SportMaxx - Croft 22/23 Aug '09

By John Thorne

Dunlop SportMaxx Race Report

First off, remember in the last report I mentioned that we had our Astra and Corsa sealed by the BARC for investigation of illegal LSD’s? Well as expected BARC inspected the cars and confirmed that we are using standard Vauxhalls differentials and confirmed our cars are 100% legal. The BARC scrutineer came along with a standard diff from a dealership, removed ours, compared them visually and against the part numbers and confirmed they are legal. We do not run illegal cars and we do not cheat, there are a couple of people in the paddock who need to reel their necks in a bit before accusing us again. Anyway, it needed to be said.

The penultimate round of the championship and its all coming down the wire, Abbie entered the weekend in equal first place with Simon Shaw in class A and with Ray Grimes back in the seat of the EJM prepared Clio we expected the weekend for class B to be a tough one for Abbie. In class A we were without the services of Stuart Clarke in one of the Astra VXR’s so we drafted in Tom Onslow-Cole into his seat for the weekend, Tom wasn’t able to score any points but we thought his experience in BTCC would be a useful asset as we continue to develop the cars for the final rounds and for next season.  Utilising Toms experience we were keen to work with him and John Allison to improve the Astras handling issues that we had at Castle Combe.

Weekend didn’t start very well, Abbie wasn’t able to attend the Friday test day so it meant that all the changes we implemented to sort some of the tyre wear issues we had at Castle Combe had to be run straight into qualifying, combined with the fact that she’d never raced at Croft before meant that we were effectively driving blind for practice, not good. We’d also made some aggressive changes to the handling of the Astra with suspension and geometry improvements but with only John available for testing (Tom could be there until Saturday) we were fully prepared to revert back to the previous set up if we didn’t see any improvement. Overall it wasn’t an ideal way to start a weekend.

What made it doubly annoying was the news (that we received in assembly) was that Abbie would only be scoring half points this weekend due to the fact that the invitation class SEAT had been re-classified to invitation only so it meant only 3 class B cars on the grid.

Race 1

With all three cars struggling with a variety of minor issues, lack of track time, set up, time in seat etc they all qualified relatively down the grid, John was in 6^th, Tom 7^th, Abbie was 3^rd but the racing was pretty entertaining. Abbie and the other class B cars were engaged in a race long fight with the Clio, BMW One Series and the Clio with Abbie tagging on the back of the first three, this went on for 7 laps then an incident between the front three let the door open for Abbie to pick up a win in the final laps – phew. Abbie did well but it was clear that she was suffering from sheer lack of seat time, she hadn’t driven the circuit, as a result qualified relatively poorly and needed time to get used to where it all went, we also suffered with mid corner grip which we needed to fix, it looked like the spring rate changes didn’t suit as we’d hoped so we reverted back to the old set up, not easy doing this without testing.

The Class A race was the usual frenetic affair, both John and Tom made progress but got stuck behind Corte for most of the race, lined up behind him in all the corners only for him to pull away down the straights, frustrating and eye opening at the same time. They finished 5^th and 6^th respectively.

Race 2

With Tom not scoring any points and with both the cars suffering from handling issues from set up changes we’d made we took the opportunity to try some different set ups on Toms car, they both set off pretty well and with John on the old set up he made good progress but Tom again got tangled with Corte which damaged his front wheel and through the geometry out and scrubbing the tyre on the bodywork so that slowed him down dramatically. Abbie got off to a better start starting from pole and despite never getting away from the other class B cars got another win and another fastest lap.

Race 3

Best race of the day for us, John got a good start, got past Corte early on and set about the Astra VXR of Churchill, he settled for third in the end which was a good result. Tom had another mare, we were trying more set up ideas but early in the race Corte clattered the tyre bail at the chicane throwing a tyre into Toms Astra smashing the bumper, putting a hole in the radiator and he pulled it in pooring coolant out of it.

Next race is Snetterton, final round, who knows what will happen.

John