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)

Practice Session - Sat Jun 19, 2010

Opinion is divided: there are those who say that just putting a number on a car makes stuff fall off. Those of a more optimistic nature say that it is putting a car on a race track that makes stuff fall off. On Saturday I attended a practice session at Killarney. I had a whole bunch of new things I wanted to try. Some in my head and some in the car:

· New brake pads (EBC Yellow Stuff)

· New timing software (see http://www.racechrono.com)

· Stiffer front ARB setting

· A new coolant additive (Redline WaterWetter)

· Some different lines

· Some different gear selections

Luckily for me, my practice sessions were severely curtailed by a spark leak.

After no more than 5 laps in the first session I noticed that a red light had come on on the dash. My first reaction was panic, brought on by a worry that oil pressure had disappeared, but the panic passed when I realised that the oil pressure was healthy and that the offending light was the alternator light. My initial thought was that the fan belt had jumped off, and that I now also had no water pump, so I pulled off the circuit at the first safe place to do so, at turn 1, and parked the car behind an earthen bank out of harm’s way. The fan belt was in place, so there was nothing to do but wait for the session to finish.

I was able to drive back to the pits, with Blossom coughing and spluttering at low revs. After a wait for the engine to cool down I set about investigating. Blossom’s wiring is a bit of rat’s nest, and I had changed the rev counter (and then changed it back...it’s a long story), so in keeping with the idea that “a new problem is most likely caused by the last thing you changed” I investigated the dash wiring, looking for a short or a loose wire. Disconnecting the rev counter and re-connecting it made no difference. Disconnecting the multi-plug from the back of the alternator and re-connecting made no difference. The power wire at the starter motor that had burnt through some months ago when it wandered up against the exhaust manifold was hale and hearty. The ECU was securely plugged in. Much head scratching ensued.

Lying on my back, half in and half out of the cockpit, tracing the wires from the multi-plug through the rat’s nest it occurred to me that these were all tiny, spindly little wires, and that there ought to be a big-ass cable to take juice from the alternator back to the battery. So, find a cable from the battery, trace it back towards the alternator and find a big-ass cable, broken off and dangling there...very close to a big-ass terminal on the alternator. That’ll be it then! Like most problems, it was really obvious once it had been solved.

Now my mom knows very little about cars. Her usual diagnosis whenever there’s a car problem is “It’s probably a loose wire.” It’s scary how often she’s right. And this time she would once again have been on the money. Five minutes after finding the offending loose wire, the spark leak was cured, the alternator light was out and Blossom was running sweet as a nut.

I’d been out at 1 o’clock for the first session, and at 3:35 I was getting prepared for the 4 o’clock session when the circuit announcer proclaimed that all sessions would now be 15 minutes earlier than scheduled, which I took to mean that the next session for Sports and GT cars would now begin at 3:45. Leisure went out the window, and I suited up, strapped in and headed out to find myself lapping amongst the Classic Car guys. It wasn’t a big deal, as my lap times are probably in the middle of theirs, so I was neither dangerous to them, nor endangered by them. And as a bonus, for once I got to experience what it’s like to be the guy reaping the benefits of blue flags being waved.

As for the new stuff:

· The EBC Yellow Stuff pads seem to be comparable to the previous (and much more expensive) Mintex 1144’s.

· The RaceChrono software worked well. It didn’t work with the GPS receiver in my pocket, but for the second session I taped the receiver to the transmission tunnel and it worked a treat.

· The stiffer (front) ARB, as expected, makes Blossom slightly reluctant to turn in, but seems to be better for corner exit. A bit of trail braking seems to help with getting the car to turn in, and is probably a good thing, extending the braking zone into the first phase of the corner.

· The WaterWetter lived up to its claim – coolant temperature is down slightly.

· I didn’t have enough time to try one of the two line changes that I had planned, but the other, which is more of an adjustment than a change, seemed to make for a smoother and faster route around the corner concerned.

