FROM THE PITLANE
BRANDS HATCH - part 1
Half a day of the Bear's life readying a car for someone else to use. Unpaid.
Come on, get those tiny tart cars out of the way and let us in.
Being three days early has a downside.
An early morning Bear at the helm of his battleship.
Don't touch his marmalade sandwiches.
Consectetuer adipi scing elit. Mauris urna urna varius et interdum a, tincidunt quis, libero. Aenean sit.
Brands was a long, long weekend. For the Kutukans it was a 5-day event. Comer and Jefferys would contest the JEC races, whilst Vanessa, newly fitted with an extra fuel tank to add range, was in action for the 40 minute 2-driver Future Classics with a certain Mr Lyddall at the wheel, sharing with some fella called Paul who usually drives Formula Fords rather successfully.
Jefferys has had major surgery to the engine, Comer major surgery to the diff, and it was time for a trip to Novatech, home of the infamous Bernie, and his rolling road. A late delivery from the Lyddall of a supplementary fuel tank for Vanessa meant a late getaway, she was built to do 20 min sprint races, and she needed more capacity. Fitting a supplementary tank in a car designed specifically not to have a big tank is what you might call a challenge, but the Bear’s solution quite neat, if time consuming.
This left the Kutukans heading for
But trust it we do, we can get consistent, reliable results, and given the long-standing relationship with the McGiverns, we can both give and take a substantial amount of abuse without being afraid they’ll spit in the abundant cuppas. 3 cars for the rollers. Vanessa first, nothing to do to her, just curiosity for us as to what she puts out.
The answer, 260bhp. We were overjoyed. Not because it’s a lot of power, it isn’t, but because it’s not a lot of power. She’s been out with the Jags twice, took perfect points both times, set XJS pole, won a race outright, and she’s only got 10bhp more than a decent F class car. It really is all in the handling, and the ability of the pilot to shuffle the wheel properly. We don’t ask for more than that in anything we build.
Comer too hit the rollers, this time to test the diff, and the misfire. This one was simple, the diff works, the misfire is gone, she’s good to go. Power is acceptable rather than amazing, and the one thing I wanted to try out on her proved not to work at all, so move on and pretend we never did it.
Jefferys was on the rollers a long time, mostly running in the new bottom end. We were also curious what it now puts out, given the extensive work done. The sound of a modified XJ40 engine at full tilt booms through the streets of
Pack up, head for Brands, where as is traditional we are the only car here, so early we have to wait for the corporate Caterhamming to end before we can park. Bear wants to try the cone course in the 60-foot rig, I want to give it go in the yacht we’re towing, but neither of us is going to get our way.
The paddock arrangement is going to be a little awkward, because we’re testing tomorrow, so can park wherever we want. We have a spot for Sunday onwards, but that’s occupied by MGs on Saturday because we’re not meant to be here til Sunday. We’re not leaving and coming back, we’re stuck here. So we park right out of the way. And get asked to move by a Morgan who wants the spot. Sigh.
The MGs will just have to adopt us then. Hook up the power and use as much of it as we can. We bought extra electrical items for this meeting specifically so we could get some more juice out of the hookup. I don't give a hoot about electrical hookup usually, but you pay through the nose at a lot of tracks, and get poor facilities, so use it when you get it. Like a bottle of wine really. I can take or leave it, but if you open it I will drink the whole thing.
Junior Jeffery arrives on the Friday, unaware of what has been done at his car. 18kg lighter, more powerful, rid of the smoke trail, and the brakes are fixed. He doesn’t know that an hour ago his car was up on stands. He’s got a reliable car to test with, but he’s never seen the track before. Could be interesting. It took me a full day to learn this track in 2007, and that was in the dry. This is damp, and his car is a boat. The upside is he’s never driven anything else, and he doesn’t know better.
Sent out onto a damp, slippery track, with a dire warning that if I saw him going quickly I’d punch him in the crotch, the boy is dispatched to learn Brands. He returns from the first session with eyes like saucers. He’s just experienced Paddock hill, and after 20 goes at it he still has that wild-faced sense of wonder. Paddock Hill is right up there with anything Cadwell can throw at you, that sense of falling off the planet is something we take for granted after five seasons, his face is a reminder of that first time of Brands Hatch popped your cherry.
