Spa

spnixon · 11 Aug 2000, 08:52 (Ref:29733)

Just joined the forum, as long as my (late) entry is accepted I'll be at Spa for the first time in the 10 lap race on Sunday morning - in my Group One Golf.

The timetable is not that great for someone just doing the 10 lap race, it means I have all day Saturday completely free.

So I'm tempted to enter the one hour race too (again if there any places left...). For that I'm still short of a second driver, who needs to be:

Used to a **** car with no brakes
Seriously vertically challenged
Nat A licence (obviously)

Anyone out there interested?

Peter N.

**Peter Mallett** · 11 Aug 2000, 11:47 (Ref:29756)

Quote:

Originally posted by spnixon
Just joined the forum, as long as my (late) entry is accepted I'll be at Spa for the first time in the 10 lap race on Sunday morning - in my Group One Golf.

The timetable is not that great for someone just doing the 10 lap race, it means I have all day Saturday completely free.

So I'm tempted to enter the one hour race too (again if there any places left...). For that I'm still short of a second driver, who needs to be:

Used to a **** car with no brakes
Seriously vertically challenged
Nat A licence (obviously)

Anyone out there interested?

Peter N.

Ahem.

apguy · 11 Aug 2000, 12:28 (Ref:29770)

spnixon said "seriously vertically challenged" not "seriously horizontally challenged" !!

I'll get me coat

Andrew

josvandeperre · 11 Aug 2000, 13:09 (Ref:29778)

Peter N

How short - how much - how ****

You may not wish to divulge either in this forum in which case I guess you need to ask Peter M nicely to put us in touch

**Peter Mallett** · 11 Aug 2000, 13:36 (Ref:29783)

you can always e mail him folks.

spnixon · 11 Aug 2000, 14:54 (Ref:29801)

I'm about 5' 8" but the seat is closer to the pedals than you might imagine for someone that tall.

The car is not so bad, 10 races and 10 finishes this season. It even led Peter Mallett's Capri for 1/2 lap at Thruxton (until we got to the back straight). Currently lying third (I think) in Class C.

If anybody was interested I'd obviously be keen to know their race experience....

Peter.Nixon@uk.origin-it.com
http://www.spnracing.co.uk

yelwoci · 11 Aug 2000, 15:16 (Ref:29806)

Peter (Spnixon)
Welcome to the forum.
All part of the great CSCC Grp1 Blitskrieg.

Tim Clarke of Boxridge is the closest to you in the Club, but he may be taking his Dolly for the 1-hour.

I'll ask him

IanC

**Peter Mallett** · 15 Aug 2000, 10:25 (Ref:30667)

Well,

Have you found anybody yet?

josvandeperre · 17 Aug 2000, 12:34 (Ref:31068)

Well I've spoken to Peter but I cannot get a hold of Barry Sidery Smith to find out if there's any gaps on the grid - if anyone knows him / meets him / sees him - at Pembrey perhaps - we'd like to know both if Peter has a 10 lap race entry in his Golf and if we can get into the one hour race

**Peter Mallett** · 17 Aug 2000, 13:08 (Ref:31073)

I've mailed Barry's number to Peter.

josvandeperre · 31 Aug 2000, 08:50 (Ref:34172)

And off we go - I'm sharing Peter's car in the one hour - should be fun

**Peter Mallett** · 11 Sep 2000, 20:18 (Ref:36544)

Whilst I know most, if not all the stories, how about you lot telling us what your weekends were like?

apguy · 12 Sep 2000, 13:26 (Ref:36721)

As detailed on http://www.tintinracing.com....

Spa-Francochamps - 8/9/10 September 2000

As I arrived at the circuit and parked up in the paddock I saw Eau Rouge for the first time. It's safe to say it looks nothing like the camera shot that you see when F1 cars are hammering around. For one thing it's steep, I mean really steep. With a down hill slope exiting La Source it dips and then climbs hard round a right hand bend before disappearing into the distance over a left hand crest. It looked awesome.

Arriving at 5pm on Thursday I was disappointed to find the worst camping facilities at a circuit yet. No shower block nearby was open, the nearest patch of land was rock hard and the paddock bars were shut - a disaster! Making do with beers supplied by Peter Nixon and a BBQ supplied by myself we settled in for the night.
A damp morning greeted us on Friday. I had 2 qualifying sessions lined up for the Sunbeam, I was entered in a 10 lap BSCC and CSCC challenge and a 1 hour, 2 driver endurance race with the HSCC and CSCC. Qualifying for the 10 lapper was first, the statistics for this race were astounding, 64 cars ranging from an Aston DB6 through a multitude of Morgan 8's, Lotus Elans, Marcos GT, Lotus Cortinas, Austin Healeys, Porsche 911, the list went on. All of this on the full Grand Prix circuit of 4.5 miles!
It's the first time I've had the opportunity to pit my car up against sportscars rather than the usual saloons and the results were surprising - to find myself outbraking and sweeping past a 911 was a joy not to be underestimated! The Lotus Elans were quick on the straight but awful in the bends and could be dealt with very easily. One problem marred my qualifying and that was a loose gearshift mechanism: I kept losing 3rd gear and had to be careful not to find a bunch of clattering neutrals. On returning to the pits I found I had lost 2 out of 3 securing bolts and the problem was soon rectified. With a grid position of 41 out of 65 I had not disgraced myself and Peter was 3 places behind, with Rick's XR3 one place in front.

