PART VII - GENERATIONS

BATTLEFIELD TESTING

A brief foray to a Cadwell trackday to further settle the car and driver to each other, and then suddenly the season was upon us.

As is customary, the car was finished at the last possible moment, cosmetic frippery having been demanded by our furry-faced taskmaster. The need to add rather difficult paintwork did rather delay the important part of the job, the fitment of the new and shiny rollbars, so racy that it made me want to touch myself.

It took an awful lot of beating, filler and sanding to erase the bodywork problems on the car. It wasn't that far shy of a full respray, only the roof and bonnet escaped. The Mercedes silver paint though was a revelation. Having played with metallics and micatallics in particular, we've always hated them, but this stuff goes on so well, covers so effectively, that we finish the job and conclude that it is impossible to make a proper mess of it with this stuff.

The custom paint that Philip has elected to have is a right pain in the neck. Lines in the middle of panels, lines that follow no definite line, and the problem with the arselift car is it tries to look a little more rounded and smooth, yet here we are laying sharp lines across it. That it came out as well as it did was surprising.

We happen to have an arselift boot spoiler, and that too is a pain, because the bootlid is so different that to fasten it on you have to take out the backlights.

With that done the car does look a lot smarter. The dents and dodgy paint is gone, there is much more gloss to it all, and the paint scheme works better than we thought.

We do get time to play with a few bits before we leave, but the pieces to finish the roll bars arrive so late that we'll be assembling the front at the track.

Philip was soon beating the car round the place, and learning the new track. We keep an interested eye on laptimes, because we've had to guess at what the target time is. The chance to get hold of the car myself for three laps in the afternoon allows a little feedback.

A decent balance, but a little unsteady on the rear, the classic class F rear wobble from the subframe moving, you feel the tyres bite and then kick the shell back into line as a seperate movement. It's a bit disconcerting, and only really notable on the stickier tyre. Other than that, the car is pretty stable, nothing hiding there to worry us, but the problem here is I'm not on the ragged edge with it in three laps, and until you lose control you don't really know.

The times fall with the day, and by 5pm it's smiles time, he's hit the target time. Repeat that tomorrow and he's done it. Bit of a slow burn, but then that may be the smart way, not everyone is best served by a hair on fire assault.

A proper Kutuka spanner check of the car revealed that the clonk I noted was in fact a missing gearbox nut. So much for that modification, it's taken less than a season-equivalent mileage to come loose, but at least we caught it.

Race 1 went according to plan. He caused us some nerves on the pitwall, as again it was a very gradual build up of speed, but he did get there. Lease we know what to expect from the pilot, what type of driver he is. We're more of the "pole is set on lap 2" type, but nothing wrong with this way of doing things. He takes class pole by the sort of margin we demand of a Kutuka car and driver.

Other than a little tap from Paul Merrett in the race, Comer brought it home as we'd hope for a perfect set of 17 points. Not as fast in the race as in qualifying, class rival Bruce Cologne Brookes was to be alongside for the second race. A lesson to be learned here, in that day 1 is where you earn your start position for day 2, and the more cars you can get between you and your rivals on day 1, the better you will fare.

Race 2 went wrong. Too slow early on, bogged down in the pack, massive damage from Coppock junior getting it wrong and smacking him square in the passenger door, our complaint being that he was still there to get hit instead of 20 seconds up the road, but then we're very fussy. But that is the difference between going fast out of the box and taking your sweet time about getting up to pace - the rolling start had robbed Philip of whatever dose of adrenaline he usually gets making his incredible standing starts.

When it did kick in he made a move on the wildly-sliding Askham that bordered on the genius but ended as insanity, and a front wing added itself to the list of damaged panels. The eventual end of the race, three of us leaning over the fence begging him to leave the saloon alone, spoke to a lack of experience at winning championships.

With a lap to go, don't go for glory against a car you're not racing, because the spin here onto the infield ended his race. A wobble from the car and not seeing the last lap board meant that he parked it with about 400 yards to go, a DNF instead of 14 more points. Doh.

The inability to pass Askham did show us a few things. The classic D/F class pass is engineered over the course of several corners, you pass a more powerful car by popping them on the exit and holding them off line. Philip had so much more corner speed that he was going in tight to the corner and trying to overtake up the inside - leading to a drag race on the exit that doesn't work against a more potent car. And to a spin when you lay into the power too hard.

To improve his chances, more power needed. The most cost effective way to do it is to swap an AJ6 for an AJ16 engine. Which Bear and Officer David achieve in a single day. That's engine out of an X300, engine out of XJS, swap all the bits over, and plug it in. Not bad going, to say I wouldn't let them in the garage.

