Away At The Races - Part II

Race Day and Drive Home

Craig had a Cunning Plan. “Mate, instead of racing with the Sports Cars guys, why don’t we move our entries across to the LUK Coastal Challenge? Instead of trundling around toward the back of the field, our lap times will have us in the thick of it!” It seems unbelievable to me now that I needed persuading, but I did. The organisers were happy for me to shift my entry across, so I did and then went out to do timed quali.

Timed quali was a bit frantic, as instead of having a leisurely start to the day I had to suit up and head out in double quick time. There was a fair amount of traffic, which meant that I struggled to find a clear lap and I ended up recording a time in the 1:19’s. I had a self-imposed target of 1:18’s, based on what people had done with similar cars, so 1:19 was slightly disappointing but not too awful. I was gridded in 20^th place for the first heat, in a field of about 35 cars.

The first heat was called, I leapt into Blossom, turned the key and found no co-operation from the starter motor. Craig helped identify the errant electrical connection, and we had life. These things always happen when there’s time pressure, as if the excitement of an imminent race was not enough.

The first lap or so were frantic and, mindful of the fact that I had to drive further than usual to get home, I surrendered a place or two in the first lap until everything settled down. First order of business was fending off Barry Kapelus in a Ford Kent powered Mini. Once I had some space on him, I set about catching Ian Thomson in an Opel Rekord. That took me a lap or two; Ian clearly knows his way around Aldo Scribante because when I thought that I would outbrake him into the hairpin at the end of the straight he was having none of that, and stayed off the brakes long enough to leave me with nowhere to go.

By getting good drive out of the final turn, I got past Ian on the main straight and then headed off after Herman Fourie (in a Toyota powered Lotus 7 replica) and Anton Ehlers in a very pretty, bright yellow Escort Mk I. There was a brief moment when I thought that I was going to find a way past both of them going into turn 1, but then Herman moved across and I had to come off the power and wait a bit longer, eventually overtaking Herman after I got better drive off the last corner. And a lap later I managed to narrowly outrun Anton, overtaking him between the last corner and the chequered and beating him by 25 thousandths of a second. At the time I hoped that he had not placed his transponder at his front axle, because mine was on my rollbar, and the difference would have been enough to change the result – by my reckoning my transponder was about a metre ahead of Anton’s when we crossed the line.

The second heat saw me starting where I finished the first, in 11^th place. Another slightly timid start saw me chasing and passing Steven Murphy’s red Alfa Giulia. After that there was nobody close enough for me to chase after, but I had my mirrors full, first of Steven’s car, and later of Johan van der Westhuizen’s equally red Ford Interceptor. When we caught up with the backmarkers my usual relaxed and patient overtaking gave way to the desire to place as many obstacles between me and the chasing pack as I could, so I fairly carved through the back of the field, passing three cars in the last two corners. I gained another place when Patrick Hanly went off on the last lap.

Before the second heat, I saw that there was petrol around the flange where the fuel pipe returns fuel to the fuel tank. Between that and the fact that I had enjoyed a fantastic two heats, I did not want to push my luck and do the one hour race. I packed everything up and headed back home for a shower, and then returned to watch the end of the one hour race.

For the drive back to the circuit I borrowed my mother in law’s VW Polo. Now, this is a car that I genuinely like, but after two days in Blossom a VW Polo feels like driving a bouncy castle. When I got back to Aldo Scribante, the first good thing that I noticed was that Craig was not at his pit. That meant that he was still racing. Phew!

Better yet, Craig was out there punching way above his weight. The announcer had him in fourth place, which was slightly optimistic. Craig finished in fifth, ahead of some much “faster” machinery and also won the index of performance, which is a measure of consistency.

Lying in bed on Saturday night I pondered the fuel leak. As the fuel pipes from the tank had been re-welded recently, and the welds looked excellent and deep, I decided that the welds were not at fault, but that the clamp on the fuel hose which meets the pipe for fuel return must not be 100% tight. That would explain the seep of fuel which appeared to run down the pipe and onto the flange. With that sorted (apparently) I slept.