He doesn’t like the track. It’s something we’ve seen of Matt in testing before, he likes a simple circuit with straights to use the power, the exact sort of place that bores me. He’d go to Silverstone every week, a track I’d put it in my bottom two. But it’s a function of the car. Lots of go now, but the chassis hasn’t really been touched. It has good road, rather than race, shocks all round, it has been progressively lowered to the point of stupidity before we were allowed to tamper with it, and there is only a single, standard road car anti-roll bar on the front.
They’ve dropped the height to try and counter the roll, rather than uprating the roll bars, and the reality is that this car really doesn’t work at all. My only time in the seat at Donnington told me that, the violence it takes to wrestle this round fails to reward finesse. And that in turn educates the pilot that his best tracks are the point and squirt circuits. Which is not our way of doing things at all.
Still, this is what we have to play with. We can tweak tyre pressures and camber, but little else. At least we know the brakes are fixed, and that the engine works in the real world.
His new tyre is removed and his race rubber refitted, the boy is given a briefing from the heights of the grandstands about the track layout and where we think he might perhaps put the car, supplemented by a nice map drawn in the dirt on the bonnet. His dad would have a fit, but pace before grace. We give the child a quick rub with an oily rag and send him on his way.
Well, eventually. He only has two 30-minute sessions here, they really do screw you at this place with the testing fees, but that means every second counts, and the boy dawdles even after a gentle reminder that this is costing him £3 per minute.
The second session is drier, and it goes better, we watch the times fall, but with an analytical eye on his lines and the car’s behaviour. Nothing wrong with his ability to catch a powerslide, but some interesting choices of approach, and worst of all the cardinal sin of double-braking. We watch the brake lights flick on early into Paddock, go off, and come on again after he’s turned in as the foot goes for a confidence boost the brain is screaming for.
He’s lucky Dermott isn’t here to see it, because he’d get his legs slapped for that. After 20 min the lap times hit a wall, he’s not getting quicker, so we call him in. Takes three laps to do it, but he eventually gets the message. Bear does the tyre pressures whilst I beat him around the bash hat and offer a few pearls of wisdom. With a promise not to double-dab again, off he goes. A second comes off the time, but the telltale brakelights reveal Paddock is still scaring him. He’s under the minute mark though, and for the conditions that’ll do nicely. Session over, back to camp, and to the beer.
Saturday was awkward. Parked in a
A day off gives time to reflect on the insanity of what we do. Assume that there are 20 Jags coming. One will go home with damage. Two more will have a mechanical issue. So you have a 15% chance of having a problem on any given weekend. Add the rain, it’s more like 25%. You wouldn’t take those odds on the road, yet here, for a vast sum of money, and at substantial personal risk, we volunteer for it and think that’s normal. Mental.
Throwing a different pedal box at Vanessa, we were briefly accosted by an early-arriving Dye, who forced us to drink beer and return to our work giggling like schoolgirls. Not that I can say with any certainty that schoolgirls do giggle these days, certainly the bunch of sour-faced cows that object to me leaving my driveway in a morning don’t look capable of mirth.
Vanessa was last out at Cadwell earlier this year, testing a few bits, but the rock hard brake pedal is only any good for the larger driver with legs that could support your average rhino, and she is being 2-drivered by the smaller Lyddall, and some other chap we can recall very little about save that he didn’t look like a bodybuilder last we saw of him, so the pedal box has to be put back to Jaguar standard. It gives something to do in those dead hours.
The team arrive Saturday evening, the paddock enlivens as Comer, then Webster arrive and the wine bottles appear. I swear they have one in every cubby hole and compartment in their vehicles, coats, and underwear. A late-arriving Lyddall brings a large motorhome that drinks more than the team put together, and the novelty of heated shelter briefly amuses until he switches on so many systems that the Bear’s power lead, now feeding half the paddock, melts itself into slag. There is more to racing than just cars, you also need to be educated in the art of camping, which in these cases means being an electrician.