· The jury is out on the use of second gear in turns 2 and 5. At this stage I think I’ll continue to use third gear unless things are crowded and slow, which may make the lower gear beneficial.

My lap times were slightly disappointing, being about 2 seconds off my best, but the car was at least (and at last) running nicely. The good news was that the lap times were all heading in the right direction, with each lap slightly quicker than the preceding lap. The good luck in having my practice session cut short was that I would much rather have this sort of problem on a practice day and next weekend I’ll be racing!

May 8 - Race Meeting

In motorsport, like in other sports, you need to be ready at all times. Ready to trot out a plausible, blame-free excuse for poor performance. If your excuse can make you look good while you screw it up, so much the better. Here’s mine: I was too fast. Sadly, I wasn’t too fast on race day, but at the track day a week previously. With my 6 year old son on board (who loved it) and my wife (who loathed it) I had been quicker than Porsches and Ferraris, so I was even more than usually full of myself, and even more than usually full of it.

Qualifying on Saturday was very slippery on an ice-cold track, which slowed a lot of people down. Although I was not happy with my lap times in qualifying, my grid position was acceptable as I managed to qualify ahead of one of the guys who always finishes ahead of me. One of the things that I was unhappy with was the fact that during qualifying I got caught behind cars that I know I can beat, but was not able to get past them. What I should have done was to slow right down for half a lap to get some clear space, but it’s easier to be clever after the fact, even if I was making a very basic error at the time.

The first race started with drama in turn 1, when Godfrey Lancellas (Lola T212) decided to spin around and take a look at the guys behind him. From where I was, there was an almighty cloud of blue smoke and the sight of race cars ducking for safety. Nobody anything suffered worse than heart palpitations though, and we were racing. I say “we were racing”, although looking at my video footage, what I was doing was driving Miss Daisy. Brake points were all over the place, and so was I. Almost. The one place that I was not all over was the apex. I had a pretty dull race watching Martin Coward (Birkin S3) get smaller in front of me while Stephen David (Marcos Mantara) got smaller in my mirrors.

There was a brief moment of excitement when Steve Humble (Mallock) chucked parts of his car skyward shortly after lapping me. Evidently a clip holding some of the bodywork in place quit. Two hundred metres away I saw pieces of orange race car leaping for the heavens.

For the second heat I was determined to make amends for my lacklustre performance. In turn 2 Jean Fourie hit an oil patch and spun, and I made it past him. Johan Engelbrecht (Porsche GT3) was being cautious around the spilled oil, and I went past him too just before the kink. Just after turn 3 I went past Andre Brink (Porsche Carrera RS) who was also being cautious. I’d gained three places in as many corners, now all I had to do was run like I’d stolen something. But, with all the oil on the track, the red flags were out. The air inside my crash helmet went blue with cursing.

Wally Dolinschek later claimed that he had only lost about 500ml of oil from his car's power steering. He managed to spread that 500ml very far, thin and wide then!

On the re-start, Stephen David ignored the instruction to stay in line for the first corner and put his car between mine and the car in front of me, and there were no opportunities to make places in turn 2. I found myself behind Arno Lambert (Mercedes SLK) and Jean Fourie (CAV GT40) and the three of us had a good dice for the remainder of the race, with Jean blocking Arno and Arno blocking me. More than once I snuck past Arno, only to have him re-take the position. And more than once Arno made his car about eleventy-seven feet wide in the approach to turn 5, preventing me from getting by him there. On the last lap Jean slowed and Arno and I passed him.

The cement dust laid down to pick up the spilled oil meant that my video footage was mostly grey after a few laps, and many people were experimenting with new lines in turns 2 and 5 (where the cement dust was worst). As a result, lap times for most people were slower in the second race than they had been in the first. I was gutted to lose my excellent start, disappointed to have a poor re-start, but pleased that I had spent almost the entire race dicing with Arno. Before the next race meeting I will experiment with some small changes to my car’s setup, and some large changes to my mental approach!

