Competition Round-Up

Robin Hood Stages

Vanessa Steele and Ian Smallridge spend a day in the forest!

Having tried our hand at three tarmac events, I decided that I actually wanted to get the car a bit dirty (you can tell that it wasn't me who was going to have to clean/fix the red girl!) and have a go at the real stuff in the forest.

I was toying with the idea of the Malcolm Wilson, but a quick look at the maps soon put me off. There seemed to be a lot of map between Crawley and Cumbria. As we drive to events, it was just too far to travel. We decided on the Robin Hood Stages in Sherwood Forest as we had been informed that they were fairly straightforward for us novices, with no steep mountains to lose a rally car off.

We booked in overnight at a very nice B & B. It is always a good sign when you can't see the house from the main road – and the gravel drive met with approval. Ian reminded me however that it was NOT the place to start practising! Our service crew were Ian's cousins, Philip and Richard who had been roped in at the last minute and their car was bursting to overflowing.

The day of the rally dawned and the weather could only be described as grim. Oh well, at least we were going to be in the car. We made our way to the hotel where the rally was going to start and were greeted by a jolly chap who wanted to check out the opposition. He proceeded to be really encouraging and tell us the tale of his first event where he rolled his car several times, writing the thing off and injuring his co-driver in the process! With that thought ringing in our ears we headed off for coffee.

Our due time off was 11.19 and with nervous grins we made our way to SS1. It was at this point that I began to question what made me do this. Surely it wasn't for fun? My stomach was doing barrel rolls (hopefully the car wouldn't follow). We got to the star of SS1 and the next three minutes were certainly eventful! It was a short stage, just to get us into the swing of things – and the car did just that – from one way to the other. We had spectators diving for cover and I think that even a few of the trees decided to uproot and leg it of there.

By the end of the morning however we were starting to get used to the deep mud and holes big enough to lose a 106 in. The only minor problem was a lack of toilets anywhere and the knowledge that I had another hour and a half before service and any chance of finding any! Now I know why it's a blokes game.

At service the most useful tool ever invented, the hammer, came into good use. We had managed to lose half the inside of the wheel arch (sorry, I don't know the technical name, but it's plasticy) and we needed to detach it somehow.

The afternoon flew by and we only went wrong once on a road section, due to a minor misunderstanding. However we didn't incur any road penalties. The road section resembled the Grand Canyon, only this was the Grand Canyon filled with water. At one point we started to get quite worried as the water came over the bonnet. I think that I had the more difficulty negotiating this than any of the stages!

We managed to get caught on one of the longer stages by a 2.0 litre Escort, which promptly parked across a gateway it was supposed to go through! I suppose we should have got out of the car to help the unfortunate co-driver to push the car out of the way, but well ,it was raining wasn't it? We were quite happy to sit there, although it did cost us quite a bit of time. By then all we wanted to do was get to the end without breaking anything.

LM3000 Snetterton Test

Allan Rennie, in 1997 won the BRSCC Championship that he was contesting in his Ralt. Although he did contest a couple of Historic Formula 2 events in 1998, an expensive off put paid to any further outings that year and he planned to give up motor sport. However numerous conversations in their local pub with Chris Morford persuaded him that he really ought to do something in 1999. The result was the purchase of an LM3000 GT Sports Car.

For those who have never seen one, it is a fully enclosed race car 6 ft 4 inches wide and about 12 feet long, including the large rear wing. It has a rear mounted 3 litre V6 Cosworth engine mated to a 5 speed Hewland gearbox.

Once in the workshops at Loxwoods, at Alfold in surrey, it was apparent that there was quite a lot of work to do to get it into race trim.

The rear uprights had to be replaced as under MSA regs they are now time limited, due to breakages in the past. All the rose joints were replaced and longer drive shafts fitted to reduce the chance of breakage. The fuel and cooling system was re-plumbed and several metres of exhaust manifold lagged with heat insulating tape.

Once all this was done there was still the steering and suspension geometry to sort out.

Allan had spent some time taking measurement and ensuring that everything was square and parallel to allow them to make a start on the set up. Unfortunately he chose the day after the Awards Dinner Dance to do it! A somewhat jaded Chris arrived at the workshops at about 10 am and spent the next 6 hours helping to adjust Toe In, Camber and Castor angles at both ends of the car and making notes as to how many turns of this made how much difference to that, etc, etc.