At first light I was up and at the supposedly offending hose clamp. As soon as screwdriver met hose clamp there was a muted click as what had been a tiny crack became a very large crack, just above the weld. And I was about to depart for Cape Town. Swearing didn’t fix the problem. And even my fierce, laser-beam-eyed staring at the pipe didn’t fix it. So I did what anybody would do in the situation – I broke it good and proper.

Then I channelled the spirit of McGyver. First things first, I broke out a stick of chewing gum. While I was chewing, I blocked off the fuel return flexible hose so that the fuel returned into the fuel overflow on the filler neck. Once that was done, I took the chewing gum and used that to block the small hole on top of the flange. Minty! And good to go. Chewing gum is supposed to be good to fix fuel leaks. It may be that the brand I was using was not suitable, but my experience is that chewing gum does not fix fuel leaks. I hear good things about soap though...

As I was hitting the road some distance towards Cape Town, i.e., ahead of the rest of the convoy, I trickled along the freeway, slow as a slug, to let Craig and Ant catch up with me. The weather was mild, but the wind was absolutely howling so when Craig came past me, and I upped my speed, I soon began to regret my decision to drive in beanie and flying goggles.

I further reviewed my decision when, some two hundred metres ahead of me, a large piece of orange detached itself from Craig’s car. I watched in awe and expletives as the bonnet flew high up into the air, before the wind blew it into a field. We stopped to play ‘hunt the bonnet’, and Craig dabbed at the wound on his chin. The bonnet had smacked his crash helmet back with such force that the skin on his chin had split and was bleeding.

With the bonnet retrieved (and me wearing my crash helmet) we set off once more. Driving along the toll section near Storms River, Blossom coughed and then picked up the revs. Hmmmm. The same thing happened again once or twice, and usually just as I was overtaking something. Each time I noticed that the temperature gauge dropped. Clearly, all the sparks were falling out, however briefly.

Twice we ground to a halt, and then re-started. “Now listen mate,” Craig admonished, “if you could just break it and leave it broken I might have a chance of fixing it for you!”

After a number of exciting moments, with coughs and splutters seemingly every time I pulled out to overtake something, Blossom decided that enough was in fact enough, stopped and stayed stopped. Within seconds Craig had identified the offending section of wiring, found the problem and fixed it and we were off again.

In Knysna we stopped for brekkie, where we met up with some of the other Capetonians who were making their way homewards, and Francis Cusens, organiser of the Knysna Hillclimb. After breakfast at the Knysna Quays, we all trooped off to the site of the hillclimb start to salivate at the prospect of some more motorsport adventuring.

The rest of the homeward drive was a breeze. Craig didn’t throw any more pieces of his car at me, and no more sparks fell out of my car. Neither of us ran out of fuel. With the sun setting, Craig and I stopped to refuel at the N1 One Stop opposite where our adventure had begun three days and around 1,500km previously.

Cups of coffee restored some warmth, before a couple of last minute photographs in the car park, and off to our respective homes. I parked Blossom, unpacked, showered and went to bed. After 12 hours on the road – including stops – I could still hear the noise of wind rushing past my crash helmet. And then I fell asleep.

Video footage of heat 1

Video footage of heat 2

(Picture: John Grosse)

Away At The Races - Part I

Aug 12 & 13: Drive to PE and Practice

The night before a race meeting I do not sleep well. There’s too much excitement and fizzing in my blood for sleep to really happen. I usually have everything ready for the next day, so that all I need to do when the alarm goes off is to bounce out of bed and go. With the mouthwatering prospect of a long distance drive followed by two days at the race track and a drive back, sleep was never a real proposition. And 750km in winter, in a car with no heater, windscreen, roof, windows or carpets really is a long drive. No wonder I was looking forward to it so much. With my alarm set for 5:30, I woke up at 5:00.

