PHASE 2 – testing, and Donington..

A baking hot trackday, one twelve year-old pilot, one jaded XJS racer, two seats, and a vast supply of petrol. The goal? A 1.30 laptime.

I’m working on the basis that the car is a little above F class XJS weight, with a smidge above F class power, on inferior suspension setup, so this thing needs to be floating round a little way off what a top F-class XJS can do here. The F class pace is about a 1.27/1.28 as near as I can figure it from my own car’s escapades here, Helen did a flat 1.26 in the night race last year, and though she was lightened for that it was, after all, in the dark, so that’s my best guess at what a laptime needs to be.

The pre-pubescent pilot has never driven this car here before, and I’m not exactly familiar with the place, and I’ve never driven this car before, so we’re sharing this trackday as a rather steep learning curve for us both. With some of the grosser problems caused by the rolling road corrected, the real question is how the engine performs, and whether we have indeed cured this car’s overheating issues. Anything over and above that is a bonus.

The small child is therefore sent out to discover where the corners are, and to perform a reliability check on the car. It is very quickly apparent that the car works, and also that he is utterly incapable of exercising patience. I have long since forgotten what it’s like to be a teenager, in fact I can’t recall how old he is, I’m not sure he shaves yet, and that need to attack the world at 100mph thinking that you’re the next Schumacher. The orders were to build up slowly, and check the thing is actually working. What we got was full chat out of the box.

 Lucky then that the car proved itself to be reliable. Smoky, as predicted, and using more oil than we like, but all entirely predictable without any oil control rings left intact. Temperatures and pressures, however, are good, the Bear appears to know what he’s doing.

We know the car isn’t making the power it should. It gained a nice flowed head during the rebuild, some of Power4Peanuts – www.power4peanuts.com – proven wizardry behind it, but the whole thing is being blatantly strangled by an exhaust system you wouldn’t use to fire peas across a classroom. We know this, but it doesn’t matter today, this is not about finding maximum power, it’s about making it reliable, a car the boy wonder can actually use to get some laps in. There is far more time in the pilot than the machinery, and that’s why we’re here today.

The joy of it is that this is a trackday, not a test day. Oh yes. That means we can have a passenger, and that is crucial to the plan.

The kamikaze kid is trying to bust laptimes from the first lap onwards. It’s rather pointless, not knowing the corners, tyres not set, and a swarm of trackday heroes to contend with, a number of familiar faces from our previous forays. The joy of waving an even larger Jaguar at them is worth the trip all by itself!

The car behaves itself, and the times come down, but then they stop progressing. This was what we had expected, and it’s where testing goes wrong for so many people. You can’t do the same thing lap after lap 100 times and expect to go faster, you  might get more consistent at the one laptime you’re setting, but not quicker. You have to hone your approach, try new things and refine them that little bit lap after lap, changing the lines, the braking zone. It is often the case that your approach to a corner is radically different by halfway through a day, sometimes even trying a different gear or settling the car by braking instead of lifting to increase your exit speed. All the stuff that the midfield forget to consider.

It is this part of the testing process that we’re now here to instill in the nappy-wearer. Stealing the car off him, and nosing it onto the track, the XJ40 is a painful place to be. My actual skeleton doesn’t fit the seat. Whilst I concede that there is padding I carry that the miniature child pilot does not, this is more fundamental, my very bones can’t get into this seat, so I’m perched halfway down it, and relying on the belts to hold me in place, without the lateral support of the seat I’m sliding about like I’m on a church pew.

That aside, the car is vaguely familiar, I drive an X300 on the road, and the drivetrain here is essentially XJS, so it all sort of feels like it belongs, except for the fact that the car feels much bigger. Visibility is superb, there is an acre of glass everywhere you look, and that does reinforce the feeling that I’m driving a cathedral.

Takes a lap or two to remember the corners, a couple more to work out what the car wants to do, and a couple more to establish if it likes the way I would choose to drive it. The idea is to take the two completely different styles we have, pick the bits that work, use them. Pushing it on a bit on lap 5 and there are heinous sounds coming from the rear under heavy braking. Really, really nasty banging noises, the rear subframe is quite clearly trying to get out. It does temper the assault somewhat, but the curious thing is that despite the roll of a fishing trawler and the weight of a supertanker, the balance isn’t half bad. It tends a little towards understeer, but that can be reduced with a late turn/apex, allowing early throttle, and all that roll does seem to let it put its power down. It’s better than I was expecting, albeit on these more tempered installation laps.

6 laps puts me half a second faster. Back in, do the tyre pressures, and change pilots. It’s lunchtime when we strap the poor boy in the passenger seat and we potter out to give my version of the lines. It’s interesting stuff, because at low speed he’s like a nodding dog, agreeing with everything I say, when really I was hoping for disagreement and debate. At full chat his little feet are scrabbling for grip and his hand goes for the rollcage’s doorbar.