I have never quite understood the craving for power, it seems to be an obsession across the paddock, a mantra chanted by all who demand the comforts of home without asking whether they are necessary. Running a kettle can be handy, but there are other ways.
When I come racing, I come for the racing, we’re away from home to do something different. So far as the Bear and I are concerned our job once we’re here, because we’re support crew, is to do our best to get as many people on that track as we can. It doesn’t matter how much of a prat we think someone might be, if the car’s broken and we can fix it, we’ll help.
And that means roaming the paddock looking for trouble. Last season Kutuka assisted in getting 26 cars back into action over the course of the year. That is 26 cars which, had the Kutuka team not been there, would have needed someone else to put them back into action, or else gone home and not raced.
Admittedly a couple of those were our own machines, but you don’t get involved if you’re hiding in your support vehicle, and once you commit to the wandering, the need for electrical hookup becomes less urgent. Those who hide away in their mobile living room for the weekend are missing half the event. You wouldn’t go on safari for the television in the hotel room…
We prefer life a little more spartan. Give me a place to sleep that isn’t leaking, and the rest of it is negotiable. So we stood in the rain with the bbq blazing away, cooking sausages for the softies inside. As our concession to luxury, we brought more than one type of sauce. Oh yes, we know how to live it up.
Sunday is a late start, which is just as well given the amount some people drink, and qualifying dawns wet and wild, the track is treacherous and the paddock is already full of crashed cars before the Jags go out. It will have a few more casualties when they come back in. Hitching a ride to assembly there are a few things that you notice. The first are the number of drivers standing around getting wet. Error. The second is that there are 2 cars on T1Rs. Oh dear.
One is Crossley. Fair enough, he hasn’t got any R1Rs, can’t argue with that. I take no delight in dashing his optimistic hope that they might offer an advantage. No, they’ll cost 3-4 seconds per lap in these conditions, there is no comparison with the softer tyre. If it absolutely pelts down and rivers form, then yes, but otherwise no. The other car is Patrick Doyle, who has a choice but got some bad advice, he was looking for the wet weather advantage, and gained a handicap.
The Lewis machine, with Kirkham at the wheel, arrives in assembly with steam pouring from the bonnet. It’s a new engine too. Senior Doyle is on the case in moments, suspect is a dodgy-looking expansion tank. In fact the answer is easy, the fan is manual rather than automatic, and in his borrowed car no-one had briefed him on the need to knock it on. A flat battery meant it had to stay running, hence the brew-up. Tracing the wire from fan to cockpit revealed the switch, and all was well again.
Dean Sewell’s new car is resplendent in a giant
With our two drivers set for wet, off they pour. As ever we have them out first, clear air means no traffic, but it does mean they are the first guinea pigs. And there’s a problem, all of our making. Philip has steering issues. Our tinkerings will cost him dear here, he has restricted left-hand steering angle, making at least half the corners rather problematic. Oops. That is going to cost him dear for the weekend, because he will not set a competitive time, and in these ideal conditions an F class car could be in contention for pole.
An F class car in this lot is the perfect weapon, it has more grip than the other cars. No power, but great traction. Heavy and on narrow rubber really does offer up the grip, I recall having to lift on corner exit to avoid ramming Palmer back in 2010, he couldn’t lay the power down, and that makes this an exciting contest, any F class pilot with balls today could take pole. Robbing Comer of the ability to steer left is therefore rather costly.
We watch the laptimes with interest. We like to play a game of “what should pole be.” We are armed with a lot of data from previous years, and some healthy optimism..
In general, the laptimes here will turn out to be the same as 2011’s wet qualifying, and about 2.5 seconds slower than 2010. Yes, it really has been 3 years of wet qualifyings in a row. Palmer and Ramm’s times for example are a carbon copy of last year, Crossley is 4/10 down but on even older rubber than last year what can you expect, and Drage and Comer have swapped over laptimes from last year. So though today looks wetter under a leaden sky, the track is about the same.
