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BRCA touring car national round 1 Aldershot Mark's meeting Arrived Saturday at lunchtime weather was very grey and cold, I think we both tried Take-off CS22 and Pits Shimtzu D25. My D25's had harder inserts than Ian's and Ian certainly got his to work better. My car had a problem with the back of the car stepping out midway through slow left hand corners which wasn't a problem with the CS22 tyres. Ian had bad interference problems which we originally put down to the fact that he had his crystals in the wrong way round. We left the track at 6.00pm having not really achieved much, - we knew what didn't work but was still unsure of what DID. During the evening Ian swapped his V2 speed controller for his old Comet and I put some short orange rear springs on my car. Sunday started quite sunny and warm and Ian was confident the changes I had made to my car meant I could now run the D25 tyres. He was right. It handled very well although still slightly tweaked it had transferred the problem to slow right hand corners. refilling the rear shocks cured this and my car was dialed. I started off the day with a very slow 17 lapper which put me in 18th place after R1. My second round run was really good taking off 10 seconds from my best time but was still only good enough for 11th. I stayed in 11th after R3 despite taking off a few more seconds from my FTD. Just when I had resigned myself to pole in the B final I took another 5 seconds off my time giving me 8th in the A final. I was well pleased with this and we both had a relatively good final, Ian qualified 6th and finished 5th promoted to 4th, due to a disqualification. I finished 8th promoted to 7th. Ian's meeting As we made it a racing weekend and spent Saturday afternoon practicing for Sundays race. No point turning up too early as the damp and dust on the track makes the cars handle differently. Practice went well with some good work done on tyres and gearing. The car was pretty well dialed due to the previous weeks practicing with just some fine-tuning required. Big problem with motors though. My ageing spitfire had given up the weekend before and I had nothing quick to use. At the end of the day Gav managed to source a couple of Orion Cores which are the same motor as the new Hellfire’s we were hoping for, and we decided to try these on Sunday. Sunday was pretty hectic at first with the car suffering from chronic interference. Strange symptoms though. Perfect for whole lap but couldn’t accelerate up the straight with out extremely erratic steering. Even stranger still, it worked perfectly for 3min then went ape! The motor was quick with my car significantly faster for the first 5 laps then it went extremely soft. Tried different brushes, gearing, cells, chargers, and charging techniques to no avail. The car was good though only question was tyres with the changeable track temperature. Started on Pitz 25’s as I didn’t have any 20’s and Trinity tyre tweak. Unusually the Takeoffs the modified guys were using wouldn’t work for stock. Probably just the lack of temperature we could get into them. Changed to a set of Gavs 20’s for round 4 and the final as the track cooled. Tyre choice for the final was a close call as it started to drizzle. Stuck with the 20’s although I did my best to get the additive off. I doubt that it worked and as it turned out the track was just dry enough for our final so it didn’t matter. Drove a good final with a leap from 6th on the grid up to 3rd at the start. I Was pushing hard for second when the recurring slowing up problem slowly dropped me back to 5th.
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