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| Table Mountain trying to hide behind a rain cloud |
At any rate, I arrived at the track to crisp clear air and blue skies. More importantly the track was dry and clean. The clean bit, it turns out, is quite important. You see, we had had the mother of all rain storms the previous couple of days and this had effectively served to wash the track surface. I though this was quite a good thing. Surely a clean track is a happy track. Actually, it seems a clean track is a slippery track. But more of that later.
I pulled into my pit bay next to Paul's GT40 and set about getting the documentation sorted out for the day. Scrutineering passed without incident and it was time for coffee and a catch up. Ant in the Turbo Type 5 was present as was Haydn in the red supercharged Type 5. Today would be his last race in Fine Cars before he upped the stakes and joined us in Sports & GT's. Conspicuous by his absence was Craig who was busy making a new light weight body for his car. He tends to follow the Colin Chapman approach of "adding lightness" to the problem of going faster. Myself, I tend more towards the American view of adding cubic inches rather. Craig had promised to bring his pom-poms and come and cheer-lead for us later in the morning.
I stood for a while and chatted to Paul about his GT40. It's a wonderful machine and he has been getting steadily faster all season. Tweaks to his brakes coupled with more confidence had seen him come very close to the 1:24 Class D barrier last race day. We chatted about breaking out since I had snuck in a 1:23 during our track test the previous week. We both decided that sandbagging would be a good idea lest any of us end up in Class C.
Qualifying was called and we all hustled to the grid to get a feel for the track surface we would be playing on for the day. It still amazes me how different the track can be from race to race. There were only 25 competitors entered in Sports & GT's, a rather depleted field with many folks away, taking advantage of the short three day week we had just had. I lined up behind Paul and we headed out. The track was cold and seemed to be a little more slippery than usual. Still, with the tyres warmed up I managed to pass Paul and get in a couple of quick laps before the front runners started lapping me. At this point clear track is a thing of the past so I pulled into pit lane behind Steve Humble's Mallock which had suspicious wisps of steam coming from the engine area.
Back in the pits Paul seemed quite happy with his performance, he had put in a concerted effort just after I had passed him and was feeling good about qualifying high up. Thus, it was quite a shock to him when he discovered he had qualified second last...in Class C. The silly chap had posted a cracking 1:23:3 instantly punting him up to Class C. He grumbled a bit, but I think he was secretly quite chuffed, as well he should be.
This, rather surprisingly, left me on pole for Class D with Hennie and Martin breathing down my neck. My car was now feeling fantastic. The brakes were working exceptionally well and my new approach to the gears seemed to be having the desired effect. Ant was still plagued by his miss fire from last week so had qualified second last in the field and was considering sitting things out.
About this time Craig and the crew arrived and he set about assisting Ant in sourcing a new set of plug leads which cured the miss fire. This effectively meant I now had Hennie, Martin and Ant breathing down my neck for turn 1.
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| Ant in full race trim |
The day was warming up nicely as race 1 was called. We rolled out on our usual warm up form up sequence, and I made sure I was close behind the car in front of me when the lights went out. Twenty five cars thundered into turn 1 and I managed to keep my place fending off a serious attack from Hennie. Turn 2 was much of the same, but then as I blocked Martin on the outside both Hennie and Ant shot past on the inside down to turn 3. "The buggers" I thought and set off in hot pursuit. The field stretched out and they left me a couple of car lengths back. Finally I managed to get my rhythm going and started to reel them in. Because they were battling each other they were slowing down allowing me to catch up. I bided my time. It was bound to happen. Hammering into turn 4 Ant spun after the first apex. He did a graceful pirouette off to the inside and neatly reversed back across the track. This required Hennie, who was close behind, to spear off into the farmlands of turn 4 to miss the reversing Harper. I sailed passed the mayhem and set about putting as much time between them and myself as possible.
We would later discover that Ant had done slight damage to his right rear wheel, giving it some negative toe, which resulted in him spinning off again later and also adding his own brand of "lightness" to the front of his car by removing sections of the fibreglass nose.
Hennie, thankfully, remained a slightly growing silver dot in my mirrors while I rather surprisingly passed Paul with ease on the back straight of the final lap. The race ended with me managing to secure the win in Class D. It was only when we pulled into the post race holding area that I noticed a couple of cars missing and some others sporting trendy new paint markings. Seems the racing had been quite close, and possibly a bit too close in cases. Eric's rotary Lotus 23 was parked up on the exit of turn 5 looking a little worse for wear after a coming together with a Porsche. While a couple of other heated discussions were on the go regarding rights of way etc. Paul had some fetching Mallock orange down the side of his car too. Steve had touched him while trying to avoid a Lotus during a lapping manoeuvre, in the process folding Pauls mirror back. This left Paul with a serious blind spot, not difficult with a GT40, and together with a gear selection problem had seen him call things off and coasting home.