Three vehicles were to drive up in convoy: me in Blossom, Craig Harper in his Harper Type 5 and Anthony Cocks (with his son and his son’s girlfriend) in a Land Rover Discovery. Obviously Ant was driving with us so that Craig or I could tow the Landy if it needed help. We met up at the Winelands One Stop on the N1 at 6.30.

“Confession time!” I owned up. “I couldn’t sleep this morning; I’ve been awake since 5:00.”

“Amateur!” Declared Craig, “I was up at 4:30 and doing crossword puzzles until it was time to go.”

As we drove into Paarl the mild early spring morning gave way to coolness. I’d been expecting a chilly start, and mindful of the notion that there is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing, I was wearing my flameproof long johns underneath my jeans for warmth, I had a t-shirt, a long-sleeve t-shirt, a thick fleecy sweatshirt, a scarf, a wind and water proof jacket with its own zipped-in fleecy jacket, gloves and my full-face crash hat to keep my head warm.

Driving through the Huguenot tunnel I could hear Craig making the most of the echo by winding his car’s engine up to the red line. “How very childish!”, I thought, slowing down and then grinning like a maniac as I did exactly the same thing. Although our cars are very different, they are powered by very similar Toyota 20-valve motors, with the rev limit set well north of 8,000 rpm and they sound wonderful at high revs. When we emerged from the tunnel, first light was gaining the upper hand over darkness, and the temperature was noticeably colder than it had been on the other side of the tunnel.

Driving through Worcester, Ant pulled up alongside me and Craig, wound down his window, leaned out and said “Lads, apparently it’s two degrees!”

“I know!”, I yelled back, “I can feel both of them!”

Over breakfast at Rooiberg, Ant commented on how cold it had been. “Did you boys notice there was frost on the ground?”

“Notice it?” asked Craig, “Anthony, you guys are mere observers. We on the other hand are active participants in the cold!”

After breakfast the sun had come up and we headed out in a much milder morning, only to stop after a few kilometres when I saw Blossom’s alternator light blinking. An inspection of all the alternator connections showed no loose wires, so on we went. On the outskirts of Sedgefield I saw a gathering of traffic cops, and I had no doubt that they would stop us, which they did. “My” cop asked to see my driver’s licence, checked that the car’s licence disc was in date and then went across to where her colleague was grilling Craig. Craig’s interview was a bit stickier than mine as his car’s disc was out of date, and his car is registered in Botswana, just to keep things interesting. But Craig is a charming fellow and soon had the Law seeing things his way.

“I can’t believe it!”, Said my traffic cop, referring to Blossom, “This one’s registered too!”

The cops were intrigued by our cars, and the notion that any sane person (well, how were they to know?) would drive such cars all the way from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. Craig received an unasked for design critique of his car: “You can take the whole car...keep it...just leave me the wheels!”

Neither cop really believed that Craig and I had been behaving on our trip (although we had) and waved us off with a charming warning: “Drive slowly gentlemen...we can’t cats you, but we jus’ suit you!” This last was accompanied by mimicking a pump action shotgun. It’s exchanges like this that really cement my respect for the ladies and gentlemen of the law.

Lunch at Knysna took a little longer than it should have, when Blossom refused to start. Craig diagnosed that there was a spark leak in the power supply to the fuel pumps, and we rigged up an emergency electrical feed to continue the journey. That would have been the cause of the flickering alternator light, as the pumps’ power supply shorted out.

In the late afternoon Craig disappeared from my mirrors, so I slowed to let him catch up. And then I stopped to wait for him. And then I called him. He had run out of fuel, so I turned round and stopped to refill his car from my jerry can. The rest of our journey was uneventful. Craig and Ant drove on to camp at Aldo Scribante circuit, and I made my way to my brother in law’s house on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth, where I would be based for the next two days.

After spending most of the day wedged tight in a narrow bucket seat with almost zero padding (there is a very small piece of 5mm thick foam rubber behind the driver’s head) I felt as though I had been wrestling a grumpy bear. After a beer, a shower and supper and yes, thank you another beer would be lovely, I got an early night’s sleep.

