Castle Combe – 27th July 2019
Steve: FTD & New Course Record – 53.51s Watch Video
Matt: 1st in Class – 53.97s
Carole: 2nd in Class – 60.21s
Zoe: 1st in Class – 65.83s
Steve: Back to one of my favourite circuits, Castle Combe, we were testing some new electronic hardware and suspension set up on the 2.0L XE SBD Dallara. We weren’t sure what the weather was going to be like and apparently even 2 miles away from the circuit there was torrential rain, the most we got all day was a few spots but nothing else! Matt went first in practice and had a good clean run. The car felt comfortable, on my practice as I came out of the first chicane, the ECU shut the engine down due to one of the test components delivering a fault, but managed to restart the engine and complete the run, still putting in a quick time. We worked out which component was causing the problem and sorted out a temporary fix on it, but didn’t know if it would last all day. Even though there were 160 cars competing, the turn around time was very fast and we didn’t have enough time to strip it down completely. I managed my 1st timed run with no issues, breaking the course record in the process with 53.51s. Matt posted a 55.18s putting him 3rd Overall just behind Glyn Sketchley. We had been working on the damper settings to further improve low-speed traction out of the chicanes and decided for the 2nd timed run we would try a more extreme adjustment to the dampers and rake of the car to prove a point. Matt got a good run in, being first to drive in T2 to post a 53.97s to move him up to 2nd Overall. Unfortunately on my run, the temporary fix to the prototype component gave up and the ECU again shut the engine down partway through the run. Once the Dallara was recovered, we thought there was insufficient time to examine the component before T3, but decided to strip it down anyway to save time next week. Fortunately, the problem wasn’t as bad as we had thought and been pleased to discover that with a few simple modifications the problem will not occur again. We managed to get the assembly back together just in time for T3. Matt went first again because I had already changed out of my race gear, not expecting to run again. Matt posted a reasonable time but slower than his earlier time. My run was quite a bit slower than my 1st timed run, but we worked out that the setting changes we were testing were too extreme and we had gone too far in the settings. The good thing about this is that it gave us valuable information as to what was giving us improvements and changes are required for our next event. All in all, a great day getting FTD and everybody seemed to have a good time. The event was beautifully organised by Bristol Motor Club and ran smoothly even with such a huge number of cars.