Videos:

Heat 1 start:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPYdpr8Gbjk

Heat 2 start:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iui0c4Na2uQ

Heat 2 re-start:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRuXIlYfHY4

May 1 - Track Day

My wife and I had a deal. I would spend a Saturday morning doing her stuff, and she would spend a Saturday morning doing mine. That meant that I would do a morning of yoga. Less OMG and more om. In return, She Who Must Be Obeyed would do a morning's track day with me. Most observers felt that I had the better end of the deal. The yoga session was mostly bearable - I cycle regularly, so I am fairly fit. I wasn't so fond of the home made physics and physiology ("Now, I want you all to close your eyes to conserve energy...energy leaves the body through the eyes!") but the rest of the morning was OK.

May 1 was payback time. I drove Blossom to Killarney and SWMBO and my 6 year old son followed in her car. WPMC track days are run to simple rules - drivers split themselves into fast, medium and slow groups. The different groups aren't really split by speed at all, but by rules of engagement. In the slow group, no overtaking from the moment the car in front's brake lights go on. In the medium group, outbraking is allowed, but cars must drive single file through corners. In the fast group race rules apply.

My son loves doing track time, despite the fact he is too small to see over the scuttle. He insisted on going out first. We joined the slow group. Behind us was my friend Alan in his near new Elise SC. I was to show Alan my lines around the track. All went well until a Ferrari came roaring past us. Naturally I had to hare off after it, and fairly quickly caught up, at which point the Ferrari let us past and off we went, my ego fairly out of control.

SWMBO did not much enjoy her track outing. I started out slowly and built up speed over two laps or so. We went past a number of cars, and towards the end of the session caught up with a Porsche GT3. As we were in the slow group, I was not allowed to outbrake the Porker, and the Porker would not pull over to let us past. At every corner exit Stuttgart's finest would power away from us, and at the end of every straight, we'd be right back with them.

"How was it?" somebody asked her.

"Dreadful. Ghastly. Just fucking awful!" was her reply.

"But why?"

"It's loud, windy, too close to the ground, there's no side protection, the seat's uncomfortable and James drives like a maniac. He goes too close to the edge of the track and too close to the car in front!"

So, a fun day out for me and my son, less so for SWMBO. But there was worse to come. A morning of monstering Porsches and Ferraris left me complacent and over-confident for the next race meeting...

Feb 27, 2010 Race Meeting

The first heat of the February 27 race meeting got off to a confused start. We had been told that we would head out on a sighting lap, form up on the grid and then do a formation lap behind a pace vehicle, following which we would be racing. Heading out on that first lap, Blossom was misfiring badly, and would not rev above 5,000 rpm. Ever the optimist, I hoped that it was just fouled plugs after idling for several minutes in the holding paddock. That was the first thing I got wrong.

The second thing that I got wrong was that instead of forming up on the start grid, while I was slowing, looking for my grid position, pow! we were racing. Between being taken by surprise and the misfire, it didn’t take long for those gridded behind me to overtake me and within a lap or so I found myself at the back of the field. The old motoring saw has it that in order to finish first, first you must finish. True enough, and with Blossom running very slowly, I had lots of time to consider this piece of wisdom and realise that it also applies to finishing last, and indeed anywhere else. Knowing that my car was not going to die, I did what I could and figured that by finishing the race I would at least gain an advantage over those who failed to finish. At least two cars failed to finish the heat and as a bonus, I went past Gavin Gorman when he got a bit overenthusiastic in turn 1.

After the race a quick investigation revealed the source of the problem when one of the plug leads fell apart in my hands. With the culprit identified, the next thing was to source a new set of plug leads. With logistical help from Craig Harper I managed to track down a new set of leads and installed them with time to spare ahead of the second heat. One of the oddities of motor racing, and I am not the first person to comment on this, is that the same people who will happily squeeze you off the line, if not the track are the very same people who will move heaven and earth to help a stricken competitor get back on track. Mostly so that they can squeeze you off the track again, I suspect.

