The morning of the Birkett dawned cold, but dry, with blues skies and bright sunshine… just the way we like it. 
The previous day’s testing confirmed that the car should hold together, so I was hopeful of not letting the side down.
I had some new soft tyres on order, and we fitted these to the rims between qualification and the race. Talking of qualification, with close to 300 cars to get their 3 laps in, it is always a busy affair, the format changes from year to year. Some years you get three laps only, some you get a continuous open period, and some (like this year) you get a 20 minute slot. I was second out, and decided to use my 20 minute slot as a supplementary test session, and eke the very most out of it.
With the front floor now stable due to the previous nights group fettling session, and the back end so much more planted with the rear floor now in place, I was having a ball… so much so I was severely disappointed to see the checkered flag, marking the end of the session. As I pulled in the garage Andy asked me “How was that?”. ”Well my lines were crap, my gear changes clunky, and I’m rusty as hell… but other than that it was brilliant” .
The car was transformed with the front and rear grip in closer balance. She was still a little bouncy on the front dampers, so we added another click, and in fast corners she was wallowing a little in roll… So we tweaked the front and rear roll resistance, by stiffening both roll bars to try and keep her a bit flatter. We moved them a very small amount (about 4mm at each end). But other than that the only problems were that high speed, but low frequency vibration and a wing mirror that was a bit loose and had drooped.
One other thing I noticed was that I was now pushing harder in the corners, and carrying more speed onto the straights, but she wasn’t accelerating like an RGB car should. An RGB car should jump like a scalded cat when you hit the loud pedal, Cinders was more “easing” up through the gears. It is probably a combination of a tall main sprocket ratio, the heavy drag from the rear gurney at full height, a lack of tuning on the fuel map, and me not ragging the nuts from the engine just yet. She just wasn’t quick enough down the straights, and this was illustrated by Austin passing me like the wind halfway down the Hanger Straight later in the day.
We made one other modification before the race, I commented to my lad Chris that I needed some padding on the central pillar to protect my left knee, as the hard point was rubbing on the bone and very uncomfortable, he disappeared and 30 seconds later he was back with a butchered car wash sponge and a roll of duct tape to make me some impromptu but vital padding to aid my driver comfort…. top paddock fettling son !
During qualifying Cinders had of course, spat about half a litre of oil into the catch tank, so I emptied that and added some extra to the engine, but once we’d done that and filled the fuel tank we were ready to go. I’d been allocated the second stint, so that meant I had to be sitting in the “Ready 5″ position as the front of the garage, while Derek started the race, from grid slot 8. Just in case he had a mishap or curtailed his stint, last year a tin top wiped the front corner off his Fury on about lap 10 I seem to recall…. this year he was also in an AB Performance Sabre.
Ready 5 is both an exciting and lonely place. You have to be ready to go at a press of the start button, so you’re fully suited and booted, helmeted and strapped in. Which means you’re awash adrenalin and lost with your thoughts inside your helmet, usually for at least 30 minutes. I’m mostly preoccupied with watching the guys on the Pitwall count down the laps on the previous car’s stint, and keeping my self calm. In this case I was following Derek, who is also in a Sabre, but also in a different world of talent when compared to me. Derek started 8th… and in my 30 minute wait I was kept updated on his progress. 7th,6th 5th….4th. 3rd… For goodness sake.. how can I follow that! Well done sir 2:14 round Silverstone GP circuit in a RGB car is awesome.
I forget to mention, in the time between practise and the race I fitted my new Contour Roam camera. I hadn’t had time to do it before and could only find one suitable place which was on the front scuttle. As a consequence you can’t see my hands I’m afraid… and it all looks far too easy and in fact a bit slow. But here’s a video of the first stint. Its the first viable video I’ve ever had from a Birkett… although you may want to mute the sound as it is mostly wind noise.
Almost immediately after had left the garage there was a safety car session… I’ve cut most of this out of the video, but you do see my perfectly timed restart taking the place from a sister RGB car immediately after the start finish line… followed by another few minutes of frenetic running or so. With regards to the restart the SC board and waved yellows are withdrawn at the start finish line, and replaced with waved green flags. These then “ripple” from marshall post to marshall post in both directions around the circuit, so as I was going around Luffield I saw the Safety Car boards had been withdrawn and the waved greens emerging… this means I can accelerate to race pace, provided I didn’t overtake before the start finish line. So I dropped back a bit to get a run on Dave Watson in front and was very pleased with the timing
I didn’t disgrace myself despite a slightly over keen spin at Copse, on not quite yet hot tyres… and when I came in we’d dropped down to 8th (which wasn’t bad allowing for the other cars also doing relay changes), and this is where we pretty much remained for the rest of the day. Overall I was about 10 seconds a lap behind the other guys in the team, which for an unproven car is pretty good, there is much to come.
I did have a nice little battle chasing down a pretty little Lotus 20 , but lack of pace on the straights was hurting my ability to keep up, although I was matching him easily in the corners. The other thing that became readily apparent was the complete lack of steering lock, due to the orientation of the lower spherical bearings, as it currently stands I don’t think I’d get around the hairpin at Mallory…. something else to look at over the winter.
Unfortunately in my second stint that nagging low frequency vibration was getting much worse, so I curtailed it after 6 laps or so… which was the first of three unplanned changes in the team as me, Tim and Dan all had to curtail our stints, but good old Derek went out again and brought us home to the checkered flag in 8th place overall, but not before the bright blue skies turned grey and dumped some hail on the competing cars. Thankfully by then I was back in the Garage.
We suspect the vibration is due to that CV joint I had to rebuild in the week before the Birkett, Andy has already supplied a replacement so it will get changed over the winter.
The full results are here http://www.750mc.co.uk/images/uploaded/2012%20Birkett%206%20Hour%20Relay.pdf, and as always we acquitted ourselves creditably on the road (known as the ”scratch” position). We were 8th, just 8 laps down on the leaders, as our handicap gave us just 7 credit laps, collectively we drove to our handicap. Of course the Birkett trophy was won by a team who exceeded their handicap by a significant margin (15 laps I think) which would be almost impossible for us to do.
Still we all went home very happy, and with cars in one piece, unfortunately our RGB buddy John G took his car home in pieces after something apparently broke halfway down the back straight, and it pitched him into the wall.. Thankfully John is ok… but the car is a mess which was a shame for him after a such great day for everyone up to that point.
Overall the Birkett was brilliant fun, full of incident and excitement as always. And I now have a long list of small tweeks before the start of next season. but first I am going to finish that 1275GT mini.
here’s the team photo.
From left to right, John Shaw (spanners), Dave Hacket (Pitwall), Derek Jones (Driver), Colin Chapman (Driver) and his wife Dominique with Duncan Mepham (My Spanner Man) behind. Then Jonathan Roberts (Team Manager), Matt Newton (Pit Wall), David Wale (Driver) and his wife Sue, Rob Ellis (Garage), Tim Hoverd (Driver) and his wife Anthea, Hugh Robinson (Garage and Pit wall) and then Me grinning like a gimp and wishing I’d worn my RGB fleece like the other drivers, and my son Chris is behind the camera.
The Car is Derek’s AB Performance Sabre with some interesting aero mods on the back which I may just have to emulate if it will allow me to do 2:14 laps of Silverstone GP Circuit(If only it was that easy )