The season has started at long last, feels like a long time since the last sprint. The weather for the first outing at the Castle Combe circuit last weekend was great, sunny all day with just a few cloudy patches. Unfortunately the result was less pleasing for me. Having run on three test days without any sight of a serious fault the engine let me down yet again resulting in fails on both timed runs.
I think at this point I should be tempted to just throw in the towel, but I am staying optimistic since I did get to run the car at full pace during the practice run and it was rather good to say the least, the engine was pulling like the proverbial train and the car felt very planted and responsive. You see, like some poor addicted junkie I only need one good hit to remind why I still put effort into this pastime, I am addicted to the shock and awe that comes from releasing a lot of bhp in a light weight package.
The failure details are rather unexciting (that is a good thing), sometime during the day a bracket the holds the plenum down broke. This resulted in the throttle bodies lifting off the engine and throwing the fueling out. The net result was I stalled on the first timed run and on the second I got away but the engine was misfiring. I might have had a chance to find & fix but the rather unhelpful start marshal refused to let me recover the car between the 1st and 2nd runs so it was stuck in the pit lane for most of the afternoon.
During the practice run I hit a flexible bollard at the second chicane damaging the front left wing (pic thanks to blatman). The tyre only just survived, it will need replacing before the car is run again. This track was really too big for the gearing on the car, I hit the rev limiter (~125mph) many times in practice. I don’t have many options to fix that, some bigger profile tyres will probably make most sense for later in the year if we make it that far.