As the first driver of the endurance race I went out in the Sunbeam for the qualifying session, much happier I had a gearshift that worked I gained a second on my previous lap times. This time I overtook 2 Porsche 911's, the day was getting better. After 15 minutes I swept into the pits to hand over to Rick for his qualifying session. 5 minutes before the end of the session and the tannoy announced "number 82 has technical difficulties" Uh oh. The car arrived back at the paddock 20 minutes later on the back of a pickup lorry.
An oil pressure pipe had fractured and in less than 200 yards had deposited the entire contents of the sump over the engine. Rick had caught the oil pressure light and shut off as soon as possible - but what was the damage? The engine was gunked down, the offending pipe was removed and blanked, 3 litres of fresh oil poured in and fingers crossed. It clanked and then fired up, on idle it sounded okay but only a road test would prove it. Under load the engine coughed and complained, it refused to pull above 5000rpm and sounded rough as nails. The worst was confirmed when I shut the engine off and attempted to restart it, the crank had nipped up in the shells and it refused to turn. My disappointment was obvious, no way to repair this and I hadn't done a race yet. Rick's XR3 wasn't looking too happy either, it was blowing oil past the rings. Despite this, he bravely volunteered his own car for the 1 hour race - what a star!
With nothing else I could do on the car, I packed up and we retired to Spa village for some well deserved moules and frites.

Saturday morning was spent rushing around trying to get the French officials to swap my entry for the Talbot into an entry for the Escort. With re-scrutineering consisting of no more than a casual glance the Escort was in. The car was fuelled up and ready to go, we decided to keep the revs down and try and make the distance but with compression down by 50psi on cylinder 4 we needed some luck as well.

The endurance race was a 46 car grid with a rolling start, superb. As I sat in the paddock waiting to go out I prodded the starter button and to my horror the button pinged across the car! Every swear word imaginable went through my head, I was left with 2 bare terminals which I attempted to press with my gloved finger, to add to my woes the remainder of the button now disappeared into the dash :-( I called over for a bump start and a couple of fellas duly obliged. As we assembled on the track I was hoping this was the end of my troubles, hmmmm. Cruising around on the green flag lap I could smell burning, I thought it was oil and then I glanced to my left to see smoke coming from the dash!! I stopped the car, flipped the belts off and leaned over. It was the starter switch which had arced the +ve and -ve terminals and was now glowing red hot with black smoke bellowing from it. I ripped the wires out the back and attempted to tie up the +ve terminal. While this was going on I had failed to notice I was on a slight uphill slope, with a loud bang I was notified of the large red Mustang that had just met with the rear bumper of Ricks! With some hand waving and a very red face I set back off to join the back of the grid - a result of having to swap cars. With a rolling start I kept with the back of the pack and planted it on the green light, slightly unsettled because of the starter button, smoke, Mustang and oil consumption I set off trying to regain some places. In fact I did reasonably well and gained about 7 places by the 2rd or 3rd lap. Each lap was in excess of 3 minutes and each time I came round the car was feeling slower and then the pinking started. Oil smoke from the failing engine was starting to fill the cabin, at 25 minutes I signalled that I was coming in. Expecting the worst Rick thought the car was a goner, nope, I just wanted to make sure there was enough life left in it for him to get some laps in. With another litre of oil poured into the engine Rick set off for his stint, despite losing power and being some 10 seconds a lap off qualifying time we finished 30th out of 46 starters!

At a presentation ceremony we received a nice trophy each and I picked up some pictures as a momento.

So now we had 2 class D cars that had been killed by Spa. Other Group 1 cars suffered similar problems and one Capri had a particularly nasty accident at the top of Eau Rouge, Spa is definitely a war of attrition. Only Peter now remained for the 10 lapper race on Sunday, I stayed for the drivers party on Saturday evening and intended to leave on Sunday morning immediately after the race. As I greeted Peter in the paddock on Sunday his face went ashen as the car refused to start. After 10 minutes of frantic fuse changing and discussion it was found that the fuel pump had seized. With no spare and no time, Peter was also out out of the race. I retired to the grandstand, out of harms way, to watch the race. A severely depleted grid was lined up, the original 64 cars must have been wittled down to about 40. With a charging MGB V8 being pursued by a yellow Camaro it was entertaining to watch. The Porsche 911 never made it the grid either.

Sitting on the ferry back I know I'm not going to get my engine repaired in time for Snetterton. I've decided to swap it for the older race engine I have on my garage floor. This has different profile cam (280 deg instead of 340deg) and is 12BHP less but I have very little choice. From previous testing it's about a second a lap slower round Snett - I'll just have to try harder then :-)

yelwoci · 12 Sep 2000, 16:38 (Ref:36744)

Spa wasn't just hard on the Grp 1 Class D cars, I manged to kill the RX7 too!