While we were forming up in the pre-race paddock for the second heat, I spotted a marshal walking around carrying a chalk board which read “1 lap”. I approached him and asked: “Is that one lap and then we’re racing, or one lap and then form up on the grid for a pace lap?”

“It’s one lap and then form up on the grid.” He informed me.

“Great,” I said, “’cause there was some confusion in the first heat, please ensure that the pole sitter knows.”

And with that we went off on our sighting lap. Once again I slowed as we approached the grid area and once again Lucy whipped the football away as Charlie Brown was about to kick it, and I was slowing down while the front of the field tore off. After the race Gavin, who was gridded behind me in his Birkin 7 said that he’d seen me slowing and spotted the leaders leaving and was sitting behind me yelling “Go James, go James, go James, go!” into his crash helmet.

When I realised the race was under way I accelerated as best I could. The misfire was dramatically better, but Blossom was still not running 100%. At least I was able to reel Martin Coward (Birkin 7) in, inch by inch. When I could hear his car’s exhaust note on the exit of Malmesbury I knew that I was getting closer, and from then it was just a question of time. I tried a look up the inside into Cape Town corner but Martin was having none of that, so I tucked back in behind him at the exit of the corner. As we cleared the kink on the main straight I was aware of the front runners coming up to lap us, and a great deal of smoke and dust at the end of the straight (which I would later learn was Hennie Trollip dealing with a stuck throttle in his Lotus 7 replica and using the run off area to avoid disaster).

I stayed off the racing line to let the duelling Nick Adcock (Tiga) and Steve “Stumble” Humble (Mallock) past just before turn 1, which was still clouded in dust. In the excitement, Martin ran wide and lost grip on the marbles, allowing me to nip past him. Arnold Lambert, in his Mercedes SLK 200 was several seconds up the road and with nobody to dice with was soft pedalling for the last few laps, and although I was closing the gap, by the time the checkered flag fell, I was still a long, long way behind him, but reasonably pleased with the outcome.

Drive of the day must go to my mate Craig Harper, who pedalled his Harper Type 5 (see http://www.harpersportscars.com)to a lap time in the 1:25’s. For a road legal car, on semi-slick tyres that is a remarkable achievement although, on a purely personal level, slightly depressing as I don’t know what I am going to need to do to get close to that.

The video on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4O8x2_dIkQ ) shows me chasing Martin Coward for a lap, followed by his spin. Look out for the expanding dust cloud at the end of the main straight, caused by Hennie’s moment of unwanted excitement.

Feb 2010 8&9 - Historic Race Meeting

I had a weekend of mixed fortunes with the hysterics. On Saturday it was suggested to me that, because there were some fearsome fast cars entered in the pre-84 category where I was entered, that I should move to the pre-66. Timekeepers don’t care if you move your entry, so that was easy. I checked with the head honcho at Killarney and he was happy. “Do I need to speak to anybody else?” I asked.

“No.” Quoth he.

An hour before my race is due to start I go and check the grid, which has the word “Revised” across the top. And I had been revised out of it. By this time any other race that I could have run in has been and gone. It turns out that the head of the pre-66 crowd didn’t want any car which did not have a HTP competing. All of which is fine, but it would have been nice if I had been asked to check with him, and even nicer if somebody could have let me know. I was furious.

On Sunday I ran with the pre-84 where I was originally entered, and got lapped by a Porsche 956 as well as the crazy fast rotary powered 7’s that usually lap me in club events. In that race I was gridded at the back, because I didn’t have a result from Saturday’s race, which was fine. I snuck past a GT40 on the second corner and then had an almighty dice with a similar spec car to mine. It took me three attempts to put him away properly. On all three I got past him going into the last corner, and on two of the three he managed to get past me on the following straight. After that I was reeling in another road legal seven who subsequently had an oops and went off, and then Craig’s car had a lose and I left him too. So, job done! I got past everybody that I could possibly have expected to catch. My wife and son came to watch that race, and I had a big lump in my throat when I saw them in the stands on my warm up lap.

