Kumho BMW - Snetterton 9th August 2008

By John Thorne

The good news is that we managed to go a whole weekend without someone trying to remodel the car, the bad news was that we continued with our long line of crap luck.
Interesting weekend really, we hit a new low in qualifying, not even a lap out and round Corum and wham, back steps out we plume a trail of thick white smoke and I pull it into the pits, turns out the gearbox plug had popped out thus depositing the contents of the gear box all over the track (which had to be closed for clean up, sorry guys) and all over the exhaust resulting in a spectacular red arrows style display.

Being unable to put in three laps in qualifying I was out of the weekend completely, however as I’d raced at Snetterton this year already (in the Dunlop SportMaxx) I was allowed out at the back of the grid – I was getting bored of that already.



All the previous day in testing had been fine with us a little off the pace with low 1.19’s and car felt a little light in the faster corners (we’re still running standard anti roll bars so thats the next thing to look at we think) but overall it felt good and despite being a little off the pace we were hopeful of a good race. Starting at the back of the grid ruined that of course for race one but at least its fun starting from back there.


Race 1

With 27 cars in front of you there’s not an awful lot you can do in real life but when the lights went out we got a good start and followed the pack through turn one. We managed to pick off the Class D and some Class B cars early on and then settled onto the rear of Colins Class A E36 M3. And thats where we stayed.


Try as I might I just couldn’t find a way past him, it was as if he was driving with his doors open. I even tried round the outside of most of the turns but just couldn’t do it so we ended up 13th, not bad from a 28th on the grid but if I’d gotten past Colin I was sure of a top ten which would’ve been even better.


Race 2

Up to this point in time the weather had been dry but an hour before race 2 the heavens opened – my prayers had been answered. The car was still overweight compared to the E36’s and a wet race would level up the playing field nicely (it helps that I like wet races of course). Well it couldn’t have gotten much wetter, it literally bucketed down and it was touch and go being called off, it wasn’t so lights went out and I set off from 13th on the grid.


Being mid-pack in a wet start is not normally a nice place to be and this race was no exception, pretty much from the end of the straight visibility was down to zero and you could only see the car in front when he brakes – great fun. What made it even harder (like it needed to be) was that despite 10 layers of Rain X anti fog the windscreen misted up so much I couldn’t see the end of the bonnet and I was effectively blind. Why I didn’t stop I’ve no idea really but I was able to gauge braking points by looking at the side of the circuit, knew when to turn in at the bomb-hole when the left hand tyres went over the side rumble strip and we were overtaking people pretty quickly so I figured I’d stay out until I fell off.


I managed to get a few people at the end of the main straight by simply pulling alongside on the inside and braking just after they did and turning in at the same time, it wasn’t very scientific but did require a fair bit of guts and it paid off, I managed to get up to 4th place.  By this point the car was decidedly unstable under braking into corners, due to the fact that we’re the only car running 18” wheels we had no spare tyres as Kumho was closed for holidays and the only stock was at a dealer in Blackpool. One of the tyres at Donington was damaged so we ran that in testing only to have it sheer down the side wall from the heat so we were forced to run with one set of fronts both with dramatically uneven wear. This meant that we were effectively running on slicks on the front in the pouring rain – hilarious. Actually it was, I was really enjoying it, had a great battle with Richard Mallinson with us overtaking him and the end of the straights under braking but him getting us back through Corum as I struggled to control understeer through the corner. After a 5 lap batter Richard emerged the better and we came home with a 6th place, our second best place, again in the wet.

This year was always about development with the E46 M3 and despite the run of bad luck we’ve had we’re pretty pleased with how things are moving. We’ve been working on some adjustable anti-roll bars for the car with KW and these should be ready in time for Oulton Park so we can slacken off some of the suspension settings we’re using to compensate for the excess roll. We’ve also got a load more weight to come off but time might prevent that happening before the next event.

Speaking of which, next race is Oulton Park on August 30th/31st.

John