I screwed up going into Eau Rouge by not turning in decisively enough, so I went wide, backed-off, the car jumped out of 4th, I went back on the throttle to buzz the engine, then compounded the mistake in a panic...I was doing 100mph through Eau Rouge in neutral!...and slapped it into 3rd.

Approaching Stavelot I noticed the oil Temp was 140C and the water temp was off scale. But the oil pressure was still 35psi low but there.

I backed off and the temps came down, but I had black rain coming up the screen!

One dead ****el!

IanC

yelwoci · 12 Sep 2000, 16:40 (Ref:36745)

I'll have you all know, especially the thought police, that ****el is a perfectly acceptable description of the inventor of the rotary engine!!

Felix will turn in his grave!

:-)
IanC

TimD · 12 Sep 2000, 16:44 (Ref:36748)

It's okay Ian, I know what you're talking about. Think of the trouble that the CART driver Hiro Matsu****a has.

Sorry to hear about the engine, though. How easy is it to source a new Mazda rotary engine?

**Peter Mallett** · 13 Sep 2000, 06:52 (Ref:36885)

Ian said that Spa would be his last event this year because he wouldn't be able to source a decent engine by Snetterton. So, we can fully expect to see him in Norfolk then.

The annual Spa meeting is very hard on cars and drivers. If you've never been there previously, it is seriously daunting. The trouble is that, racers being what they are, if you tell them this they won't believe you. Sadly this leads to bent and broken cars because we ask too much of the machinery.

Peter's fuel pump stopped working and he was out of the race. Fuel pumps work harder at Spa than any other circuit becuase you are flat out more often and for longer.

Ian C was relatively lucky to get away with a broken engine because I watched him and from where I stood it looked like he was heading for the wall.

Andrew was somewhat unluckier because you can't legislate for a broken oil union. At least him and Rick made the one-hour race in Rick's car.

However. I will be surprised if they don't all come back next year because from what I saw they've all got the bug.

josvandeperre · 13 Sep 2000, 08:32 (Ref:36889)

I agree - even the current/former TVR owners were very friendly & helpful !

And for non-campers I can recommend L'Auberge in Spa - nice rooms very good food and not expensive

Seriously I had a ball - thanks to Peter - is there a two driver race at Snetterton ?

yelwoci · 13 Sep 2000, 12:18 (Ref:36905)

Repairing the engine is not a great deal.
Hopefully only the seals have gone, but if they're damaged the housings can be sourced and reworked as necessary.
But having seriously overspent this year I'm not doing any more.
But the thought of 6 months off is a bit daunting.

The moment through Eau Rouge was quite something and as Peter noted I think I was very lucky!
I went in quite fast, with a lift at the bottom of the pit straight hill, turn in left and brake, then turn right and up the hill. I didn't turn in hard enough and was swinging wide. I eased off, a mistake, and it slipped out of gear.
Going through Eau Rouge at 100mph in neutral while understeering off is to be recommended!
Even though it destroyed the engine, 3rd gear brought the car back under control.

IanC

SNH · 13 Sep 2000, 12:29 (Ref:36910)

from yelwoci
'But the thought of 6 months off is a bit daunting. '

tell me about! 11 months so far...........

**Peter Mallett** · 13 Sep 2000, 15:02 (Ref:36942)

Quote:

Originally posted by yelwoci

I went in quite fast, with a lift at the bottom of the pit straight hill, turn in left and brake, then turn right and up the hill. I didn't turn in hard enough and was swinging wide. I eased off, a mistake, and it slipped out of gear.

IanC

My italics.

You were okay until you eased off. That's what throws you at the wall. If you keep the right one planted you (at worst) go across the gravel trap at the top. At best you are ten mph faster through Radillon.

I was finally told the secret to that complex this year, but wasn't quite using it last weekend. You'd think after all these years I'd know but I had to ask someone eventually.

spnixon · 14 Sep 2000, 20:09 (Ref:37163)

I'll post my full story when I get time to write it (spent 9 hours last night getting from Eindhoven to Antwerp - about 60km. Bloody lorry drivers!).

The latest update on the fuel pump is that it didn't fail at all. 6 hours of work today including fitting a new pump (I needed a spare anyway), new filter, and blowing 20 (yes, 20!) fuses have given me the conclusion that the problem lies in the two small wires going through the dash to the warm start regulator and auxillary air valve, whatever they are. One of them is earthing out somewhere causing the fuse to blow, but the wires just go into the loom and its a total mess. Urgh - more work required...

Anyway cheers to Jos for sharing the drive in the 1 hour race (at least the car survived long enough for that) - hope you enjoyed it and I'll get the lap times to you when I can!

**Peter Mallett** · 15 Sep 2000, 06:56 (Ref:37262)

What on earth were you doing over here in the flatlands then?

Seems like most of the CSCC is spending its time in the Netherlands and other "Low Countries".