dbRacing - NSSCC Race Report Croft 7th September 2002

NSSCC Race Report - 7th September 2002

Practice

The 924 GT returned for the final Croft round of the NSSCC Championship, although the RS was also race ready, having had the oil cooler repaired and refitted.

The dampers had been rebuilt in a turn around time of 4 days including 2 days shipping, and the main aim of the weekend was to try and get these working properly. The weather was dry though the track was still damp from overnight rain. I took a couple of laps to get the tyres warm and then started trying to get a reasonable lap time, but I did not feel comfortable with the car at all. The car seemed to be down on power a little but the bigger problem was the handling which just felt awful with terrible mid corner understeer and total absence of feedback. After 8 laps I managed to get down to a 1:43 almost 3 seconds a lap slower than the RS two weeks ago. This put me 12th on the grid, right behind Graham Saul and Chris Springall, just like two weeks previously. David Cox came over and commented that he had never seen me driving so slowly on track.

I returned to the paddock to change the front struts to the old ones which had now been rebuilt. The changeover went reasonably quickly, but working by myself I did not manage to get anywhere near the 8 minutes it took to put a strut on at Silverstone As it was I just had enough time to change the struts over when it started to rain. The nearside had 14 degrees of camber initially and so more time was consumed getting the camber somewhere near a normal setting and in the process becoming very wet in the downpour. More time was then spent changing the wheels over and moving to full wet settings (the car, not me, I was already wet !).

Race

I was hoping that the changed suspension would help me in getting the car to handle properly, and with the race being wet and practice dry (sort of) we got to have two green flag laps. As we lined up on the grid I had a space in front of me as Chris Springall had returned home due to lack of adequate tyres and the monumental driving problems he had in the wet race at the last race meeting.

At the start I made up good ground passing Saul and tucking in behind David Cox in 8th place as we headed round Hawthorn for the first lap. I should have made a move to pass him at the Jim Clark Esses, but decided that making such a move would wait until I had got a better feel for the handling of the car. For the next three or four laps I kept station behind David Cox, but also had to defend against Guy Blumer in his Escort who was very quick through the complex and almost ran into the back of me a couple of times. Eventually he outbraked himself at the hairpin and I thought that would be the last I would see of him. Guy is in his first season and always seems to have an eventful race. This was to be no exception as he promptly went into the gravel at Clervaux on the very next corner. About this time I started to hear a pinking sound from the engine and noticed that the temperature gauge had moved into the red zone. After 3 laps trying to drive in 4th and 5th gears to get the temperature down and get points I pulled into the pits and retired from the race before the head gasket gave up the ghost.

I have since found out that the inlet manifold was cracked, so its a new manifold and another head gasket replacement in preparation for next meetings race at Castle Combe.