The repairs to the car, however, are extensive. The collision did some major damage. The door is stoved right in, and the outer sill has been crushed, as has the rear wing. They are not easy to repair. Hammers, feet, pull straps, chisels, and the car is gradually pulled, beaten and kicked back into shape. The roll cage, so heavily rebuilt over the winter, has in this instance actually saved the car's life, the damage stopped at the enormous plates welded in. Had the cage been as it was before we started...

Facelift doors aren't easy to find, and this one is scrap. We do eventually source one, but postage takes time, and we are run past our deadline, leaving no choice but to fix the one we have. This means cutting the inner skin out of the door, rendering it illegal for the class, and with big hammers, drifts, and a huge piece of 3/4 plate, beating the outer skin and the side intrusion bars back into shape, including the car's distinctive swage line.

With it back together we then have to tack weld the inner skin back in the door to make it legal again, or it would be a "lightened" panel that class F cars cannot have. Barmy, but regs are regs.

The car is painted, badly, with hours to go. Not as neat as we'd like, but good enough to race. To Brands she goes then, back together, with more power.

The wobble that retired the car at Snetterton? A small stone in the tyre bead. 14 lost points for the sake of a tiny pebble. The driver is swiftly briefed that if necessary he is to carry the car home next time.

Brands itself netted two 3rd places, which was irksome, because the car was faster than that, the pilot was faster than that, and though it rained, which usually suits him, it didn't somehow all come together. Pace in testing was enough to do the job. Pace in quali was not. With Skelton out it would always be a toss up which of them would win the race for pole, but Seath's intervention was unexpected.

The demon start of a dry race deserted him, and though he nabbed Seath back he'd been passed by Drage in the melee, and after that, precisely on the pace of the front two, he never got back into range. At least race two would see him start immediately astern.

Again, the demon start was compromised, this time by V12s firing through from the back, and though the race went better, same outcome. Philip passed Skelton nicely, didn't know he'd done it, and let him back through. Whilst giving chase he ran a hint wide at Graham Hill, dropped that tiny margin behind, and clawed it back too late. 3rd again despite being consistently faster. Irksome, but it happens. That is, however, now 4 races down, and 3 podiums. Points look good at that, and points are what the long-game is all about.

Katrina comes home without fresh damage, which means we get time to play a little more. She gains the bonnet stripe he wants, and we revisit the rear spoiler, finally attaching it more securely, and wiring in the high level brake light we grafted in there, to act as a rain light.

Problem is, at this stage, we're without feedback. The driver is not reporting any wayward tendencies with the car. It bounces happily at both ends, but we can't do any more tinkering without knowing what goes wrong when it lets go, and the car isn't letting go except when it really lets go in a big way. We cannot cure an ailment without knowing its symptoms. This is where a lot of track time and a committed, careful, analytical test comes in to play, but there's no testing now for a few months. We have to assume it's working well. We stock up on new parts in case we need to change anything, but no sense fitting them. She goes to Donington as she was, mechanically.

She doesn't come back as she was. One front wing and two bumpers to fix. The wing and front bumper, well, own fault. The rear, certainly not.

A wet quali showed that the car must be behaving, because he put it fourth on the grid. You can't do that with a car that doesn't work. The front end damage came as he went to pass our other Bearded Warrior, decided he was giving him the corner, then watched the gap disappear. Ironically something Philip once did to me at Brands Hatch in the wet!

4th on the grid though, and a combined grid at that!

He then cleaned up in the race, though lost fastest lap due mostly to a lack of competition. We have by this point spotted that our pilot is very much a man in search of combat, not a laptime hunter. If he can't see it, he doesn't chase it.

Race 1 does see him tagged in the rear end by a saloon who doesn't know his arse from his elbow. Ironic therefore that the following day the same car will spoil his race in what looked very much like a revenge attack for this incident. We were certainly not amused by this behaviour.

The smack in the rear quarter to "pit" the car off at the Kraner curves was extremely dangerous, and Philip was lucky to get away with only a long grassy excursion, and to drop from first to third in class.

Fortunate that his quali had been so good that he actually extended his championship lead then, he leaves Donington with a clear race in hand in terms of points. Damage is annoying, but we can fix that.

Repairs take some time. The front wing is removed and beaten into shape again, the two bumpers extensively repaired. It costs £50 in materials, but contrast that with the going rate for replacements - £400. Bear does offer a rather impressive cost saving on bodykit repair compared with renewal, and he keeps getting better at it.

The car is repainted to a good standard for Oulton Park, where a faultless drive sees Philip take an uncontested full points drive, easily clear of the class. Proper success in class F is boring.

It leaves him, at the halfway point of the season, two full race wins clear of class F on points and only 4 off the lead of the overall championship. When we collected that car earlier this year, who would have predicted this? Not one to count chickens though, I think we might need to do some more testing. I don't agree this car is yet going fast enough with any consistency, and one DNF will change all this instantly. Of course, less that DNF at Snetterton he'd lead by 9 points...

I have a plan.