I arrived back in the pits to find Ant busy shovelling sand out of the front of his nose cone. The ever useful duct tape was employed and he pronounced his car fit to race. No one had noticed the odd toe out of the rear drivers side wheel at this point. While we headed over to the clubhouse for some lunch Steve decided to change the head gasket on his Mallock. Its amazing what some guys can do in the couple of hours between races.
I had drawn third on the grid for the second race so would be starting behind Martin with Hennie next to me. Ant and Paul would bring up the rear of Class C ahead of us. You could have covered all five cars with a dainty hanky. We were that close. A mere 3 tenths of a second covered all five drivers. This was going to be a close one. Provided everyone stayed on the black stuff of course. I was determined to repeat my race 1 performance and was glued to Martin's rear as the light went out. I knew I could out drag the two Lotii on the straights, but the twisties were a different matter. I bolted ahead of Hennie into turn 1, but he emerged next to me on the exit. I out dragged him into turn 2, but was slightly distracted by the odd snaking actions of Ant ahead of me. Hennie managed to sneak passed me and then, narrowly missing Ant, dived passed him too into turn 3. Something was not right with Ant's car and as I went wide to pass him on the outside of turn three he slowed to pull off, a victim of the ragged handling induced by the rear wheel toe out.
The two Lotii were now a way down the track and I set off after them. A lap later I had managed to catch up and I passed Hennie on the main straight only to be passed by him again coming out of turn 2. I pulled out to pass him again on the back straight, but almost collected a slow moving Porsche on the right of the track. This was not going to work, I needed a better plan. About this time we were joined by Arno who had spun in turn 2 and for a couple of laps he mixed things up with us until he passed Martin and made a break for it down the back straight.
By this time I had figured that the only way to stay ahead of these two was to pass them on the back straight and make up as much time on the front straight so that I could stay ahead in the twisty bits. I figured that as long as I could get to the back straight again ahead I would be able to pull out a lead and be safe. As Arno passed Martin going into turn 4 I saw my chance, we were all bunched up and as we exited turn 4 I unleashed the V8 and swallowed Hennie whole. Martin has a turbo rotary in his Lotus so was having none of that, but I did manage to dispatch him down the main straight and slithered into turn 1 on the hairy limit almost throwing it all away mid corner. Still, they were both behind me which is what counted. Now to keep it that way. I hauled the car around the back of the circuit braking as late as I dared and powering on as early as I could. I made it to the start of the back straight in front and the rest was history. Once I had the two straights to my disposal I managed to put a good number of car lengths between us.
I could now see Paul's GT40 ahead and I seemed to be catching him. New target then and I set my sights on his twin tail pipes in the distance.
The rest of the race was spent chipping away at his lead. I realised that I could out brake him into the fast corners and was gathering much distance on him into turn 5 and 1. But I was running out of laps. On the last lap we entered the back straight a couple of car lengths apart. I cooked up a crazy plan to out brake him into turn 5 and then sprint to the line ahead of him. In the spit second it took to formulate the plan it seemed perfect. I drifted towards the inside of the track and waited for his brake lights. Once they came on I waited some more and then climbed onto my brakes and headed for the inside of the corner. "Fortune favours the brave" rang through my mind. Turns out I waited a little to long. The cliche says nothing about the timing of the brave. Thankfully Paul is a gentleman of a driver and saw me coming.
I hit the corner way too fast and vainly tried to get my tyres to both steer and stop beyond their limits at the same time. I failed, losing the rear, catching it again, losing it again and ending up facing the corner viewing things from the curb. I swear Paul waved as he shot past. Suddenly I thought about Hennie who could not be far behind. Paul was Class C, but Hennie was Class D. I would have thrown the Class D win away if he passed me now. I hooked first and skidded back onto the track the engine bouncing off the limiter, hooking second just left the rear wheels spinning and finally third got me going again. I crossed the line to take the win in Class D berating myself for almost tossing it away. In the post race holding area I went over and apologised to Paul for almost taking him out. He told me that he had seen me coming and was wondering how he was going to keep me behind him until he heard the screeching of tyres. Then he figured he just needed to stay out of the way and I would do the rest for him. How right he had been.
Anyway, it had been a good days racing, with my first outright class win where I had actually passed people and beaten them as opposed to winning because there was nobody else in the class. I was happy with the car and now knew for sure that I could not brake at the 50m marker on the back straight. On the up side I did manage to record my highest ever top speed, 221km/h. Not surprisingly it was going into turn 5 on the last lap of the race.
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| A sweet victory at last |
Unfortunately I did not have the camera mounted for race 1, but the clip for race 2 can be viewed from the link below. The middle bit is a little boring, but the finale is worth the wait.
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