Speedscene, March/April 2022
Warning! Sprinting is addictive and expensive…
2021 British Sprint Champion Steve Miles shares the story of his journey so far.
Around 1997, I decided to purchase and build a kit car. At the time, a Caterham was around £9k, a Westfield £5k but my budget only stretched to a Robin Hood at £750 and a knackered Mk4 Cortina! Over two years, I transformed this into a rather nice-looking kit car, full of Wilton carpet, oak dash and comfy seats and I was very proud of my creation. In the intervening years between 2000 and now, I went from a bottom of the class club event at Scammonden Dam to British Sprint Champion, and what a fun 21 years they’ve been.
The Robin Hood was quickly stripped of all its luxuries in an attempt to make it go faster; the Pinto engine gave way to a Zetec and I then removed the Cortina subframes and manufactured my own suspension. Eventually, the Robin Hood was consistently beating Caterhams, which as you can imagine put a few noses out of joint! This car was no longer deemed a kit car but a one-off special, so I thought “Time to move on”. I had a good Zetec engine and found a single-seater racing car that had been designed for Formula Ford Zetec. It was only six-years old and I got a loan for the purchase from the Bank of Giulia (my long-supporting wife).
I have developed that chassis during the last 20 years, increasing its capability in all areas and have had a fantastic time doing so. In the initial days, it was a case of adding a front wing, a rear wing and bodging a bigger floor and gradually my times got quicker. I took my first FTD at Curborough in 2002 — back in the days when you got a laurel wreath for such an occasion! And I even managed a few British Sprint run-off placings over the coming years, although I do remember one season when I was always 13th fastest and consistently failed to make the top-12 run offs.
Around 2010, I purchased the chassis and engine from the late Bill Gouldthorpe which was an almost identical RF96, predominantly so I could move from Zetec to Duratec power, and fit some clever trickery from SBD. Bill’s chassis and mine were sister cars in a Portuguese Formula Ford team and over the winter, I split both cars and took the best of each to build my current chassis. As the season loomed, I still hadn’t sold the no.2 car that I’d put together from the worst bits, but with two weeks to go, someone visited and the car was sold. Rather ironically, it was shipped back to Portugal, and I’m rather pleased to say, for £2k more than I’d paid for Bill’s car!
The first thing to do was replace the glass fibre body work with carbon fibre. My good mate Martin Pickles made some superb moulds after repairing the body work and we then got these turned into carbon fibre by John Hansell of Fibrelyte, going from 26kg to 5.5kg. I did go a bit silly one season and got the overall weight down to 391kg. However, things kept breaking and I’ve subsequently found that a bit more strength has added reliability and we now sit at 421kg, which is still good for the 2-litre racing class, with a cracking 307bhp normally-aspirated Duratec, revving to 9,200rpm. A lovely stat is that when I change up to the next gear, the start revs are 8,000!
This chassis combination has been developed continually, but there are still many parts of 26-year-old Formula Ford on it. I think the only reason I keep doing this expensive and addictive game, is that the car has more performance than the driver and I’m constantly the weak link in the chain.
Five years ago, with the help of Mark Bailey, I upgraded from a manual four-speed LD200 gearbox to a JL five-speed sequential. This was the first JL box in the UK and I benefited from the development work being done in the US for a race series. SBD supplied the gearbox control, so at the same time we upgraded to fly-by-wire throttle bodies, paddleshift, new loom and air actuation system. The exciting day came when we had to set this new combination up and I distinctly remember Steve Broughton doing a fantastic job despite being in a lot of pain due to a tooth issue and the day ending in the dark, driving up and down the industrial estate where his workshop is. I couldn’t wait for the first event now that I was a ‘proper’ racing driver with flappy-paddle gear shift changes!
Before this season, I had only won three British Championship run-offs, the first being at Coombe in 2008. The previous week, I had been at the circuit as my brother took his old Mercedes estate around on a track day, but I paid to have some tuition and got the advice of an old Coombe sage. He taught me a wet line or two and due to the non-aerodynamic nature of my Formula Ford-based car’s good mechanical grip, coupled with good tyres, I managed to outperform some V8s that day; the memory is still very vivid and available on YouTube. The other two run-off wins have also been in the wet. In 2021 however, we have had 11 run-offs from the potential 32 available; as I say, there’s life in the old chassis yet!
Four years ago, a significant upgrade to the performance of the car came when I became acquainted with Naser Teymourian, who was studying at Oxford Brookes University and the aerodynamic performance of my car was his final year submission. He visited Nottingham several times and with a whole series of measurements and photographs, created a CFD model. This was run through the university computers in several iterations, after which he proposed a series of modifications. I then got these manufactured and the deal was to feed back the results. The following season, with the same engine and gearbox, my lap gains were between one and four seconds at every track! Believe in the power of aerodynamics!