Before heading out to Aldo Scribante I replaced the emergency power feed to the fuel pumps with a more permanent solution. By the time I arrived at the race track. it would not be accurate to say that I had some feelings of trepidation. It would be accurate to say that I had many feelings of trepidation. I checked Blossom’s oil level, got changed into my race gear and headed out into a personal sense of utter confusion.

I have driven Killarney race track, my home track, many times. I’ve ridden it on a motorcycle. Hell, I’ve even ridden in on a bicycle. Other than that I’ve done a track day at Wakefield Park in Australia and that’s it. So I’d had no experience in learning a new race track. And Aldo Scribante is a tricky little bugger. For a start the surface is very grippy, so you can brake much later than my brain told me was possible. So you come to a corner, scrub off more speed than you need to and then accelerate into the corner. And that is when you discover that a lot of the corners tighten up partway through and that you are now going faster than you ought to be. On top of that the circuit goes through dips so that the topography hides the track from you.

For the first few laps I felt like little old ladies on bicycles would be going past me. Everything else certainly was. Gradually things began to flow, I began to enjoy myself, and I began to enjoy, no, make that love the track. It’s like the love child of a roller coaster and a fire cracker.

The grippy surface means that braking is late and dramatic. At the end of the straight, when you hit the brakes you must make sure that your eyes are clenched half closed in the manner of Clint Eastwood squinting at a bad guy. If you fail to do this there is an awful mess inside your crash helmet as deceleration sucks your eyeballs out of their sockets and they bounce on the inside of your visor. The esses are fast and furious and there is more of that teasing going on, because if you carry full speed through the first ess, you will not be able to make the second ess.

Then there is a short straight and the first dip, with a sweeping right hander on the crown as you exit. Get that right and you are whizzing along to a hairpin bend and then dropping into the second dip. There is a left hander at the bottom of the dip which your balls know can be taken flat, but your brain insists that you lift for. Then there is a long sweeping left hander before the sharp bend onto the straight.

And because the track is so abrasive, which is what makes it so grippy on the line, off the line there are more abandoned marbles than you will find in a looney bin, so the transition from grippy to slippy is fast.

By early afternoon I was able to stay in just about in touch with Hennie Trollip (Lotus Seven replica) who is a seasoned campaigner at Aldo Scribante, so I declared myself happy and toddled off back to my lodgings. The exhaust support had snapped, so I made a plan to stop at an exhaust shop on the way home and get that fixed.

Climbing a short hill on the N2, driving in the right hand lane, Blossom decided that she did not want to go any further. As soon as I felt the engine die I pulled off the road as best I could. There was too much traffic for me to be able to get to the left hand side of the road, so I coasted up close to the Armco on the right and ground to a halt.

That was when my wife called. And wanted to know why I sounded tense, distracted and uncommunicative. Oddly enough, the worry of impending flattening by goods lorry always makes me react that way!

There was a repeat of the fuel pump spark leaking. I could tell because when I tugged on the wire, it came out, with sparks still leaking out of it. Another get-me-home fix was made, and in less than 10 minutes after I stopped, I was under way again. This time when I made a permanent fix, something I was becoming rather good at, I made darn’ sure that the propshaft and the power lead were never going to renew their acquaintance, and weight of cable ties be damned!

July 31 Race Report – Much Ado About Nothing

Two weeks ago I treated Blossom to new boots, replacing Dunlop Direzzas with Bridgestone RE55’s. I gave them a test run on a practice day and declared myself happy with them after running low 1:29’s first time out. (My best ever lap time at Killarney is a 1:27.5 or thereabouts.) The rest of the practice session I spent trying to film Ant Cocks in his maiden outing with his new Harper Type 5. I decided that the tyres were right, they felt right, and all was well with the world, as I fully expected that come race day I’d be slightly quicker with the sense of occasion that a race day brings.

