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| Tue Nov 12, 2019 11:15 pm |
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AK
Site Admin
Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 20101
Location: Aberdeen
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Usual long post alert... and prob forgotten more than I have remembered! A bit light on pictures (long story but should have some of my own in time), and I'll add in vids later.
Background: This is 'TrackScotland’s' third year at Mission Motorsports 'Race of Remembrance'. If you don’t know what this is, check it out 
12hr / 1000km endurance race wrapped around a remembrance service on the Sunday morning. A great event, and a bit of a season finale for us Very different to most of our motorsport activities throughout the year too!
• 2017 - Lost out on 3rd place with minutes to go - gearbox failure  Learnt a lot
• 2018 - Entered 2 cars and 8 drivers. Class win and 4th place. Learned even more.
• 2019 .... 2 car entry
Prep – Those involved in the team will know I don’t want to be caught short of a part/spare after making the long journey. With that in mind I built a new SMRC Mini Cooper Cup car this year with a view to using it as a 'spare' car for RoR before its brought into active SMRC duty  So we had to prep/test 3 cars before the event :O Simon and Matty (MB Garage Services) had them in/out of the workshop after trying a few things out at Knockhill, and they even tested one of the car themselves to get a better feel for things with them being the main support at the event - The ‘RoR’ setup seemed to get a very positive response from all the drivers during testing. Final touches to all 3 being done on the week leading into RoR. The pink car was also sporting a prototype digi dash system from 603 Autosport! Gucci Gucci!
Wednesday
Set off to collect MB Plant MotorSport support van from MB Garage Services and Motorsport in Ellon. Loaded it up (a bit lighter than previous years) and returned for Simon and Matty to load their tools and equipment. Home to pack and collect Jonny from nursery, with Fee in London till later in the eve. Busy busy running around like a headless chicken!
Thursday
Out of the house at 6am to collect cars/trailers and rendezvous with the more Northern drivers. Several hundred miles later the armada of camper vans and trailers arrived at Anglesey and began setting up (taking over!) the garage. Usual Thursday night prep needed to be done (I dont have enough time to get this all done before we head down).. radios installed in all 3 cars, lap timers installed, displays installed, geometry verified, stickers applied. Discussions on strategy and tactics. Bed sometime after 1am.
Friday
Up at 6am, and cars out front for a photoshoot before they head off to scrutineering. It was good to capture a moment when all 15 of us were together with the 3 cars looking reasonable fresh  Went on a track walk with a handful of the team – always insightful.
Drivers signed on at 8am, and paid testing from 9-12pm.
Testing
The 3 ‘new’ drivers (Will, Sandy and Adam Morrison) were given the majority of seat time in the testing car. As with every year so far, we have taken a car to test without having to be mindful of taking life out of the race car. We didn’t have the luxury of a second test car (no time to build another LOL) so the Pink team just used Barbie sparingly, with each driver doing a small number of laps to get a quick re-cap on Anglesey. Lap times were very positive at this point, already as quick as we’ve been before but without any pushing of the car!
Towards the end of testing the pink car developed a vibration FL. Diagnosed straight away as the inner CV. Seemed like the driveshaft was replaced in minutes and car ready to go soon after! Great to get any breakages out the way early :O Hopefully.
Qualifying
The drivers were given strict instructions to do the minimum laps required without being too concerned about lap times. In reality its of little importance where we are on the grid. Both cars ended up together again, with 0.8s splitting them.
• Pink – 1:49.018
• Blue – 1:49.883
Adam KINDNESS - 1:49.018
Craig DILLON - 1:49.674
Lowell FORSYTH - 1:50.699
Mark DAWSON - 1:51.721
William ROBSON - 1:49.883
Gordon LONG - 1:53.973
Adam MORRISON - 1:51.442
Sandy BONNER - 1:53.160
These times put the Pink car in P25 and Blue in P26 overall. 4th and 5th in Class A (1600cc).