But last year Stew took pole with a 1.03, which is some three seconds per lap faster than today. Whilst he’s a madman, we know that even with his renowned car control in the damp, that sort of time could be at least matched by an equivalent madman.
And we don’t get it. Gary Davis takes pole with a high 1.05, which shouldn’t be enough. The E class cars should have beaten that, and didn’t. Palmer usually has a hangover in quali, and Ramm’s machine may perhaps not be set for the wet, but the time is disappointingly absent, we would have expected faster.
It is hard to tell, without hands on wheel, exactly what’s going on out there. They are clearly all struggling at Graham Hill, the lurid slides coming out of that corner are finally topped by Kirkham shortening Lewis’ car, whistling backwards into the scenery, but he’s not alone in taking damage out there, Baby Doyle runs well wide at Paddock and leaves a new stripe along the flanks of that big V12.
We watch with amusement as Jeffery, first out, takes his sweet time about letting Gail catch him. He was under strict orders to let her by and latch on for some wet weather driving lessons, her car is a better chassis and she has about four hundred times more track time, we’re not above sending a pilot out with orders to “follow that Jag.” But he’s actually going pretty well without, it must be 80% of the way into the session when she slides by.
We’re standing with Daddy Jeffery at noise test when the two XJ40s thunder onto the straight and out of sight, nose to tail and quad pipes barking at us. His face is a mix of joy, and fear, and pride. He can barely stand still. Did he ever think he’d see the day that his car would be slipstreaming Lil in pursuit of what might be saloon pole? No.
In these conditions we tend to discount the old XJ6s. Too light on the tail to lay the power down, they struggle, so we are rather impressed the
It is then business as usual with Gail shading Matt, but it is starting to get closer at the front of this grid when it rains.
Bit of a catalogue of woe further down though, Sewell’s box has broken, Dave Dye can’t make Dorlin’s car behave, no low end and a sudden delivery of huge top end without a deal of warning does make for a difficult car in the wet.
Kirkham has shortened Lewis’ XJ6, and the Kutuka hammering is suddenly in great demand. Interesting, we thought, that we should be called upon to fix an XJ6, we’ve never played with the older saloons before, and we find it a little odd that no-one else seemed prepared to assist. Usually it is all hands to the pump when a car needs helping back into action.
The Kutukans stumble into action. First things first, fix Comer’s steering. It is simple, and easy, but the hot engine and the driving rain make for an uncomfortable experience. Both cars then fuelled for the race and ready to go but for tyre pressures, which we leave set for wet and will only change at the last moment if necessary.
Then we can tackle the other machinery. A rotor arm for Dave Bye. A David and his laptop for Coppock. Two
Race repairs can be brutal, but that’s because the collision that does the damage is also brutal, to bend it you need to expend a lot of energy, and it takes more to put it back again. Removing the shattered backlight, and the car reversed up to the trailer, a winch cable fed through the opening allows the car to be pulled vaguely back into recognisable shape. Then everything has to be hit with large hammers, twisted, bent, mangled and clamped into place, drilled and riveted, then a duct tape special. Yellow tape borrowed from Gail, blue insulation tape from Crossley, a backlight unit from Morrant/Taylor, and the car is back out in its regular livery with all working lights.
There have been allegations over the years that this car features a switch to turn off the brake lights. Having had to get into the wiring to fix this thing, what we can say is that when we played with the car, they worked just fine. Though we will also say that the wiring generally was bloody awful, and that we wouldn’t be a bit surprised if periodically the car suffered a complete lighting failure across the board. The flat battery and lack of 1st gear also took us a little by surprise. New engine, but missed some of the basics. Simon Lewis, you are required to report to the headmaster at once.
Sadly there is naught to be done for Sewell. We carry a spare Getrag, but it’s of no help to an XJ6 driver.
The grid is swollen by the arrival of Howard, who has elected to have a busy weekend. A double-header at Silverstone with the CTCRC started yesterday, he’s done his 2nd race this morning, and was then to head here to qualify out of session and start last, doing therefore 4 races at 2 tracks in 3 days. But his tow vehicle broke down, so whilst he awaited repairs, and with the CTCRC being more flexible in this regard, he entered another race while he was there to get a few more laps in for something to do. Busy boy.