All the settings were put in the middle of the recommended range. Allan was very concerned not to make the steering to heavy. The races in the BRSCC Open Sportscar Championship are 30 minutes plus one lap, and this car is almost two and a half time heavier than his previous Brabham. (He's is also rather vertically challenged).

Before leaving for the first test at Snetterton the car had to be put into its rather natty box trailer. This is a major undertaking in itself. First the rear wing has to come off, then the silencers. The front body then has to be removed before the car is winched in backwards with less than half an inch to spare each side. The front body is then replaced and everything tied down.

On arrival at Snetterton they took up residence in their pit garage and had a quick look at the track, which had a lot of standing water on it. A decision was made to run the car on wets initially. As the car was fired up the engine rumbled into life – and stopped!! A brand new fuel pump had failed. A replacement was fitted and the engine warmed up ready for the first session. No changes were made to the set up other than setting the front tyres at 17 psi and the rears at 18 psi.

Allan set off on his first ever drive in the car lapping in around 1 minute 18 seconds, putting in about 15 laps before returning to the garage. A change to slicks was the order of the day, another 5 gallons of fuel, a change to the tyre pressures of front near side 16, offside 17, rear near side 17 and offside 18 then he was off again. After a couple of laps to get some heat into the tyres, Allan stepped up the pace and was consistently lapping at around 1 minute 12 seconds to 1 minute 11 seconds. (The onboard data logging equipment showed a best time of 1 minute 10.3 seconds).

The car was about a second a lap slower than the times of the top cars in the series, but not bad for first time out.

It was now time to start playing with the set up. The first change was to stiffen the rear anti roll bar on the near side. As they went to adjust it they found that the rose joint had broken, so it was a quick sprint across the paddock to Martin Donnelly Racing to buy a replacement, which was duly fitted. Changes were also made to the front springs and to the front near side camber. Another set of laps followed but the overall times did not improve. However the car did pull 147 mph along the back straight.

BRSCC Race Meeting 20th March

Castle Combe

Following the reasonably successful test at Snetterton it was decided to enter the LM3000 in the first meeting of the championship at Castle Combe and use it as another test session.

14 cars were entered in the race, made up of 8 LM3000s, 5 Radicals and one Protosport Evo 3. Scrutineering was uneventful apart from a tear being found in Allan's first set of overalls. Qualifying started at 9.40 and was to last 25 minutes. Allan stayed out for the whole 25 minutes to get more experience of driving the car and to learn the circuit, which he had not driven before. The circuit proved to be surprisingly bumpy and the chicanes caught Allan out a couple of times. On his return some thought was given to changing the gear ratios on 2nd & 3rd as they were slightly too low. This was reflected on the data readout which showed he'd hit 8160 rpm at one point. His top speed in the session was 146 mph. The oil and water temperatures had also run slightly low, so some adjustments were made to the airflow, spring and damper settings on the front whilst the gear ratios were left as they were to get some comparative data. Allan qualified 6th on the grid some 2 seconds behind the leaders Mick Millard and Chris Lord.

These races have a rolling start, a new experience for Allan, and Mick Millard led the cars into the last bend at almost a snails pace. Although he hung back trying to get a bit of a sling shot Allan was outgunned by the LM3000 of Howard Spooner. The next 20 minutes saw Allan and Howard swapping places on a regular basis until Howard's car ground to a halt. With 8 minutes to go disaster struck when one of the exhaust manifold pipes fractured causing an immediate loss of power. Although noisy, race officials did not black flag him and he continued to finish in 5th place. All in all it was a satisfactory day given, Allan's relative lack of experience in the car, running at a new circuit and also using a set of tyres that had definitely seen better days.

The car's top speed had increased to 149.8 mph during the race and the fluid temperatures were up to where they should have been. Allan was fortunate though that the race had been no longer as a stone had gone through the radiator causing a slow leak!

New tyres have been acquired and some modifications to the car will be made prior to the next meeting at Brands Hatch on Easter Monday.

Stunning Display By The Big Black Monster

One of the highlights of the Castle Combe meeting was the debut of Bob Light's B6 Sport Chevrolet in the Special GT race. The car is similar in size to the LM3000. Bob built this car himself and the build quality is stunning, from the carbon fibre panels to the stainless steel exhaust manifold through to the self built F1 style steering wheel. The wheels alone cost £800 each! The engine churns out some 675 b.h.p!

