Diary of a sprint season in a TF part1

Lewiscypher wrote: ...You can do a whole season 8-10 events for under £1000 .....

Sorry kids Christmas is cancelled, your dad spoke to a man called Lewiscypher :bust:

I'm sure the tykes would understand.
They would be thrilled when they got their own pit-crew overalls underneath the Christmas Tree,
and the wife would love her quick lift jack! :woohoo:

Lewiscypher, thank you very much indeed..
The 15th is the day after POL, but I intend to be there :broon:

A couple of questions..

Can I use a biker helmet, full face or the one that lifts up at the front ?
Do we need a suit for the intro ?
Where would my local one be, Warwickshire area ?
How long are the actual sprints ?
Average mph ?

Thank you again

For the intro day you dont need a suit or helmet its not a campetetive event and we wont be going at competition speeds, its just a chance to try the track with someone sitting beside you

Erm not sure where there is a sprint venue in warwickshire sometimes they can be set up on a temporary basis

Ill have a think. ask around but if you do a bit of searching on the net you may find one start with the MSA and find your local motor club http://www.msauk.org/site/cms/localGroupFinder.asp?category=469

put your postcode in

NOt quite sure what you mean by how long- the event runs over a day and typically you will have two practice runs and two competetive runs as a minimum depending on no of entrys

Length depends on the course today on curborough long course (2laps) we were doing between 70 and 75 seconds per lap and Iwas crossing the line at 80 ish

Other courses like mira/ shelsley are much quicker and you would reach higher speeds, curborough is very tight and technical


its not like a track day where you do lap after lap- the challenge is doing one perfect run no mistakes (you make them of course theres no such thing as a perfect run just varying degrees of bad ones in my case! :coat: ) its a bit like trying to get a hole in one in golf I imagine

doesnt seem very long but its very intense

Youll get abetter idea at the intro day- you get walked through the whole process scrutineering protective gear etc

Hope that helps, pm me if your coming on the 15th :yesnod:

Update on today first two runs dreadful, second two moderately less dreadful last run matched what I do on in the golf and starting to get more comfortable and enjoy the car, Still 2seconds behind the leaders today though :rant:

I must be patient, I must be patient I must......

Well she went into Austin Garages Friday to get the wheel bearing sorted

Just as well as it turned out to be completely shot, despite the low miles (one too many rumble strips maybe)

much longer and it would have been real trouble was starting to go out of shape big time :pinch:

Wheel must have been moving a fair bit , the car now feels much more secure,felt like it on the way back from the garage took her out tonight for some "evaluation"

miles better, the care always felt nervous before :oops:

Spent some time on a clear back road practicing threshold braking, brakes are better too more progressive and car is more stable under heavy braking

Nick reckons there was enough runout to have affected the handling and to knock the rear pad back which would have increased pedal travel

So money well spent!

Superb job done by Nick who described it as "like working ona new car" (ie all the bolts just undo) which is nice

Shes booked in again in may for belts fluids and replacement coolant hose which runs quite close to the exhaust downpipe looking a bit dodgy and that should be it for the next few years apart from some touching up of some paint marks which I might get done


TTFN

Lovely to see she is getting all sorted ..
I was unable to make the 15th, actually my son had a fit and said its bad enough you doing Autosolos without you doing this as well
I ill however follow your adventure :yesnod:

There should be some heat sleeving on that vulnerable coolant pipe. :yesnod:

It has the later coolant valve (cant recall the correct term) but this pushes it nearer to the downpipe, it has extra sleeving round as standard but apparently they deteriorate its a point of weakness, can see some cracking already

(suggest you all get it checked next service I was shown one that had "gone" dosent bear thinking about)

Needless to say nick has a special fix with some special heat retardant wrapping thats the right diameter for the pipe-

If your in the midlands(or prepared to make the trip (they have one client who brings his V8 ZT from paris!) austin garages is definitely the place to go, cant recommend them highly enough

Forgot to update on the Intro to sprinting day last week

All went well, l took people round with my " instructor "badge in the Fabia VRS daily driver

funnily enough people seemed to prefer the 911 turbo which one of the other instructors brought :oops:

,Format was a demo run at 2/3rds to show the lines then two runs with participants got to go ina 360 bhp scooby, couple of MX5s ( probably shouldnt mention them here but a lovely little well balanced car), Honda s2000 (what an engine!) and erm a diesel mondeo- saving grace it was being driven by two guys who are building a 260bhp red top engined locost which they plan to sprint - talk about in at the deep end!