Night Familiarisation
This session has no bearing on the starting position so there is nothing to be gained by pushing a car, or taking unnecessary risks. Drivers only had to do 3 laps to prove they were capable in the dark, and were reminded of this, and most behaved themselves… :X
Saturday – Race Day :O
There was a few hours of free testing on the sat morning, both teams used this to bed in new brakes for the race. A few stop start laps later that was done and it was time to set the running order and get our ducks in line for the race. The running order for the Pink car was myself, Craig, Mark then Lowell. Blue car went for Will, Adam M, Gordon then Sandy.
Andrew MacDonald was the team member doing the MMBoF – I’ll let him comment on that, but safe to say… It looked pretty bloody cold and flip-flops aren’t ideal!
Race! (my own personal experiences here, will let other drivers cover theirs if they want)
Things kind of sink in when you’re in the holding area lined up next to a bunch of famous drivers… and you are in bright pink shopping trolley! Bring it on! Rolling start with 2 green flags laps (weather was abysmal) – made up a couple of places early on then settled into a bit of a rhythm behind the Canadian run MX5 in Class E. It was a good bit quicker on the straights, but holding me up in the corners. I wasn’t willing to risk a daft pass so just kept plugging away. Lots of wet laps later a small disaster struck. I snatched a brake, activated the ABS and ploughed into the back of a very early braking civic (nearly had an incident with him pulling across in the braking zone a lap or two earlier). Hindsight I should have just went off track to right but I must have thought he’d seen me coming in hot. Minimal damage, but steering was out, one LED broken, bonnet mashed and bumper destroyed. Kept it going to end of stint, lap times still decent. My stint was just over an hour long. Craig was in after me, still very wet but rain easing with the darkness falling.
Vid from race start - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf7Wgvvw1xU
I was back in the car around 8:30pm, on dry tyres :S. The first lap or two was a bit wiggly working out where the grip was. During these laps Will in the blue car passed me ( I didn’t know it was the sister car behind!). Handful of laps later I was back pressuring Will. The following laps were pretty epic! Pitch black, wet greasy track, back markers…. Some requesting of team orders on the radio… being told to just get passed rather than being waved past LOL, then being reminded to ‘Bring the cars home’ once I started to try a bit more for the pass! Eventually made the pass up at Peel with a cheeky little block pass to make sure Will didn’t have the momentum or inside line to come back at me for the next corner, job done! We finished the day 1.6sec apart, line astern on the road and P2 / P3 in Class A (1600cc) to a 1500cc Turbo (I think) Civic in P1
Vid from Pink car – Final stint Saturday - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8_7Cl8Jdhk
There is no longer Parc-Ferme overnight so we took the chance to make some running repairs and some precautionary repairs.
Pink car needed the most :S – Gearbox swap (was experiencing a slight crunch 3-4 when rushing gears), New clutch, New front bumper, New front discs, new rear pads, brakes bled…. Taped up the bonnet
Blue car needed a new lower ball joint and brakes bled
Sunday – Race completion and Remembrance Service part way through in the pit lane.
I was out first on Sunday (driver ending Sat must start Sunday) for a short spell. It was wet but drying with a healthy wind and sun starting to peak through the clouds. I was pretty confident the Yoko 050 was the right tyre choice, and kind of new what to expect from them on the initial laps. Got a decent start holding along side a C1 until crossing the S/F line, only to then see it and Will in the blue car tandem spinning behind me. I’ll let Will explain that one Had a great time in this stint, passing the Synchro Civic for the class lead, generally having a hoot without thrashing the car. Handed over to Craig around 40mins into Sunday.