I also went out with the pre-74 cars, again gridded last. I went out with the pre-74’s mostly so that I could share the track with a Ferrari P312PB, which is basically an early 70’s Ferrari F1 car with a 2 seater body, owned and driven by Lord Irvine Laidlaw. On the first lap I got past an MGB GT, then got past a Lola (which was a bit poorly) and had another dice with the same 7 that had kept me so busy in the pre 84. The Ferrari was something else. I saw the blue flags and the headlights in my mirrors at about the same time and gave lots of space up the back straight. “Fucking hell!” was what I said when it came past. It was that loud that there was a sensation of pressure on my eardrum closest as it went by. Some laps later it came past again, this time on the start/finish straight, but this time I was ready for the noise. He came past me, shortly before turn 1 and then I realised that he didn’t make much ground on me through the corner. Cool, I thought, I’ll keep him in the video, but I couldn’t believe I was keeping up through the corner. When I found myself keeping up on the short straight to turn 2 I realised what had happened. The Ferrari had lapped me just after the start/finish line, so he had taken the checkered, but I was still racing. At his cool down speeds, he was not a lot slower than my racing speed. So I can say that while racing, I was given a point-by from a Ferrari. It also meant that although I did not finish last, I was the last person out there racing. Again, job done, I got past all the cars that I could have hoped to. In fact, this was an even better one, because somebody had dumped a whole slick of oil on the racing line going into turn 2, so I used a weird line through there all race, and managed to overtake the other road legal 7 by driving around the outside of him, which was very, very satisfying indeed.

Links to youtube vids...

Pre 84 Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EnfuMG7n9U starting from the back of the grid, with a big dice with a car similar to mine
Pre 84 Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbPgbcM6TEg overtaking 2 competitors who have spun out, and being monstered by a pair of 911’s

Pre 74 Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUu4-ES9QVE this clip ends with me being lapped by a fearsome F1-based Ferrari sports racer
Pre 74 Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk-bTJc5uZ8 me “racing” the Ferrari – his race has ended, mine still has a lap to go!

A result, and its results

Like most people who decide to go racing I rather fancied my steering and pedalling abilities. Let's face it, nobody takes up anything, especially not anything that places large demands on one's time and wallet, unless they think that they can do a reasonable job of it. So it came as quite a shock to discover that I was absolutely rubbish. Car control was OK, and ability to drive a consistent line was not a problem, but pace was seriously lacking.

In part that was because I was trying with a wrong car. Driving a car with 70kW of power on street tyres while my competitors had in excess of 100kW and semi-slick tyres was part of the problem. But even after I had made the change to semi-slick tyres and a 100kW Toyota engine, I was still well off the pace. When it rained I was competitive, and in July of 2008 I picked up a 3rd in class, which was fantastically satisfying, as it confirmed what I had though (and had hoped all along), that I could after all pedal and steer a race car.

In the dry I suffered though . Part of the suffering was mechanical. It took a few race meetings to get the cooling system sorted out so that it cooled the engine, rather than burping coolant all over my legs. There were some electrical niggles that took a while to get sorted out too. The car would pull strongly until 6,000 rpm and then cough and splutter just when it should have been taking a deep breath and hurling me towards the horizon.

With the basics sorted out I had the cams re-ground to give more torque at higher revs. At the same time I had the cylinder head gas-flowed and the valves re-seated. The new cams also meant that I had to finally ditch my pushrod-engine mentality and rev the nuts off the car. The rev limiter is set at 8,200 rpm and I resolved to change up when I bounced off the rev limiter. My home (and so far only) circuit is a 4th and 3rd gear track with Blossom's current setup.

For the first race of my first club race meeting with the new enhanced cylinder head, for once, I was not the last road legal car on the grid at the start. There were three cars behnind me. The guy who was ahead of me was a lot faster, and tore off away from me at the start, never to be seen again. The car behind me was, similarly, a good few seconds a lap slower than me, so after the first few corners he was out of my mirrors.