With everyone back in action, the opportunity to photograph a sleeping Stewert presents itself. We never turn that down. We marvel at the chance to actually see this mythical creature, he has holed up in his camper with the heater on full blast and cannot be coaxed into the daylight.
Vanessa was fixed yesterday, but still needs the rear pads swapping and the passenger seat removing, but this is the work of moments, for now we can watch the racing. Race conditions fail to improve, and the cars are set for wet as we head off to assembly. If you ever hitch a ride in an XJ40, try not to slam the door on your middle finger, the resulting mess is bloody, and demands more concentration to activate the video camera.
The race was interesting, but pretty clean. Drier than quali, but with the occasional rain squall to enliven proceedings just as it looked like the tarmac might offer traction. We love those conditions, constantly hunting for that grip and sliding over and back under the limit three times per corner, it’s so much fun you can’t not enjoy it.
Comer tends to race better than he qualifies, Jeffery tends to lose places hand over fist as he’s simply too polite, so it will be no surprise to see them close on each other, something that always makes us a little nervous because we really don’t want to have to repair two cars that hit each other.
There is clearly a busy first couple of corners, out of our sight, but we can predict what happened, the traffic jams here on the opening lap are always a place to make big gains, especially in the wet, so when Drage appears in p4 it’s no surprise. He’s not one of our drivers, but he is a class F driver, and that means immediately that of the lead cars I would prefer him to win the race, I champion the class F machinery and I really don’t care who’s driving it, I am still campaigning for the roadgoing category.
I know he’s got to make his kills fast if he’s going to win this, the F class car is at its best early when the modified cars are still trying to work out if they have grip, whilst the F class machine has it all there on demand right away, they are a much easier car to attack with in the wet and a good assault early can make hay. Chris Palmer is most likely to find the pace sooner, he has more in reserve in that car so it’s easier to locate it.
I find myself willing Drage to make the overtakes whilst he has time, I made the error of not pushing my advantage in 2010 because I wanted a championship and the points mattered to me, but with hindsight I could have made far more of that race, and it would be good to see someone else succeed where I did not. Sadly the same disease afflicts him, and within a couple of laps the chance has gone, the mod squad have worked out how to find the grip and will begin to extend, the F class machine has to accept that the game is up. I wish, for the first time in a while, that I’d had my car here, I really fancied a go at this one.
The lead trio ease away, and there is a sense that Davis, who dropped to third off the line, is biding his time. Palmer makes an error here in that it looks to us as if he can go faster, but is not extending the lead, Ramm tussling with
So does it prove, because when
The saloons are interesting too, a good start from Daddy Doyle has him side by side with Gail at Paddock, and she appears to encourage him to run out of road, but that’s his natural state anyway, and he hangs on round the outside even at Druids, the wide line there offering up grip, and that puts him inside at Graham Hill, where he repays the favour, Gail goes off the grippy stuff, and Doyle sweeps into the saloon lead, never to be challenged thereafter. Don't mess with Papa Doyle.
Jefferys drops back from this duet, which is a bit of a shame, he’s faster than his race pace shows, and though he makes a fist of it his inexperience at overtaking shows. Perhaps not as key, however, as the fact that we all tend to forget that it’s his first race here, and indeed his first wet race, ever. His dad has been here before, but not the boy child.
Comer is caught up in as many fights as anyone, it does look like a fun afternoon to be out there playing, and he does finish the race with that wild-eyed look of adrenaline that we all pay for, it was most amusing watching his helmet swivelling inside the cockpit as he attempted to work out how to defend from Howard’s XJ12 coming through the field.
That car doesn’t make the progress we expected, in fact Bob Beecham can lay claim to having held that car off for a full lap, and that’s one for anyone’s CV. Curious that the XJ12 fails to chop through as expected, though the pilot’s expressed dislike of the wet could well be the secret we also did our research of his CTCRC laptimes here, and it may simply be that the car doesn’t suit the track particularly well.