Although on pole position wheel spin on the start line bogged the car down and Bob entered the first corner down in 5th place. By the end of lap 3 however he had moved up to 3rd place and set about catching the LM3000 of Howard Spooner and passing him on lap 4. By now the Kawasaki powered Radical of Michael Vergers was some 1/2 a lap ahead but the Black Beast was closing fast. On lap 6 Bob had closed to within 10 seconds but had an enormous spin at Quarry. At the end of lap 6 he was 40 seconds behind the Radical. The next 3 laps were stunning as Bob Light pursued the Radical through the back markers. The sight of the B6 passing several cars on the pit straight, through Folly down to Avon Rise was awe inspiring. As the cars came to take the chequered flag Bob was less than 3 seconds behind the Radical – If only he had had one more lap!

Vauxhall Rally of Wales

Richard and Catherine Phillipson were amongst the club members competing on the Vauxhall Rally of Wales and had a rather frustrating time.

Starting slowly it took them a little time to get onto the pace. Their efforts were thwarted when they got stuck behind one of the rescue vehicles going into help a stricken Mitsubishi, and so picked up the slowest time going through the stage.

To further add to their problems they then had a fuel pump problem which cost them six minutes. This reoccurred on the Sunday giving them more aggravation, very disappointing when their times on a trouble free run such as stage 7 showed them to be the fastest car in N3.

The event organisation was marred by a hopeless results service and timekeepers who gave competitors penalties for waiting for an ambulance, which queries to the organisers could not get removed.

Result: 46th Overall, 6th in Class.

Class Win on North Humberside Stages

Richard and Catherine travelled to the North Humberside Stages to rebuild their enthusiasm after the 'not much fun' Rally of Wales.

Although they drove rather conservatively, they benefited from no punctures or drive shaft failures and won their class.

The run was not trouble free however and they had a repetition of the fuel pump problem, fortunately only costing them 12 seconds. Spluttering over the finish line of the stage they came across Andy Senior being pushed in his N2 Honda Civic. As they are battling with him for Gp N, F2 points they towed him out to the road. As Richard said "If they are not there we can't do battle with them". A generous gesture!.

Their next outing is the Somerset Stages. They hope that by that time their man at Bosch Motorsport, Simon (Bish Bash) Thomas will have found them a decent fuel pump.

Team Spirit Rallysport - Malcolm Wilson Stages

Ian and I arrived for scrutineering at about 18:00, which was no problem as usual. We then headed back to the B & B in Keswick. Bish Bash wasn't due until later that night, so this gave us plenty of time to put his bed up on axle stands and shove his pillow and duvet underneath! We thought he would be more at home under there, especially if we chucked in some dirt and oil, but objections from the landlord put paid to that. Still, you should have seen his face when he saw it!

Stage one, not much going on there. A steady blatt through, no bits fell off. Stage two got very icy & snowy the higher we went. This made it very challenging with the Yoko 33's. We narrowly avoided a venture in to the scenery, but thanks to spectators & marshals warning us, we managed to just slide very slowly around a rather dodgy bend, where two other cars were nose down into a deep ditch. We did have a minor spin further up the stage, losing us about 20 seconds. The constant change from gravel to mud to ice really kept us on our toes. Stage four, onto the legendary Grizzly Grizedale. The muddiest stage we've seen yet, but great fun as we emerged unscathed. Stage five, the second foray into Grizedale, a ten miler too. About a mile in I was going for fourth gear…nothing! Third?…nothing! In fact we had a box full of neutrals, because we broke a selector rod. ***** was the loud cry from within the car. I leapt out (stopping Bertie first!) and yanked the thing into fourth gear. Just as I leapt back into Bertie, a Peugeot 106 passed us. *****, again! Anyway, using only fourth gear we managed to get to the end of the stage, just behind the 106. Considering the number of hairpins, the clutch didn't smell too bad by the time we got to emergency service.

The Bishop was under the car in a flash and after a lot of bishing and bashing, we had five gears again, but no reverse. Who needs reverse on a rally? Well nobody, as long as you don't spin and end up facing something heavy!