I could not have been more wrong. In timed quali I went out and managed a high 1:29, despite feeling like I was going well. But all was not lost. Well, not yet anyway. I had Paul Schwartz (CAV GT40) gridded alongside me and Hennie Trollip (Lotus 7 replica) ahead of me, so I knew what I wanted to achieve in the first heat. For as long as I’ve been racing, I’ve been chasing Hennie.

After quali, I put some croissants in “the oven” to heat them up. “The oven” being under the bonnet, on top of the exhaust manifold. As I did so I noticed that there was a bolt-shaped hole on the manifold and that one of the nuts on a stud was about halfway to the end of the stud, which I was pretty sure was not 100% as it should be. After brekkie, and once things had cooled down a little, I replaced the missing bolt and tightened everything up. There was evidence of some blowing, and I was hopeful that I had been losing some ponies as a result.

Heat 1 started with a great deal of busy-ness as three of the Class A cars fell off the racetrack and then scrambled back on. Paul got a good start, and Hennie and I were scrapping away behind him for a lap until Paul overcooked it in Turn 2 and allowed me and Hennie through, with Craig Harper (Harper Type 5) behind us.

For as long as I could, I held Hennie back, swapping position with him once or twice, but when he got past me into Turn 5 I knew he was likely to get away for the simple reason that he always manages better drive out of Turn 5 than I do. After that, Craig found a way past and I was left in no man’s land for the rest of the race.

Craig had been ticked off for an oil leak in parc ferme after the end of heat 1. At least some of his oil leak was from the dipstick tube. Blossom has been leaking oil too, and despite nipping up the sump bolts, replacing the tappet cover and tappet cover bolt gaskets, the leak has remained, so I took the opportunity to learn from Craig and replace the O-ring on Blossom’s dipstick tube too. (As it happens it’s a job that’s about as complicated as putting one’s socks on, so I was happy to break my “no fixing in the pits” rule.)

Heat 2 was even worse. The field was spread out at the start, and as a result, I could not rely on bunching to help me to get a good start. I had benefitted from a reversed grid for class D, but the cars behind me all came through in quick succession, leaving me lapping in splendid isolation. I drove as hard as I could, but not only did I not make any impression on those ahead of me, worse yet, my lap times were down. In the slower corners the car was very understeery, and it felt like I was waiting and waiting for the front to turn in so that I could get back on the power.

Power does not seem to be an issue as I am still able to buzz the rev limiter on the short straights, I just need to find a quicker way around the slow corners. As I am running the new tyres on the same pressures as I was using for the previous set, it looks like I need to experiment with tyre pressures to get the right set up for these tyres. On the plus side, the O-ring replacement has finally cured the oil seepage.

Video can be seen here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAf3RLH5xZ0

July 10 2010 - Singing in the Rain

My first ever race in the rain was pretty early in the adventure. I’d done a handful of races in the dry, and they had been very frustrating. Back then, Blossom understeered as though she had a phobia of corner apexes and the Ford Kent engine that she was running was way down on power compared to the Toyota 4AGE engines that everybody else was running in their Sevens. When the Ford engine lunched itself, I bit the bullet and did an engine swap, which involved being out of action for about 6 months. My first wet race meeting was also the first race meeting with the Toyota 20 valve engine, and my first race meeting on slicks. It was also the first race meeting where I didn’t finish last. Unsurprisingly, I’ve enjoyed racing in the wet ever since.

Much as I enjoy racing in the wet, the drive to and from the circuit is much less fun in the wet. The forecast was for periods of rain interspersed with showers and the occasional downpour over the course of the day. Five minutes before I was due to leave home the first shower arrived. I arrived at the race track, reasonably dry and mostly warm, found a pit and set up camp.

With the enormous amounts of standing water, timed quali was abandoned but there was a ‘sighting session’ in its place. Without venturing from my pit, I had a rough idea of what the track would be like: wet! Craig went out in his Harper Type 5, and I relied on his reconnaissance, and kept my race kit dry. Craig’s report indicated that there were small patches of race track which could be found if you looked carefully between the rivers, meanders, oxbow lakes and other elements of high school geography.

