Another year, another visit to Anglesey and it’s pot luck again on the weather. Just like last year the weekend was blighted by rain. Saturday was a complete write off. Before the first run it looked marginal for slicks but after a long pit lane wait it became very obvious slicks were the wrong choice. Plenty of aquaplaning later, I brought the car back in after a single practice lap and on went some very old ACB10 tyres to allow us to get our practice runs in. That was it for Saturday, yes I should have brought the wet slicks that were sat at home, but I didn’t so game over.
Sunday was much brighter, we only got three runs in due to a combination of slow turnaround of cars and an impending rain storm. On the first two we were trying out a new control mechanism for boost, I had seen signs of this working ok during practice but something was wrong on Sunday leaving us with very low boost. For the final run we reverted to a less sophisticated strategy to get back the boost knowing this would compromise throttle response, but it was the quickest option to try to salvage some better times.
I ran first and promptly spun after the third corner ruining my run. In hindsight I was just trying to hard, by the time I had got to that point I had already had four “moments” where I had spun up the rear tyres way beyond their ability to keep traction. Kind of inevitable that I was not going to manage to keep the car straight with that much aggression. My long-suffering double drive ran better, getting ~3 sec improvement leaving him ~2 sec off class pace.
Overall, the weather sucked again, we needed the Saturday for testing, but we did learn a few more things, just less than I would have liked. That’s it for this year in competitive runs, but looks like I need continue with winter testing again if we are ever to get this car competitive. So far, 2 yrs effort has taken us stuttering towards better times but it’s not good enough yet.
