Steve and Zoe will be driving the 1.6L EcoBoost SBD Westfield

Carole will be driving her Hayabusa powered OMS CF08

Steve: 9th in BSC R17: 78.53s, 8th in BSC R18: 77.32s
Carole: 5th in BSC R17: 70.84s, BSC R18: couldn’t compete because of broken chains
Zoe: 10th in BSC R17: 84.98s, 9th in BSC R18: 81.31s

Due to a few things not being ready for the SBD DJ Firehawk for Lydden, Steve shared with Zoe in the SBD Westfield. Steve had made some updates for boost control and revised traction control settings that he had been discussing with Chris from MBE. Zoe went first in practice and it had just rained before her run and the track was a little damp but drying, with the extra boost that she had got from the last time she had driven the car, it was more of a handful to drive and she had a couple of sideways moments, once of which was just about 90-degs but she kept it on the track. Although Steve only went a few minutes later, the surface of the track had dried out almost completely and Lydden not being the grippiest of circuit meant the Westfield was still struggling to put its power down. Zoe went first again for the 1st timed run and was considerably quicker than her practice but the car was still difficult to put the power down. Steve had revised the traction control setting but it still wasn’t enough. For Steve’s run he decided to up the boost to see if his experience could make use of it, unfortunately this wasn’t the case and as the car went light about 100m off the start line, the power overcame the grip and he managed to do a complete 360-deg, kept it on the track and carried on going, which mean that Zoe was faster than Steve. This meant that she had out-qualified him for the Top 12 and as is always the case, whoever is the fastest in qualification, always gets to go second and therefore the warmer tyres. Steve & Zoe both agreed that the car still wasn’t handling right, so stiffened the damping at the rear because it felt like it was pitching too much. Steve also further increased the traction control settings quite significantly to reign the power in, this gave quite an improvement and both Steve and Zoe went faster, but the suspension was still not right at the rear. We could see that the traction control was now working well, but if anything holding the power back a bit too much, when traction had been regained, so after a discussion with Chris, more changes were made. Steve also changed the boost delivery characteristics to help with the limited grip that the Westfield can deliver and made two more changes to the damper settings.

In the afternoon, the car was significantly improved and both Steve and Zoe knocked even more time off. We both had a fun day and with a car that requires simply to start it up and drive it to the line, without having fans on it makes for a pleasant and relaxing day.

Carole had been having a good day and was pushing the OMS to the limit and putting in some good times in the morning and was looking forward to getting in the groove in the afternoon. Unfortunately on her qualifying run after lunch, one of the twin chains broke on the start line and the second twin chain broke ¾ of the way round the first lap. Although Colin and Paul tried to fit spare chains in the time before the next run, unfortunately just as they had nearly finished doing it, they realised that when one of the chains had broken, it had bent the clutch push rod and mounting bolts and they were unable to fix this in time for the final run.