The first heat revealed a very truncated grid, with only 16 cars starting. And with more than half of them being Porsches, it looked like a Stuttgart benefit. There are usually a fair number of Sevens in Sports and GT Cars, but on Saturday I was the only one out there. The sighting lap for the first heat also revealed that Craig had significantly over-stated the amount of race track that was discernible.

Godfrey Lancellas (Lola 212) had elected to start at the back of the grid to avoid being flattened by the Porsche blitzkrieg, Andre Brink (Porsche 993 RS) was also reluctant to take his rightful place on the grid and Craig took a while putting on his make up (or something), which meant that I started with three cars behind me. Going into turn 1 I could see nothing but the tail lights of the Porsche ahead of me, and I backed right off because if there had been an off in turn 1, the first I would have known would have been when I joined it.

After half a lap Craig dived past my starboard bow on the entrance to turn 3 and then, mixing metaphors furiously, proceeded to perform a graceful pirouette with a couple of toe loops, a half volley and a WTF as he exited into the scenery, stage left. Godfrey roared past as I slowed slightly to check that Craig didn’t come to any harm.

The track was wetter than I’ve ever seen it. Fifty metres before turn 5 there was a river running across the track. In the dry, I brake just past the 50 metre board. In the wet I was starting braking at the 150 metre board, then coming off the brakes to let the car skip and skim across the river, and back onto the brakes before the turn. The two kinks, one after turn 5 and after turn 2, are usually fairly uneventful. In the wet, they both became rather more exciting than I am used to.

Francis Carruthers evidently didn’t enjoy driving in the rain, and parked his Juno S2000 at the exit to turn 1, where he could enjoy a close up view of the rest of us threading our way between the large puddle at the corner apex and the even larger puddle at the corner exit.

Most of the rest of the race was simply a case of keeping the pointy end of the car facing forwards. Andre was reeling me in slowly, but with a lap to go he spun coming out of turn 5 and that was the end of his challenge. Craig was back on the road and managed to pass me with most of a lap to go.

For the second heat, unbelievably, there was even more water on the track, and even more falling out of the sky. I’d left my race gloves on top of Blossom’s cylinder head so they were nice and dry and toasty warm when I put them on. Long before we were on the circuit they were soaked through. I was gridded 13. I'm not superstitious, superstition is unlucky, but if you're ever at the back pits at Killarney, between pit 12 and pit 14 you will find, courtesy of me and some black insulation tape, pit 131, a reminder of a previous race meeting.

On the sighting lap I watched with a mix of disbelief and terror as the car in front of me swerved crazily from side to side, as though the driver was trying to warm the tyres. I’m pretty sceptical of this technique in the dry, but in the wet, applied with gusto, I was expecting the car to go skating off into the shrubs.

For me, the second race was largely a replay of the first. Craig went shooting off pretty smartly, giving he and I a scary moment as he chose to overtake going through the Great Lake that had formed on the kink after turn 2. And that was the last I saw of Craig. Shaun MacKay (Porsche GT3) had been gridded behind me for the start came past, but I salvaged my ego by overtaking Garth Livingstone (Porsche GT3) and pulled out a small lead over the course of the race.

Looking back, I may have been driving gentler than necessary. I didn’t feel that there was anybody ahead of me that I could catch in either heat, so I concentrated on staying on the black stuff and ahead of whoever was behind me in both heats. But, my sole aim in racing is to have fun, so I can claim “job done!”, and any race meeting that finishes with my car car-shaped is a good race meeting.

Expect the Unexpected!

The evening before June 26 race meeting I was chatting with my son, aged 6. Ever since I made the mistake of getting myself promoted from class E into class D he’s been somewhat disappointed at the lack of “piston cups” coming into our home. I think he understands how class-based racing works, but he misses the (plastic) silverware. But he has solved everything for me. “I know Dad!” He exclaimed, in the manner of Baldrick about to unveil a sure-fire, dead cert Cunning Plan: “When you’re racing tomorrow, do what they don’t expect you to do! Isn’t that a great idea?” I promised to give it my best shot.