Vid from Start of Sunday - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wcPJQzAJ4g
Craig’s session didn’t go as well though…. With a fairly big off into the tyre wall at outside of turn 1. Looks like an early turn in ran him a little wide onto the slippy kerb/grass and that was that. He got the car out of the dirt and back to the pits for Mark to jump into earlier than planned. Slightly longer pitstop as it was unplanned and needed wheels changed, car checked etc. Mark did the stint before/after the Remembrance Service before handing over to Lowell (just the right conditions for him to drift about in LOL ). Then it was my turn again around 13:30. This stint has to be one of the hardest drives I’ve done. Not pushing the car, but simply trying to keep the pace good as by this point is was clear we were fighting (4 ways) for the win, with the closest rival the sister car! The damage from Craigs off had damaged a lot of the door, meaning that the outer skin was only partially attached to inner, and the window was flapping and then gaping wide at speed. 1 lap in was enough for me to not be happy just leaving it/ignoring it, so I pretty much drove around holding the window tight to side of car. Easy enough for the most part, but 90odd minutes of doing it led to cramp in hand and right arm. The amount of force pulling the window out towards rocket was pretty amazing. I somehow managed to set the fastest race lap for the car during this spell lol!
VID from my final (10-11hrs of race) stint - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI3yk6XHGjM
Craig was in next to bring the car home. Sadly we (pink car) couldn’t take the win, but over the moon that the sister car (blue #55) took the win 16secs up the road! 1 2 in class
Hindsight – the blue car/team ran more like clockwork. Did the minimal pitstops all very close to the minimum time each time. The pink car/team was quicker when comparing lap times, but we gave away too much time through the few incidents we had, and resulting longer pitstops.
Still…. Bloody amazing weekend.
Loads of thankyous required!
Thanks to the organisers (Mission Motorsport) for another great event, thanks to the marshals for their time and effort – it must be pretty bleak standing out there in the periods of howling wind and rain! Thanks to Matty (MB Garage Services), Simon ( MB Garage Services), Sean (AA hero!) and Mathew (fueling) for the pit support. Thanks to Brian (MB Plant) for the van again! Thanks to Fee for putting up with me being so involved with car things on the lead up to this, and for the food, pit comms and team boss role. Thanks to David for the strategy!
Still cant get my head around how close the two teams were over 12hrs. 1.4 seconds apart after 6hrs. 16 seconds apart after 12hrs. Bonkers!
_________________
Impreza Race Car - SLS/SMRC
Mini Race Car - SMRC
911 - 1981 Air Cooled 3.0
500 - 1969 Fiat 500 L
Toureg 262 RLine
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| Thu Nov 14, 2019 3:05 pm |
Post subject: |
AK
Site Admin
Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 20101
Location: Aberdeen
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| Tue Nov 19, 2019 9:14 am |
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AK
Site Admin
Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 20101
Location: Aberdeen
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some quick geeking of laptimes from our 3 RoR attempts - each year has had dry running at some point, with 2018 being the wettest from recollection
2017
Pink Car (down on power with fuelling issue)
Qualy - damp
Race - 1:52.792
David's testing car - 1:51.2 (dry track, not being pushed hard etc)
2018
Pink Car
Qualy - damp 1:56.102
Race - 1:51.651
Blue Car
Qualy - damp 1:56.472
Race - 1:51.634
2019
Pink Car (~60kg lighter)
Qualy - 1:49.018
Race - 1:49.323
Blue Car
Qualy - 1:49.883
Race - 1:50.064
_________________
Impreza Race Car - SLS/SMRC
Mini Race Car - SMRC
911 - 1981 Air Cooled 3.0
500 - 1969 Fiat 500 L
Toureg 262 RLine
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| Wed Nov 20, 2019 5:37 am |
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AK
Site Admin
Joined: 27 Nov 2006
Posts: 20101
Location: Aberdeen
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Comparison of 2 2017 laps. Pink car during race (pushing hard towards end) vs not really pushing Davids car in testing session (can see by substantially lower corner speeds). Pink car also had longer geared gearbox (Midland Cooper box)
Pink car 2017 vs 2018(Craig driving - noticeable differences in traces at certain points (different lines for example))
(now with Getrag gearbox and not noticeably down on power)
Pink car 2017 vs 2018 (Craig driving - noticeable differences in traces at certain points (different lines for example)) vs (now with Getrag gearbox and not noticeably down on power), 2019 had ~60kg less weight
_________________
Impreza Race Car - SLS/SMRC
Mini Race Car - SMRC
911 - 1981 Air Cooled 3.0
500 - 1969 Fiat 500 L
Toureg 262 RLine
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