Then, after five laps, a Lotus 23 in the class ahead of me got touched by a CAV Ford GT40 and ended up parked on the exit of turn 2, which meant that the flag was red-flagged for a re-start. One lap into the re-start, once again, lying a very comfortable second in my class, Blossom stopped dead. No lights, no sparks, no engine cranking no nothing. It was heart breaking. From a comfortable second place to a DNF. I got a tow back to the pits were the cause of the problem was found.

A live wire that runs through the starter solenoid had come into contact with the exhaust pipe, the insulation had burnt through and the core had come into contact with the exhaust pipe where it had contacted and earthed and developed a mahoosive spark leak which had allowed all the sparks to leak out. I connected it all back together again and cable-tied it out of harms way and we were ready for heat 2.

Then came the good news (for me): there had been so much confusion with the re-started race that the positions as at the re-start would stand. I had my second place back. All I had to do was repeat the procedure for the afternoon heat and I would have a second place for the day.

On the sighting lap the car was misfiring and not revving beyond 6,000 rpm. Suddenly instead of being sure of a second in class for the heat I was doing mental arithmetic based on my 12 second advantage over the third placed guy from heat 1, who overtook me into turn 2 on the first lap. I figured that as long as I kept him in sight, all would be well.

Better than that though, I was able to stay right with him and even reclaim second in class after a few laps. But things were still not going all my way, because another road legal Lotus 7 got past me at the end of the back straight until I managed to reclaim second under braking. It was hard work, and not the easy race I had been expecting, but it really was fun.

Then, going into turn one, the car felt as vague and woolly as a politician under question. I was convinced that control arm was broken and was getting ready to park the car when everything came back and I realised there was something slippy on the track surface. Something very slippy indeed. A Chevron race car, running at the pointy end of the field had suffered a problem with its scavenger pump, and was depositing oil all over the racing line.

I tippy-toed around the circuit, watching out for lairy slides whenever I had to cross the River Multigrade and managed to keep the pointy end forwards. Exiting turn 5 I saw the car behind me pirouetting gracefully out of contention, just before the red flags came out. Again.

Second in class! In the dry.

After the race I pitted, loaded up my gear and headed home. After a quick shower I bundled my wife and son into a more sensible car and returned for prizegiving. The exact composition of the trophy that I received is dubious at best. My wife described at as "plastic tat", but my five year old son was more charitable. "No Mom it's gold-ish!".

He's right you know.

That was three weeks ago, at the time of writing. The cause of the misfire was simplicity itself - a loose plug lead which took minutes to fix (and prevent a recurrence).

I have also had to improve the anchoring of the driver's seat following a scrutineer's note, and replace the jubilee clamped oil cooler hoses with crimped fittings. At the same time I elected to upgrade to stainless steel braided hoses.

As a result of that job I had hours of fun tracking down an alternator warning light that wouldn't go out, even though the battery was being charged by the alternator. That turned out to be the oil warning light, because when the engine swap from Kent to 4AGE took place, the feeds to the unmarked red lights on the dash got swapped around. Once I learnt that the problem was really the oil light, a quick check revealed that the cable to the sensor had been knocked off. I've written "OIL" and "ALT" on the dash lights with a felt tip pen, so at least now I know what I am looking at.

Feeling all electrically capable, I also tracked down why one of the indicator lights had not been working, and discovered some wiring that had rubbed against a rear wheel. That's been tidied up and the wires have been tucked away from the wheel to prevent a recurrence.

The rear exhaust hanger had broken, so I have replaced it.

As I write, the car is still on jack stands, awaiting a final clean of its underneath. Partly to remove the oil that got spilt during the oil hose replacement exercise and partly to remove the remains of the oil that got picked up during the last race.

The next race meeting is set for April 4 (6 days away) and I have put in an order for light but persistent showers.