Was interesting and useful to talk people round,helped me think about my own lines and approach

but nerve wracking as some heavily modded cars turned up and you have no idea about the ability of the driver they tend to be either brilliant or ,,,,,,,

more often not....

tricky business instructing

they say there are two aspects of a mans performance you just dont criticise

and driving is one of them wouldn't know much about the other :lol:

stuck to talking about the best way to approach the circuit, its tricky to give advice to allow enough time to actually follow it

Good day had by all and hopefully we'll get some people taking up sprinting :yesnod:

Not had chance to post much lately

so updates on two events in one go

Motorsports marshals club on the 12th, oh dear!!

set a reasonable time 1st practice run and it went downhill from there, the quicker I tried to go the more ragged it became, so bad Ive put off posting :sick:

In retrospect i realised as I tried to push for quicker times, I was subconsciously reverting to FWD mode , and boy she didnt like it at all, rear was coming out around flagpole (which is effectively a u turn for anyone who hasnt been to curborough)on the second lap and locking up under braking it was shambles!

on the last run I made myself forgot times and tried just to be smooth and get it together and got a bit of time back but left pretty fed up with myself :bang:

So on to sunday 20th- Shenstone & district car club ( my club} )sprint - Id spent a lot of time beforehand thinking about what id been doing wrong the week before, determined to ingore times, stop trying hard and focus on just being smooth and using correct technique ( always easier from the armchair than the driver seat!) and ......

Hey presto! :woohoo: a series of Personal best times, still not enough and only 4th place but much better than the week before

Maintenance wise shes been back to austin garages for belts and all the fluids changed, realign the passenger window. Coolant hose that runs by the exhaust downpipe was beginning to perish ( get it checked boys and girls its a weakspot!!) now wrapped with some special heat wrapping that nick has found fo rthe job, got a second remote key fob keyed to the car(wish Id checked on the price before Id asked for it!)

Bill wasntexactly small but that should be it for a good few years, just a check and an oil change per year should do it given I plant to do less than 1500 miles per yearand I can rest knowing shes in tip top nick- cambelt was lookinga bit crispy so despite the mere 6500 miles shes done it was worth doing for peace of mind

the thought of the belt letting go at 7000 n the back straight makes me shudder :pinch:

Flew through the MOT this week and just picked up a new set of F1 gSD 2 tdoay which appear to be the last of the current batch ( according to trade tyre place I always go to

Nick from austin garages told me they were available at the moment and it woul be worth grabbinga set while I could

againt not cheap!! but the old ones were ten years old and getting a bit hard ( anyone see the article in safety fast on old tyres ?)

Been watching the debates on tyre choice on here with interest- was tempted by the toyos, have used them on the golf with good results, but since f1s were obtainable I opted to play safe and go with the recommended tyre for the car

1 it keeps the car original- imprtant for this particular example i think and

2 steve the previous owner an MG development engineer and my sprinting mentor gave dire warnings about using other brands

3 as someone on here pointed out the extra is still a lot less expensive than rear ending someone!

So bit the bullet and paid out- given the low miles I plan to do they should last me thenext ten years

Of couse theyll need running in

so plan to take a run down to MG in the park event tommorrow- wont be there till late afternoon as cant get away till lunchtime but the run down the fosse way should be fun

will be my first long run in it- but given the weather its almost rude not to!

hope to meet some of you there at long last

TTFN

Chris

Chris, great to hear from you again and catch up on your adventures.

Do you get any photo's at these events? Would be nice to see one or two.

:drive: Have a nice relaxing drive tomorrow and enjoy your day.

Thanks :broon:

this chap takes photos of curborough sprints
http://rhodopsin.co.uk/Other%20Sports/index.htm
although he doesnt seem to be taking any from this year

search curborough sprint course on you tube and youll see various posts of in car footage etc

we have been doing some filming with a company which does arial photography using a small 8 bladed RC helicopter to produce a promo vid for curborough

the TF is in that although we had to abort filming do to equipment problems , from the footage Ive seen so far it shoul d be pretty impressive, :beer:

will post it up once its ready

An aerial video of your car, that I look forward to seeing. :yesnod: