MMCC Club Night

We had a pretty cool track layout at Morecambe tonight, quite twisty and hard to get consistently quick times on. Mind you, now I think about it, what Morecambe track isn't like that?

After some very scruffy qualifiers which were full of little mistakes and unnecessary entanglement with each other Dean and I ended up in the B final with Colin joining us. I managed to break free at the start of the race, but Dean caught up with for the final minutes of the race and he was right on my tail for the final few laps. Coming down the straight on the final lap I gave it a final push over the loop and stopped just short of hitting the wall, confident that I had beaten him. Dean however carried on round the track to the next corner and much to my dismay the computer announced he had won it! I couldn't believe it when everyone watching said the loop was not in it's usual spot and instead 4 feet further round the track! Bit of a rubbish end to what had been a good race, but I guess you win some and you lose some. Even more annoyingly though I then found out it was the last round of the championship (which I thought had finished literally weeks earlier) so I couldn't have 'lost' on a worser week!

I thought for pictures this week we could do a quick Morecambe pit table tour so here we go:

My pit table

Dean

Andy

Mark Carter

Mark Jordan

Kev

Colin & Pete

BRCCC Club Night

I had an eventful night at Blackpool last night. About halfway through the first round my gear diff broke, which was quite an impressive feat in itself. When I took it apart I discovered that one of the pins in the out-drives connecting it to all the planet gear had broken out of the slot in the back of the gear, bent the shim and subsequently chewed up the case and gear. Fortunately I had a spare gear diff, save the out-drives, so I used various bits from that to fix it all.

I then went out for the second qualifier only to break one of the spool out-drives after a few laps. I didn't hit anything really, honest, must just have been wear and tear. Anyway, I fixed that as well and tentatively went out for the final qualifier, in desperate need for a finish to keep myself in the A final. I pulled off a solid result and was comfortably in the A, where I finished in my usual position, behind Danny, Andy and Damien. Ho hum.

Cotswolds National 2011

My first national of the season started well enough, I went out for my three practice sessions and the car felt really good... surprisingly so, seeing as I had run out of time to do anything to it in preparation. I was feeling pretty good about life until I went to get my tires together to get them marked up for scrutineering, as I went to reach for my wet tires I realised I had left them and the wet car they were bolted to in my other hauler bag back in Manchester. Fantastic. You utter wally.

Needless to say that put a little bit of a downer on the weekend after that as we were all but guaranteed to get a very wet Sunday. Nevertheless I kept my head held high in spite of the circumstances and put it in some reasonable runs on the dry and sunny Saturday. All of them were within the top 40 if memory serves, which is about where I would hope to finish these days.

I do enjoy driving on the Cotswolds circuit, it has a nice flow to it and the surface is a joy to drive on compared to some of the other tracks in the calendar. The club guys all did a great job of presenting a beautifully maintained circuit and great facilities for the weekend.

The highlights of the Saturday for me though came from Mr Cottom, when he decided to don some ski goggles to protect his delicate eyes from the wind on the rostrum. He looked like some sort of home-made wannabe superhero, bless.

Andy was also kind enough to entertain us off the track too, he had a sticker on his shell which was just begging for a bit of sharpie editing. I, of course, was kind enough to oblige.

As predicted Sunday emptied the heavens down on us and after trying to share a wet car with Adzy didn't work out (he drove it through a small lake by race control in his first round which promptly killed it before I could use it) I marshalled my two remaining quailfiers before deciding to pack up and head off home early. This of course means I missed out on all the contorversy which followed and as I understand it, the situation has now been left as final results = the final qualifying positions. Which might not be too bad a result for myself with the three reasonable results I got on the Saturday.

All in all, not my greatest of racing moments but the usual banter in between races and on the Saturday night made it for me. So thank you to all my fellow pit mates for that.

And so endeth my lucky streak at MMCC

Racing last night at Morecambe ended my one run lucky streak I started last week. I managed to post second fastest time after Andy in round 1 of qualifying and then not improve for the rest of the night until the final when it was too late to get another 100 points because I missed out on the A final. As they say, you've got to be in it, to win it.

I enjoyed the track layout, the only place I got caught out a couple of times was the chicane exit onto the straight at the bottom left of the photo above. A handful of times I turned in a little too early heading onto the straight, clipped the corner and went straight on into the edge of the track which resulted in being marshalled. Props to whoever designed the track, I'm not 100% but I think Mark Jordan deserves at least some of the creative credit.

In my defence, it was a busy night and lots of quick guys were there, so competition for spots in the A final was pretty fierce...





I qualified pole in the B final and I quite comfortably finished there, putting in my best run of the evening which was still a little way off the pace at the front of the A final. All in all not a bad evening but not a great one either.

The night my rear belt met its maker

Racing last night at Blackpool started okay. My new bodyshell was still intact after its first run at Morecambe on Monday and the car seem to shifting round the track alright as well.

In terms of qualifying times it was also pretty close between me and Justin Bieber here... despite the constant fiddling he seemed to be doing to his super high-quality, durable Associated TC6 diff...

But then in Q3 disaster struck. I had noticed over the last few weeks that a few teeth on my rear belt had been 'lost to the cause' but I was hoping it would hold until I came to rebuild the car this weekend in preparation for the Cotswolds National in a few weekends time. Unfortunately this was not to be, two laps into Q3 I found myself with a toothless rear belt. Damien had snapped his rear belt earlier in the evening so I guess the proverbial rear belt grim reaper was in the building somewhere. As I was planning to rebuild the car anyway and because I didn't want to risk breaking my only spare rear belt (something must have made the teeth break away) before the National I decided to sit out the finals.

In other news, couple of the lads are down at the Cotswolds BTCC this weekend testing for the National and Andy asked me to take a few snaps of his car and new shell design, because in his words: "It will never look this good again!"

I know the guy who did his shells isn't exactly busy at the minute so if you like what you see and you're stuck for some last minute national shells - there's no waiting lists - chase Andy down at one of the meetings (you can't miss him, he's got a ginger 'fro going on at the minute) and ask him for some contact details.

Well that helped my MMCC championship average...

Predictably, I was up at Morecambe last night. It's just no nonsense, good ol' fashioned fun. As Adzy is demonstrating clearly in the picture below...



The track layout was once again very cool, I think the credit goes to Andy and Ben for its design and construction.



I was running my new shell tonight as well as my old one had basically met its maker, been repaired then met its maker all over again. It worked a treat, no more hang ups on bits of bent over bodyshell and I may even have crashed less due to the fear of potentially damaging it prematurely!



I've also replaced my big fan which I broke at Ardent last time I was there. I say I broke it, some idiot in an Associated jumper (could be any of them, I know) broke it by driving into the side of me. You can spot it sitting snug between the motor and speedo in this picture if you're looking close enough



It was a pretty quiet evening at MMCC, the regulars were slacking and/or on holiday so what can you do...

Not only did I remember to take pictures this time though, I also got some footage. I'll dump it in the video sidebar but it's also below so you find it easy. I'm good to you like that.


'C' Final (with Mardave and Buggy mix)


'B' Final with touring cars (part 1)


'B' Final with touring cars (part 2)

Aside from the madness in the videos above, qualifying and the finals were again a relatively predictable affair. Andy took pole, I was behind him and Col just behind me on the grid. The final started off really good with some close but clean racing... then we broke it. Well I know I clipped/was clipped by some other bodyshells, so perhaps it was just me who broke it...

Either way, when the chequered flag dropped, metaphorically, we're not that keen... I was still behind Andy and still in front of Colin. I rushed over to the computer to see if I have managed to cinch that illusive fastest lap - I know I had been trying hard enough towards the end. Victory! 1 bonus point was mine! 7.96 seconds to Andy's best of 8.10 seconds. Thus bringing my score for the evening to a nice round 100 points and dragging my 'ability' championship average up out of the mid 90s to 97 points. Good times.

Out with the Old in with the New...