TLM 350z Race Report Brands Hatch June

[MrLizard]

Brands Hatch

 

Back to our home circuit and this time we are hoping to improve on the 2nd place we secured in November.

 

It's quite a big event this weekend and there are American cars and European/US drivers everywhere!

 

We stayed in the Thistle with a nice 50% discount as they got our booking wrong, so after 5 minutes of working out how to hack the TV and setting the HDMI inputs to work on the TV channels we fell asleep watching a film. Being on track waking up the next day is always good! Especially when woken up by thundering v8's

 

Abbey arrived early in the morning as did the rest of the TLM crew although they had travelled from Coventry leaving at 4am!

As I am only the driver I was ushered to park about 20 miles away from where i needed to be but fortunately we managed to hitch a lift down to the paddock where we are greeted by a full team of people and the 350z

Even Colin managed to arrive before me I think..

 

The weather looked good and the paddock was filled with Ariel Atoms and big American V8's...

 

Since last Race we had introduced some stiffer rear springs to try and dial out a smidge of mid corner understeer we were seeing at Donington.

 

Qualifying:

I jumped in the car first as a nervous wreck but as soon as the pitlane opened a suitable dose of adrenilin removed the nerves and we were off. I was told to do one out lap and twice round and an in lap. Immediatley the car felt stiffer on the rear end, once there was a little heat in the tyres I could feel the car skipping around the corner inducing an unpredictable amount of oversteer each time the rear end bit, no time to change springs in qualifying meant that we would have to try and drive round the problem.

 

I did a few more laps and reported back that I felt the diff wasnt working as well in the last corner either just couldnt get on the power as early as the back felt like it wanted to slide rather than grip.

Mark jumped in the car and started to push on, he agreed with my opinion and said the car just isnt as nice to drive, with Mark's expertise in suspension he already had a good idea on how to fix the issue and to try and go somewhere inbetween the two setups we had.

 

 

 

Qualifying 10th, not where we are used to being although there is some fairly quick machines here, missed 9th by 1/1000th of a second and the 4 cars in front are all seperated by 1/10th of a second.

 

Pre Race:

 

Car back in the pits, lifted off the ground, all wheels off as we felt something may have been rubbing and the rear suspension taken out and replaced with springs midway between, Mark and Will from Abbey discussing the best setup for the race and deciding to adjust the low and high speed bump as well as springs.

 

 

Race:

 

10th on the grid and im starting surrounded by other cars with a full grid of 32 in attendance.

Lights go out and I floor it through the first two gears only to get blocked and have to come off the power ... still not a bad start and although losing a place into druids its gone fairly well, the next laps were all about trying to catch the front pack and not lose too much ground behind people.

 

I managed to make up a few positions but struggle getting past the lotus, from the pit board i can see that im slowing both of us by weaving to try and get past so decide to just sit behind him whilst we catch the people infront, at which point we did and he spins out, I manage to make a bit of an emergency move to miss him on the inside of Druids and then manage to pass the Seat Leon (that won last November) on the next lap.

 

The red supacopa spins and ends up on the outside of paddock (i didnt see the incident), the safety car comes out (bumblebee from transformers), this is the slowest safety car ive been behind, I should have chosen to come straight into the pits but didnt as i wasnt sure the team were ready for me and it was close to pit lane open - the team then told me to come in but on entry to the pit lane the safety car was going so slowly i decided to do one more lap than sit there BIG MISTAKE!

 

From looking at the timings when people came in if i had come in the same lap the board went out (considering the safety car did one lap) we would have jumped 4 places, if I had come in when I was supposed to we would have jumped maybe 1 place but lost no time, as it was I lost us a few places

 

I was also told at this point I had been given a 5 second penalty for exceeding the track limits which I thought was a little unfair given it was only 2 wheels but then as a racing driver nothing is allowed to be my fault.

The pitstop itself goes well and Mark jumps in, we are restricted to a minimum time of 1:50 in the pits which is more than is needed but it is still hard to measure as it starts on pit entry and ends when you cross the pit exit line, TLM Mark managed to get the timing almost bang on sending Abbey Mark out crossing the line at 1:50.6

 

Mark had quite a lot of work to do but was quite happy to do it by the looks of things , storming back through the field having to reovertake the people i had got passed due to my pitstop error, no hesitation though Mark managed some fantastic overtakes mostly through Surtee's and his aggresive driving style managed to get us back into 4th position (though 20 seconds behind the man infront and a lap down on the leader)

With the 5 second penalty we knew that Mark needed to make a 5 second gap to the guy in 5th a new shape Clio Cup car with a sequential box running in our 200bhp/per ton class (although we are at 180 atm).

 

 

Try as he might it was not quite to be, with the amount of cars on track the traffic was really restricting Mark from making the progress and the Clio just seemed to catch the same traffic on the start finish straight each lap. We ended up about 3.7 in front in the end but still a fantastic result with a few lessons learnt.

 

 

Abbey did a phenomenal job as always, their skill and knowledge on suspension and interpretting my inane babble into something that they can adjust and fix is fantastic, changing the rear suspension springs and essentially making a guestimate on setup because we had no chance to test inbetween qually and the race was great.

 

Fantastic day and we came away with a 3rd in Class trophy to add to the ever growing collection.

 

Special Thanks:

Abbey Motorsport www.abbeymotorsport.co.uk

Rev Marketing www.revmarketing.co.uk

 

The Abbey Family - Jon pulling me from the car one handed this time because my other arm got stuck!

TLM Crew for making the journey and being on form all day!

 

Considering the prices of these cars and how accessible this type of event is more people should come and join, the car is soo much fun to drive like this

[MrLizard]

 

Video of race, 25 mins in for the pitstop

[WhackyWill]

Well done boys..great write up and great pics. Thanks. :thumbs:

[GT4 Zed]

Nice race report Steve and well done!!

[Ebized]

Enjoyed the race again!

 

The Lotus spinning in front of you Steve at the hairpin was a bit of a brown trouser moment?

 

I now see what you mean about the safety car and pit entrance congestion - I'm sure I would have done the same thing in the heat of the moment

 

The pit stop though looked impressive - no chance of you staying in the car Steve, being hauled out by that bully

 

But some good consistent lapping going on, no missed gears and some opportunistic overtakes - no doubt if the safety car issue had not messed up the driver change over plans you would have had a podium position, but that said excellent result given the lightweight Seat 'specials' you were up against.

[MrLizard]

thanks Colin, really appreciated the support and you got some excellent picture too, roll on next race

[robzracing]

Great write-up Steve. Hopefully we'll be there with you next season!

[lmc]

Great write up