Steve & Matt will be sharing the 1440cc Hayabusa powered SBD DJ Firehawk CT004

We knew Goodwood was going to be wet, we didn’t know exactly by how much. We had fitted a roll bar to the rear of the car, the parts arrived on the Friday morning courtesy of DJ Racecars and Richard Hollingsworth. We had also found a loose spherical joint on one of the dampers so Steve put it in the press to repair it. Steve is going out first this year and has to remember to take things easy, which is not in his nature. Fortunately, he knows Goodwood extremely well. Being one of the last few cars to go, the rain had got heavier and there was now standing water on some of the straights and the apexes of the corners. Not knowing how the car would feel with all the changes, he took it very gently into the first fast righthander, the car felt amazingly stable though with no wheel spin at all. He drove around every puddle! When he got back, told Matt that the car had amazing grip even for these conditions, said there was loads of time to come and felt like he had been ‘driving Miss Daisy’! We worked out Steve was 9s ahead of the next car, which was a highly tuned Nissan GTR and 12s ahead of the next single seater. Matt then went out and did his usual cautious first run and came back saying exactly the same thing, that the car had really good grip.

Come the timed runs, the weather wasn’t easing any and 2 cars rolled, both were experienced drivers and regulars at Goodwood. It took more than an hour to clear the circuit, so it was then decided to take lunch and because the last 20 cars, us included had not taken their 1st timed run. After assessing the track, Brighton & Hove MC reluctantly decided to abandon the meeting, which was a shame but the right thing to do.

So we packed up early and went back to the workshop to prepare the car for Blyton. Steve worked out that the spherical joint that he had adjusted was actually too tight causing the left rear suspension to not move as freely as it should, this has now been rectified and the car is all packed in the trailer ready for Blyton this weekend.

Steve has been working with Trevor Willis with further upgrades to the traction control strategies, Trevor was testing at a Harewood club event on Saturday to be ready for the National event on Sunday. Trevor managed to make some nice steps forward achieving one of, if not the quickest 64ft time and the control of the car in slippery conditions has been significantly improved. With the information Trevor has gained, this has provided useful information for Steve to implement to further improvements to the strategies because Trevor had gone in a direction that we hadn’t considered. Unfortunately, we cannot implement them fully into the DJ now because of noise detection on the rear wheel speeds, which we think is coming from ferrous components that are too close to the current trigger wheel, but we have implemented them into Steve Miles’ Van Diemen ready for Steve to test at the weekend.

Practice times only:
Steve – 64ft:3.73s, Finish speed:90.1mph, Time:101.62s
Matt – 64ft:3.66s, Finish speed:91.6mph, Time:106.64s

Steve at Goodwood

Matt at Goodwood

Pictures courtesy of Kim Broughton