How to change brake pads...while on the move!

It's been a while, but after much fiddling, tweaking and general mucking about, we where back trackside for a race day. The year had started with such a vicious pace that I felt I was already racing, and ended up missing the first official race day of the year.

Last year had seen a lot of development at the front of the car to help curb my excessive consumption of brake disks. So much time and effort had been spent focusing on the front of the car that some other areas had been a little neglected, as I was to later find out.

Anyway, as is often the case for this time of the year, the day dawned bright and clear with temperatures gently nudging the 30's predicted. I saddled up the beast, filled the fuel tank and headed to the track. I had quite a lot to do this particular morning, since, having missed the first race day, I would need to have my car check over by the scrutineers, have it sound tested, apply the copious number of sponsor stickers and finally register for the actual race.

New stickers applied, now off to scrutineer

Once all the stickers had been applied, it was time to have the car checked out. Thankfully it passed with flying colours, mainly because it was still the same car as the one I had been using all of last season, and no sudden rule changes had been introduced.

It was then off to the sound test bay for the sound test. I put that in italics, because in reality I had to reverse my car backwards out of the scrutineering bay and over to the edge of the grassy patch nearby. Something about reduced reflective noise off the concrete. Now, my car is not all that noisy. Granted, it does not have a silencer as such, but it does have the mother of all turbo's strapped to the exhaust. The turbo serves to dramatically reduce the sound output of the car, to the extent that my car is known as one of the "quiet ones" on the track. 

Imagine my surprise, then, when I essentially failed the sound test!

The FIA have a specification for allowable sound. It's a fairly generous 105dB. My car tipped the meter at 107.7dB. Thankfully, our esteemed devision chairman had been in discussions with the club for some time around the issue of noise, and had provided documentation relating to the increased noise limit in use when applied to mid or rear engined cars. This limit was 108dB, so I was allowed to race. I was a little suspect around the whole thing to be honest, but collected my sticker and headed off before anyone had a chance to change their minds.

Back in the pit there was much muttering. Apparently 12 out of a field of 26 cars had technically failed the sound test. This year was looking to get off to a heated start before we even hit the track. Still, qualifying was called and we all headed onto the track. Soon after I slithered through the second corner, I realised that one of the areas I had neglected during last years efforts, was my tyres. 

My car runs on semi-slicks as they can mostly be passed off as road legal. They operate in a similar fashion to full blown slicks in that they offer the driver a given number of heat cycles. The idea is that once the tyre heats up, you get grip. Each time it heats up and cools down again, the rubber compound hardens ever so slightly, making the next heat cycle that bit less effective. My tyres still have plenty of tread on them, but importantly, they have a whole season's worth of racing together with a couple of track days baked into them. It's a bit like racing on tyres made of the stuff more commonly found in polyurethane suspension bushes.

It was great drifting practice, if nothing else, and I was quite surprised to have clocked a 1.24 lap time, just 0.03 of a second behind Paul in his GT40. A quick peek at the timesheet revealed a Class D bursting at the seams with 12 cars, almost half the entire field, 5 of which were within a second of each other. 

This could be a fun race, if not season!

Less appealing was that fact that my 1.24 had put me third last in the field. Clearly other folks had been spending some time and money on their cars over the break.

Race 1 was called and we all headed off to line up in the holding area. I was next to Paul in the GT40 and had Cyril's GT3 just ahead. I do love a good tussle with a GT3, so firmly painted a mental cross hair on the rear of his German machine. We rolled out and around for our start. I tried valiantly to weave some heat into my Bakelite tyres and then we were on the start straight. My grid position put me on the inside of the track which meant the short way around turn one. The lights when out and Cyril edged across to the racing line on the outside of the track, effectually blocking Paul's GT40. I did not need any more of an invitation as I wedged myself on the inside of them both. Torque ensured I exited turn 1 ahead and the race was on. Sadly, after less than half a lap I realised there was no way I was going to keep Cyril behind me with my ropey tyres, and so it was that, as I understeered wildly into turn 2, Cyril neatly tucked in on the inside and was gone. I decided to blame my tyres for this, rather then my lack of skill, and set about exacting suitable punishment from them.

This was all going swimmingly well until I dived into turn 2 and climbed hard onto the brakes. Now, there are two items on a race car that you never want to feel anything odd from during a race. The one is the steering wheel and the other is the brake pedal. As I was in the middle of my braking process, there was a loud bang from the rear of the car and the brake pedal suddenly went soft. Luckily turn 2 is a slowish corner, and there was nobody near me at the time. I managed to keep the car on the track and made it around the corner. I gingerly pumped the brakes and was encouraged to feel the pedal come back to life, however, this was accompanied by a horrible metal on metal screech from the rear. Clearly something serious had happened, so I limped back to the pits to asses the damage.

Turns out the the other thing that had been neglected during the front end focus, was the rear brakes. One of the brake pads had worn so badly that it had actually been ejected from the calliper.

Brake pad shaped dent inside the wheel arch

Thankfully nothing else had been damaged and all I needed to compete in the second race was a new set of pads. Since my car uses the extremely common Toyota RSi brakes, pads were quickly sourced from the local Midas and I set about installing them. I had opted for the cheapest set I could get as they were destined to go out in a blaze of one race glory.

Inspecting the three remaining pads showed just how much abuse my brake pads get during their short life. I suspect some cooling ducts for the rear are soon on the cards as well.

The three amigos and their sacrificial replacements.

Race 2 was a glorious affair of sideways action mixed with massive understeer and basted in the gentle aroma of burning brake pads.

I pulled up in park ferme at the end of the race having had more fun than I can remember for some time. As I hopped out of the car to inspect the smoke gently rising from the rear rims I noticed a trail of, what looked like, gun power leading back from each wheel. It looked like the new pads where now mostly black soot covering the inside of my rear rims.

If you ever wanted to know how much harder every component of you car works when you put it on the race track, there was the proof right there. I had managed to effectively destroy a set of pads in around 30km that would normally last well into the thousands on the open roads.

All told, the day was a success, with the car running well (owner limitations excluded) and I managed to clock a new top speed of 231km/h on the back straight. A new set of tyres are on order as are new pads all around. Once these are all fitted, together with the rear brake air ducts, we should be ready to take on the GT3's again.

That's assuming we don't all get sent home for making too much noise. Of course, this would not be the first time, but that's a whole different story.