On a second drive, the car does respond better to a more violent approach, which is most odd. Throwing it, literally hurling it at the old hairpin, and the exit that results from this very lurid approach is surprisingly quick. That’s not really right at all. That, to me, speaks to the car’s setup being way off, for it to respond to a hooligan approach rather than the technical says, in my tiny and inexperienced brain, that it’s wrong.

However, the car is working. That’s progress. A functioning machine allows it to run long enough to find its other flaws, and that’s how this is going to be. The number of people that turn up having spent thousands in the pursuit of more power, and don’t test the car, then break down on lap 3 of qualifying, I just don’t get what they can be thinking.

We change seats, and my instructions to do his usual thing but at 2/3 pace is utterly ignored. If this is 2/3 pace then I really need to step my game up, because it’s terrifying. He has absolutely no sense of fear, and zero mechanical sympathy. There are, however, some bad habits here, and we need to address them.

Downshifts are interesting, simply ram the gearlever from flat in 4^th straight into 3^rd without allowing any time whatsoever for the brakes to slow the car one whit, the rev counter is actually trying to get out and run off for a holiday, the rear wheels chirping in protest, and the valves dancing on the bonnet.

The lines are classic – in that turn in is too early in most corners. Jags like it late, it’s just how it is, you need a bundle of grip to take the small car lines, and this hasn’t got that. It’s impressive to watch, he just rolls this mammoth into a corner far too fast and waits for the accident to stop happening, then picks up the power when it gathers itself together. Brave as hell, but not smart, and not quick. It’s now me trying to find somewhere for my arms and legs, and frankly the pit wall seems like a good place for both.

It is the braking in the middle of the Kraner Curves that has me losing weight in a real hurry, the rear of the car is not having this at all, the car is snapping sideways, and we’re then gathering it all up into the hairpin, in the middle of the road and only just staying on the tarmac because he has the reflexes of Bruce Lee. Wait til twenty years of excess beer has got to him, then we’ll see if he wants to drive like this.

My pleading to slow down, reinforced by lots of shouting and arm waving, eventually takes effect. I explained that if he braked there again I would punch him in the testicles on the spot, and I didn’t care what sort of accident we had as a result.

A different line into each corner is explained with lots of pointing, and screaming of the word “exit.” But the concept of a slow lap is lost on him, it’s remarkable, he cannot go slowly. Just can’t do it. We finally explain one corner, and he puts the car on that line I want to try, and then stamps on the power so we rocket up to the next one, later on the brakes than anything I’d ever dream of trying, and now we have to wait a lap before we can try this corner at a lower speed. Herding cats is easier. I could sew a jelly to a trifle before I could get this boy to slow down.

Eventually, after my patience has been tested for a dozen laps and I’m starting to consider violence as a real alternative, it starts to come together. The waving finger and the scream of “exit” continue to remind him that it’s all about how we come out of the corner, not how fast we go into it, but he’s smoother, and the car starts to feel more settled. He’s not staying on the lines I would, but I’m not claiming that they were right, I’m more than happy for him to do something different, so long as the approach is sound.

The noise from the rear is terrifying still, but there’s nothing we can do about that, it is how it is. Into the paddock and released from this prison my first act is to kiss the tarmac like a sweaty, nomex-clad pope.

The boy is sent out again, and now the stopwatch starts to encourage us. It clicks down by a second per lap, three times in a row. He has listened, and learned. It is oddly rewarding. I don’t claim to know how to drive well, that is a level of arrogance I have yet to attain. I do, however, think I know more than some, and the idea that something I have explained has caused someone else to travel more quickly is most encouraging. As Dermott explained to me long ago, being better than many does not mean you’re any good, it merely makes you less crap. Point is, those laptimes are now coming down fast.

Did he ever hit the 1.30? Oh yes. The expensive telephone that I confiscated at the start of the day, to stop him fiddling with the poxy thing, can now be returned. Had he not hit his target, it was mine to keep. The torment that being without his phone caused in this teenage tart was very funny. Strapped into a racing car, helmet on, pleading with me just to show him the screen, utterly incapable of focussing on what he needed to, it was like dealing with an addict. Weird.

Day over, and the amusing thing was that it needs fuel, and it has a tax disc. But the boy can’t drive it there. I can. With chief engineer along for the ride, and to lend an expert ear, we might have tested the car’s potential as a B road barnstormer in our quest for petrol. I tell you what though, this car, on those tyres, on the backroads, is simply brilliant fun. I did think we were going to die at one point, but that’s quite normal anytime I get in a saloon.

Race day dawned wet. Matthew put the car 3^rd on the combined XJS/saloon grid in qualifying. Approximately 20 places higher than usual. Need we say more about the importance of practice?

STAGE 3 COMING SOON – MORE UPGRADES,