit’s for the GP support races, I knew what it looked like at 5MPH, but at 170MPH I hadn’t a clue.

My main targets for the event was firstly keep the car on the black stuff, next was don’t do anything to damage the engine/box and next was try and score some points so the team could still have a chance at the championship. I wanted to mostly try and be competitive with Ollie Clark as the RCMS car is a great benchmark and Ollie is a cracking driver, plus they were lying 2nd after the first round so ideally we need to match them on points as much as possible after the 2nd round.

The format for the Pro runners was a 10 minute warm-up, then 20 mins practice, 20 mins top 10 qualifying and then the final shootout for the top 10.

The plan was to learn the circuit and have a look at the competition on the warm-up session to see how much I would need to improve during the day and at the same time put some miles on the engine so Paul could check the mapping was close enough to be safe. That plan went out the window after one lap when the session was red flagged due to an accident; thankfully everyone was OK which was the most important thing.

The next session we planned to do our warm-up session runs, but only managed 4 laps as the engine was getting too hot and needed some work from Paul to compensate for the new engine setup, it was very much a case of using Paul’s experience to analyse what was required rather than what you would normally do live with the engine running under load. It was a relief to see the timesheets after the session to see we were fairly close to the pace, with 5th fastest just 1.3s off quickest and 0.7s off Ollie Clark and Simon Norris. I knew they would go quicker but felt based on how hard I was trying we might stand a chance of a good result.

The next session was the important one; there was only one thing I wanted to do, get the car into the top 10 so we could score some points in the final. I was confident we could do that although the top ten were looking to be very close and we had decided to turn the boost down and alter the mapping to give the engine more safety whilst Paul got some data logs to read and analyse. As soon as I left the pits I knew we were in trouble, the engine wouldn’t pull and was developing a misfire, so I came straight back in. Paul connected up the laptop and had a look at the data logs and saw what the problem was, changed the mapping and loaded that up and it was time to give it another go. On my out lap the red lights came on so I had to slow down, at the entry to the National straight Simon Norris’s car was parked with lots of smoke coming from the engine bay and five or six competitors stopped to help. I pulled up alongside and checked everyone was OK and the fire was out then slowly headed back to the pits thinking that would be it, we won’t qualify for the final. We were very much up against it time wise as I hadn’t set a time yet and there was only a few minutes left to run which were being eaten up in the Red Flag period. My lap time was showing as 16 minutes 49 seconds, which wasn’t going to get me into the final.

I just headed to the end of the pit lane in front of the red flag closing the track and sat there hoping they would restart the session so I could have at least one go at setting a time. I overheard the marshal’s radio saying they would restart in 2 minutes, so that was a huge relief and gave me a bit of time to think about what I needed to do. As soon as the track re-opened I nailed it out of the pits and did a fast out lap as I didn’t know how long the session would stay green, I had to get one quick lap in. The engine was pulling strong so Paul had done a great job in the few minutes he had to sort the problem. That was a 1:02.9s which was 6th fastest. I wasn’t sure if that was good enough so just drove as hard as I could and had another 3 laps before the chequered flag came out, eventually managing a 1:02.5s which was good enough for 5th, just 0.4s off fastest and 0.2s off Ollie Clark. I haven’t tried that hard in a very long time.

It was now time for the shootout final, Paul had analysed the data logs again and was happy to up the boost a bit more. Ollie was first in the queue and I was 2nd, we agreed that I would give Ollie a gap on the out lap so he could concentrate on the driving and not be concerned about me behind. The same was agreed with the car behind me, it’s the most sensible thing to do when you are against the clock and not racing for road position.

Off shot Ollie like a scalded cat, do these cars look fast when accelerating away from you! I kept about a 10 second gap to Ollie but had an Evo all over my backside going into the start of the first lap, I just kept my line and then nailed it towards Woodcote and decided to ignore what was behind me for this lap, he wasn’t coming through.

After the first lap Ollie set a time of 1:02.064s and my time was 1:02.110s so we were separated by just 0.046s! We were lying 1st and 2nd after the first lap. The gap stayed this close between us for the first 10 minutes with Ollie lying 3rd and me 4th, Steve Guglielmi was 2nd and Clive Seddon had put in a stunning 2nd lap to be leading at the half way point.

I did a few slowish laps to give myself and the car a breather then had another go at it, but couldn’t improve my time, I was mainly losing out in Luffield where there was a lot of oil or coolant on the track and I was worried that was on the racing line going through Woodcote, so wasn’t prepared to keep it floored through there as it’s not a place to go off. Ollie was far braver than anyone in that last 10 minutes and managed to knock another 0.38s off his time, moving him up to 2nd. That was a seriously impressive piece of driving and a real joy to watch from my vantage point.

So at the end of the event I think we got a great result, especially with the circumstances leading up to the weekend, to be within 0.44s of Ollie was as much as I could hope for, and to come away from the event as joint leaders of the championship with RCMS is great for the teams chances at the championship. I think we proved this weekend just how competitive the car is, even with an old git behind the wheel.

Well done to all at Team Zen Performance, you worked damn hard and deserve to be joint leaders at the half way point of the year. Well done also to all the other competitors, it was a really close battle this time which bodes well for the rest of the year; Time Attack is a brilliant event to be a part of.

Best of luck with the repair Steven, I thought you were doing a superb job of it this time, you are learning track driving very quickly and will be very competitive given an event free run and some track time.

Fulham71

Great write up John ! Id love to see more drivers perspectives of things ! Well done to Zen for getting the car there in the first place & the other guys for assisting !

That RCMS car is a beast & a lovely looking one at that ! Is that Elise really as quick as it seems ! If it is my money could be spent modifying my elise rather than my Forester !

every1sgottablue1

I was at Silverstone. Great job Zen!! After seeing you at Coombe I didn't think you would be ready in time! Trust me that Elise is well quick....anyone know what it is running??

Fulham71

The elise has the Audi TT conversion done with some added extra bits inc roller bearing turbo Running approx 380bhp !

Time Attack Licenced Driver - Stephen Guglielmi