Nippon Challenge Mallory Results! TLM350z

[MrLizard]

Race Report

 

Mallory Park 2010

 

Qualifying

 

This was a weak point of last year. Which did in fact help race craft but wasn’t very indicative of the results. Last year at Mallory I qualified 18th and finished 10th.

 

Since last year I was fortunate enough to do quite well in a Nissan sponsored competition where I was given an R35 and a 370z to play with and had to basically hot lap my way further through the competition. I suspect this and a bit of Mallory practice helped as this time round we made 5th!

 

Going out onto the circuit the car felt good but the brake pads were brand new and the discs on their last legs, the team told me I had to do 3 laps to bed them in and return to the pits.

 

I was being followed by a very quick mx5 in the first session, I was braking a little early but he certainly wasn’t hanging about, I hope I didn’t

affect your qualifying.

 

Tried to find the pit lane on lap 3 and there was a service vehicle blocking the entrance. Tried to point at where I wanted to go and he put me through into the paddock!!! I knew we had only a short amount of time and then had the two RJN 370z’s trundling infront of me. So I dropped a cog and skirted round them whilst they were on their way to assembly, sorry! Also very nearly ran the guy over in the assembly area as he was trying to get me to line up and I kept coasting towards him in an attempt to make him believe i was in this session not the next!

 

Tyres checked, pads checked, team gave the ok and off we went. Found over 2 seconds from last year per lap which im very happy with and started an incredible 5th on the grid, with Vaughen starting 1st with an awesome time in the 52's!!

 

 

Race 1

 

Having watched the Nippon for a while as well as racing I knew that Adrian in the STi was quick and I knew that Andy Mclennan was not well known for trying to conserve petrol either.

 

 

Always seem to stop breathing when lining up on the grid. Anyway getting past that, lights went out and floored the throttle, nothing! clutch slip! Clutch pedal stayed jammed to the floor, lots of revs and no power... quick change into second, still same issue but the power started to feed back into the car and the clutch came out and off I went, aiming for the inside.

 

Adrian, Vaughen and Maxim had got a decent start and were off into the sunset, Andy started on the wrong side of the track really and I just managed to push him wide into turn one, meanwhile Ian Froggett had a brilliant start in the Scooby Clinic prepped STi and flew past me. The next few laps were spent trying to pursued him to give up the position which he didn’t seem too keen on doing.

 

Laptimes seemed to be fairly equal but with Ian probably going through the first corner slightly slower than me and coming out of the hairpin like a rocket where all i could do was put a show on for the crowd. Having decided where I wanted to try the overtake I lined up the pass on the previous corner coming sideways out of the long first corner, Ian obviously could see this coming and pushed me to within a cars breadth of the grass and I managed to seal it on the inside into the esses, I suspect pushing us both wildly offline in the process.

 

Shortly after this Ian had to drop back with some overboost issues which im told were probably due to the weather conditions.

 

 

Next in line was Adrian, who had been making some serious progress whilst I was battling with Ian. It looked like I was catching but only very slowly, In my head I knew, had there been a clear track the 10 or so minutes left probably wouldn’t have been enough time to catch and then pass. I hoped that the traffic may fall in my favour and it seemed to work both ways, one lap I would catch, the next he pulled away, I could see from my laptimes that I seemed to be hitting 55’s in traffic and suspected Adrian was having a similar problem. Still I gave it 100% all the way to the end when all of a sudden I seemed to have caught a few hundred yards up without any traffic between us. At the time I assumed Adrian had taken a corner badly but I was still catching him, coming out of the hairpin I was right behind him, Adrian had obviously got a problem and was defending as best he could but with no real power, fortunately I found a gap and passed him on the finish line to clinch third overall and second in class!

 

Race 2

 

Having finished the previous race 3rd, just! I started 3rd again in this one. Unfortunately I forgot to look at the grid layout so I only knew where people were from what happened in the first race. Maxim confirmed that unfortunately the incredibly orange RX7 would not be in the next race which meant an empty spot on the grid. I assumed that I would have issues with Andy chasing me down again (though I underestimated just quite how determined he would be!) and I knew that Adrian and Vaughen would be leaving me off the line.

What I wasn’t banking on was another Scooby following in Adrians wake off the grid and making me look like I was going backwards!

I had hoped to have 6 clean laps to catch Adrian before traffic with no one in between us, that wasn’t to be, I was yet again confronted by a very quick, well driven Scooby, though dark blue instead of white this time. I did manage to out brake this one again into the esses however there was some work to do to catch Adrian.

 

 

Managed to get quite close a couple of times but knowing by now where I wanted to make a move he kept that incredibly wide Scooby planted on the defensive into the esses and forced me around the outside. I struggled for grip under braking a couple of times into the hairpin and found that coming out of it twice I ended up getting blocked (though not on purpose) by MR2’s, the first time of which Adrian chose to show me how 4x4 works and decided that tarmac was for wimps... using the grass instead!!

 

Traffic caused me to lose some ground and i had to settle for 3rd overall again including almost going head on into an MR2 facing the wrong way, hopefully kept Adrian on his toes though , great racing and a fantastic day.

 

 

Looking forward to Snetterton.

 

Huge thanks to TLM and Abbey Motorsport for running the car. Abbey did an amazing job and there is no way I would have ended up with the laptimes i did without their support.

 

Thanks to all that turned up. Tony from Envy made an appearance, sorry I didnt get a chance to say good bye!

 

Video is on its way!

 

2nd in Class twice!

3rd overall twice!

 

http://www.teamlizardmotorsport.com

 

Facebook is http://www.facebook.com/tlmotorsport.com

 

Thanks to all the sponsors

 

Abbey Motorsport http://www.abbeymotorsport.co.uk

Zenzero http://www.zenzero.co.uk

**REMOVED**

UpRev http://www.uprev.com/

Motordyne http://www.motordyneengineering.com/

Opie Oils

Total Nissan

[R35LEE]

Proud of you mate Some great driving

[Ebized]

Great result and write-up Steve - dry conditions obviously a bonus but you and the car have certainly upped the game tremendously from last years exploratory races - good luck for the following races

[alessandro]

[nixy]

Great write up!

[rtbiscuit]

mate thats a sterling effort, and a promising start to the year

[GT4 Zed]

Excellent result Steve

 

TLMS will only grow from strenght to strenght

 

 

 

 

 

 

PS: I am surprised you don't find the need for brake duct cooling I am trying to get a kit from RJN

[sparky370z]

well done mate,

[MrLizard]

thanks guys, GT4 the brake ducts are good if your running for longer periods of times, we found with the heat paint etc that 20 minutes is ok, the ducts will slow the car down aerodynamically but they are a good bit of kit

 

we will be switching from AP discs to PF discs for snetterton hopefully so will need to monitor it then.

[MrLizard]

Videos now posted: http://www.350z-uk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=36178