A poor race for Coppock has him throw it into the gravel at Clearways, something he’ll do later in the weekend too, but as it’s early on and he’s in the firing line he gets a reprieve here and towed out again to rejoin. I can never quite remember how that rule works, because I thought that was acceptable so long as you stay in the car, which he did so that’s fine, but if I recall Rodney Frost at Donnington was off the road and out of the car, yet was still allowed to get back in and rejoin the race, something I don’t to this day understand?
Crossley goes missing. We pay attention to his antics because he’s last of the T1R runners, and it’s quite fun to see someone who refuses to accept that they are old news, it appeals to our shoestring origins, harkens back to a time when your tyre budget for the car was £500 per year, rather than every two months. The photos suggest he had something of an off, but he was certainly not the only one.
Disappointing pace from Webster. He really has no interest in racing in the wet, he’d rather be at home with a bottle of red, simply not enjoying it and it shows in his pace. Cars slither and slide all over the road, and there are numerous offs at McLaren, cars then stuck there for tens of seconds as the rear tyres spin uselessly on the wet grass. Connew in particular I thought was going to set up camp there, though as he does rejoin we cover our eyes as it is right into the path of another car. Again.
For all the chaos, not a lot of damage. Partially it is because the speed isn’t there in the wet, but mostly as we have seen before the cars tend to give each other more space and respect. Panel damage is expensive. As the race nears conclusion
Good fun to watch, but clearly more fun to race in Back to camp, a lift in Vanessa as the car is now ready for tomorrow and Stew has ventured outside to try the brakes. This is most odd, because we join the train of returning racing XJS, in a racing XJS, and there must be some confused faces in the helmets, wondering where that car was out there. 3 up in an E class is tricky, and made worse if your chauffeur works out that sporadic acceleration can cause your brother to head-butt you. Repeatedly. A trying day is over. Time for the greatest challenge of all, to try and cause a smile or even basic human emotion to flicker across either of the two stone faces behind the Kentagon bar...
The girls all line up for Bernie.
And they pay him. Good to be the king.
www.NT-R.com
A last minute check of the brakes.
The boy probably needs them. He uses them a lot.
Why would you do this to a car, even a Beetle?
Fugly.
Horny Jaguar humps trailer.
It was a bit dull in the day of downtime.
Morgan drivers turn out to be incredibly whiny when it rains.
Buy a car with a roof then.
It does reduce tyre wear this way, but braking becomes an issue.
Some entertainment whilst we wait.
There's little that's more manly than a big fire, at a race track, with beer.
Finished and ready to roll again. Still two full days before it's in action.
Oops.
That looks expensive.
Getting your pilots to assembly good and early in a busy session is critical.
It is resplendant as the noonday sun, is it not?
If you get the reference - bazinga!
T1Rs on this car. Talk about tying one hand behind your back. And then glueing it to your feet.
They're a colourful bunch sometimes.
Well, he's shortened that, no mistake.
Look, hit it there, and don't get my fingers...
Gail had yellow tape. Crossley had blue.
From a couple of yards, you'd never know.
And if there's a chance to get his sticker on a car, Chris will appear as if summoned from on high.
Turn 1, lap 1.
The gaps in the field usually tell a great deal of the story of the start.
In the background, Bob Beecham vs David Howard. Fastest car v slowest. But I swear that by the back striaght Bob was back in front.
Photo Nick Gage
This doesn't look like a good idea.
Oh dear.
Karma can be fast-acting. And memories are long.
Comer goes for the late apex. Morrant for the late apex. Connew....makes another choice.
Photo by the other Gage!
Someone's been watching Stewert's onboard videos, hasn't he?
Nicely done sir.
Oh....
That's not how it's meant to end.
Coppock enjoys the Brands beach.
And the valet parking service here is a bit rough and ready.
Gravel gets in your boots. Trust me, I've been in a lot of it.
I don't even want to know what they get up to in the Porsche club that leads to this plea.
With space in the paddock being at such a premium, some interesting solutions were tried....
And time to put the girls to bed, we have urgent business at the bar.
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