Timed quali was disappointing. I found the track quite slippery at first; after a foggy early morning the track was cold with patches of dew and – as I discovered in a very exciting way – the kerbs were particularly slippery. Coming out of turn 5 a little faster than usual, the car ran wide, put two wheels on the kerb and I found myself dealing with a fair sized tank slapper, destroying what had until then felt like a fairly tidy lap and equally tidy underwear. My best lap was a 1:30.2. Good enough to at least have all of class E behind me, but behind the next car by 0.8 seconds. I put the slightly poor lap times down to a lack of grip and resolved to make amends when the racing started.

Waiting in the pre-race paddock before the first heat I thought that Blossom had a bit of a stutter when revving up from low revs, but it seemed to disappear once the car was warmed up. When heat 1 got under way in earnest, after turn 1, I was behind Jean Fourie (GT40). I chased for a lap and then dived past under braking into turn 5. It was a very satisfying move, but not a lasting one, because Jean’s car has twice as many cylinders, more than three times the engine capacity and about a hectare more tyre rubber than my car, and he re-claimed the position en route to turn 1. In turn 2 I once again dived inside under braking and held the position until the back straight, where Jean once again drove away from me, and this time stayed away.

Towards the end of the heat, Hennie Trollip (Lotus 7 replica) reeled me in and proceeded to drive away from me. By the time the checkered flag fell, Paul Schwartz’s CAV GT40 was getting worryingly close. I was concerned to see Blossom’s water temperature reading less than normal on the cool down lap, and there was some ominous coughing and spluttering as I pulled into parc ferme, and reluctance to run smoothly at low revs.

Back at the pits everything looked normal. No clouds of steam, coolant level normal, fan belt in place and everything looking healthy. The alternator was still connected (at the previous week’s practice a disconnected alternator caused uneven running), water temperature appeared normal and I could not see anything untoward. The car seemed to be running normally. Feeling slightly uneasy I went off to get some lunch and think over what was wrong with the car. None the wiser, I decided to get back to the car and run it to check that it started easily, ran smoothly and reached and held normal operating temperature.

Very soon I head a knocking noise, which was being caused by the alternator doing a shimmy. The bracket which supports the alternator against the engine block had come away from the block. Of the three bolts which should support it, there was only sign of one, and it was not a good sign: a sheared bolt, flush with the block.

With a great deal of good natured help from Louis de Jager, chairman of the WPMC Sports and GT section, I fitted a bolt to hold the bracket in place. That little task necessitated removing the fan belt (very easy) and replacing it (not at all easy). With time very much against me, I re-fitted Blossom’s nose cone, topped up her tank, emptied mine and leapt into my race suit. In the panic to not miss the race I did not get my video camera in place. I roared off to the pre-race paddock, found my spot on the grid, or something very close to it, and did my best to calm down before the start of the race.

At the start, I made up a position or two, and managed to get ahead of Hennie Trollip (Lotus 7 replica), Andre Brink (Porsche 993 RS) and Jean Fourie (CAV GT40). Andre managed to get past me before the end of the first lap, with Jean close behind. The rest of the race was a mighty tussle between me and Jean. Every lap I would close the gap to Jean’s car to inches in turn 5 and turn 1. Twice I tried to drive around the outside of Jean’s car going through turn 2, and once I very nearly made it stick before Jean managed to get a nose ahead and close the door just before the kink between turns 2 and 3. I’m deeply disappointed that I did not get video footage from the race; although it would have been mostly 7 laps of the back of a GT40 getting alternately small and large.

The really good part of the second heat was the confirmation that the wobbly alternator had indeed been the cause of the slight lack of power. Lap times were better, even allowing for the fact that I was in a race-long dice, engine temperature was back where I expect it to be and the coughing and spluttering had disappeared.

“Hot snot, we’re back in business!”

Quali: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1PnTGjWg1k

Heat 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJVtIPl2kK4

(Photo credit Jason Weeks of the Cape Town Photographic Society, http://www.ctps.co.za)