So, why has 2021 gone so well I hear you ask? At the end of 2019 I shared my car for the weekend at Anglesey with Alan Mugglestone of Triple M Motorsport. The rest of the paddock ran a sweepstake as to how many runs it would be before he beat me, having never driven the car. And for the answer — it was three! I knew this would be the case and hoped to learn how he would do it by use of the video and data logging on board. To find out for yourself, why don’t you attend one of his days’ training courses held at the start of every season at Blyton? What I didn’t anticipate was his continual adjusting of the car after every run for the whole weekend and the stunning improvements it made. The car I took away that weekend was a totally different car to the one I arrived with and the handling became phenomenal. I was left with a job list over the winter to go and extend the adjustment range, which I did.
Whilst some competitors didn’t seem bothered about competing in 2020 as there were no valid championships, I was keen to get out so that I wasn’t rusty when we got to 2021. I also had a fresh engine from SBD over the winter of 2019, but nothing really changed on the car other than the adjustments as suggested by Alan and some careful maintenance.
2021 saw more practice events, more testing and this paid dividends when it came to the British rounds. I had a surprisingly good start at the Blyton weekend with four run-off wins, although this is my local circuit and I had lots of testing, but was still very pleased as it was against big V8 opposition. Unfortunately, the V8 of Terry Homes and Graham Porret had a crash chasing my times and this left them out of action for the following weekend or so. But for the rest of the season, we have been within a few tenths of each other, sometimes Terry quicker, sometimes my 2-litre delivering the goods at circuits such as Anglesey and Knockhill, but I have nothing in my armoury for the 250bhp deficit I have for the GWS where he beat me by three seconds.
As well as three V8s this season, there have been the more powerful EcoBoosts driven by Pete Goulding and Graham Blackwell. Again, some meetings we are just a few-hundredths apart, but luckily I’ve been the right side! And finally, not forgetting the 2-litre competitors of Matt Hillam and Steve Broughton in their modern F3 Dallara, cracking competition all season and exceedingly close at times.
This year, I gave up working full time — 58 years old you know, got to slow down at some point, and I think the four-day weekends help. The closer it got to pulling off the British Championship, the more time I spent checking and rechecking! The car has been 100% reliable all season, the only exception being at Knockhill with an alternator bolt breaking, but we lashed it out of the way with a large cable tie with minutes to spare and did a qualifying run on battery power only. Mind you, I needn’t have bothered, as on my scoring run I put all the right wheels and tyres on, just not necessary in the right order (to paraphrase Eric Morecombe). How on earth I didn’t stick it in the tyre wall on launch I’ll never know!
The Anglesey weekend, where I became the first 2-litre car to clinch the Championship for several decades, was wet. I had convinced my sponsor Telsonic to supply the 2022 tyres early to give me the best possible chance, so I had brand new Pirelli wets. I was a little overambitious about their capabilities in practice and in the pouring rain went off the track after I couldn’t stop from 123mph, with no damage done. Qualifying was a more ‘steady Eddy’ affair, and so was scoring run 1. I kept it on the track and put enough points between me and Matt, to make it impossible for him to overtake me. So, in the tradition of a good day’s sport and the season result, I withdrew from the event and started an alcohol rehydration programme!
I had brought 30 beers and individual cheese portions to hand out to my fellow competitors and despite the rain, we had a great afternoon. Mind you, I found more empty Tyskie cans in the trailer the following morning than I thought I’d drunk. 9am, 4th car out and 140mph soon wakes you up, then time for cheese on toast from the camper van and an espresso! A good relaxed day and FTD to boot!
In case the British Championship came down to our last event, the rearranged GWS, I entered the ¾lap Combe event the week before and kept it quiet for some sneaky practice. Cries of cheating from my fellow competitors — I’d call it ‘initiative’! FTD ahead of the big V8 of Terry Graves set my confidence up for the following weekend.
As a ‘thank you’ for the season’s success, I paid and shared my car with Alan Mugglestone again. He still beat me, despite him running first on cold tyres, but only by 0.8s over the 115 second run. My takeaway from the event was that despite the car feeling good, he was pushing with adjustments every run to make it quicker, such as lifting the ride height by 2.5mm — a good move!
The season really came to a stunning ending at the RAC Club in Pall Mall in January at the Night of Champions dinner. I couldn’t take my wife into the venue due to the Covid risk and her current circumstances, so after being supported by Martin – who also incurred burns, sustained cerebral impact damage and garrotting injuries in the course of paddock help this season, deserved the guest spot.
Reproduced with permission from Speedscene
