RGB Racer

Anglesey Circuit or Trac Mon is one of my favorite circuits. The track is flowing and technical, fast and twisty with both elevation and camber changes and it has two or three great overtaking spots. What’s not to like? The only problem is that it is as the ends of the earth relative to me in Peterborough. Although I guess unless you live in Conway its at the ends of the earth from everywhere. After our first visit here last year it has become a firm favorite, so Duncan and I had arranged for 3 days off work to make it a 5 day weekend including traveling, testing and racing.

After a 5 hour drive in 30ft Winnebago and trailer we arrived on Thursday night to find the paddock absolutely heaving with cars. It looking like it normally does on a race day, the allocated section for RGB cars was already full. Tim arrived a bit later and then came Coli

n, so we went off and annexed a bit of the paddock elsewhere.

Unfortunately the weather forecast was poor, and it seemed that we would get rained on for most of the three days.

Friday testing was fun and very instructive, but the weekend was almost ruined at the start.

On Thursday morning before we left I had fitted new brake pads to my rear calipers, this in conjunction with the new pedal box, and new RS14 pads, and new fluid meant that I had an entirely new braking system to get used to and to get the balance setup on.

But this wasn’t the problem.. Oh No. It seems the hi-spec handbrake caliper had developed a leak as a result of pushing the pistons back into the body to fit the new pads. No ordinary leak from the piston seal either. No, it was leaking through the handbrake mechanism in the back of the caliper a part that Hi spec have specifically said I shouldn’t remove to repair as its all a bit complex in there! Fortunately I’m not completely screwed. I remember that I’ve still got my spare, right rear, non handbrake caliper in the bus. I had actually considered removing it when doing the packing but left it in the locker “just in case” It’s bolt and pad compatible with the handbrake caliper and so we effected a swap in 15 minutes or so. It has sat on the shelf for two years, but mercifully it was fine. This, I think was the motor sport gods saying “Th

ank you”. I only had it on board as it had been fetched from home mid weekend by Dave Hackett to help out Bob Mortimer at Cadwell when his Hispec calipers had failed. That little bit of helping out, came back to save me from a completely failed weekend. As they say “It goes around and comes around”.

Since our last outing at Cadwell, we had added a simple rear undertray/diffuser to try and generate some additional rear downforce. Derek Jones ,the RGB Champion has been gently banging on about this for two seasons to help cure one of the car’s perennial issues… power on oversteer at the corner exit.

So I was looking forward to trying it out and seeing if the car worked better.

In session 1 I went out on my wet tires. I wanted to give them a gentle scrubbing as I had used them instead of the dry tyres at Cadwell a few weeks ago and I wanted to level their surface again by rubbing off all the rubber crap that they had picked up. Once I had dialled the circuit in a bit, and got properly underway I started to evaluate the undertray’s effect…. Needless to say Derek was Right!

The first testing session was pretty entertaining, the diffuser was plainly having an effect but surprisingly the car was more unstable not less. I had significantly increased under steer pretty much every where, but the back end was still unstable under corner exit, power on conditions. Duncan, from his position on the pitwall could clearly see that the car was running in a tail down attitude. The car normally runs pretty level, and even under heavy acceleration doesn’t normally exhibit “squatting” at the rear. Duncan thought I looked like I was going down a runway trying to reach take off speed. So plainly the diffuser was creating much more rear downforce and this was having the effect of lifting the front of the car and creating understeer.

Despite this I managed a 1:17.3 which is pretty much equal to my best time time in the race last year of 1:17.34, and that on wet tyres too. So I’ve not gone backwards too far in the intervening 12 months. . In fact last year it took me 3 days to work up to that sort of speed.

So we now changed a few things on the car to reestablish the handling balance, previously I’ve always worked on a policy of leave the car alone if it is settled and easy to drive and work on improving my own use of its capabilities instead. But now I was as fast as last year in a car with some distinct issues, but I knew the car could be even better. So it was time to change my policy and actively change the car to find the extra time.

Between the sessions we put on my dry tyres, added and extra 10mm of rear rake by winding up the rear spring seats, added some additional rear camber in case the issue was the rear tyres folding over and went out again.

In session 2 the car was better with the understeer much reduced, although I still had problems with rear end grip.

Unlike the first session where the 1:17 lap was the only one below 1:19, I was now banging in lap after lap in the 1:17s and even dipped down to 1:16.99. However it still wasn’t right. It was plain that the diffuser was having a strong effect, I

was still having understeer at turn in and oversteer at exit issues.

Unwilling to increase the rake further (it would possibly screw the ride height and make the front drag on the ground), we added 1 additional click to the rear dampers, to stiffen them and help fight the squatting. We also removed most of the additional camber (as the tyre wear patterns showed clearly that it wasn’t working the contact patch evenly) .

Session 3 was a hoot, the car was now much more planted, and I quickly dropped to a 1:16:62. Unfortunately the session was curtailed after just 5 laps. I was having a ball and just coming along the back straight to overtake Bob M when I broke my gear stick in half! I had to finish half a lap changing down by gripping the stumpy end.

I’d done this last year at Anglesey too, and it seems I still don’t have much finesse behind the wheel. In the words of Andy Bates, who once again repaired the lever using his trusty brazing kit. “You’re a bloody animal, If you break it again I’m going to make you one from an RSJ”. Oops

So with the gear shift repaired we set out for the last session after adding one more click to the rear dampers.

We shared the last session with the Locosts and Caterhams. These are small light and nimble cars, but compared to an RGB car they are pretty slow. The RGB boys spent the entire session mugging them in the corners. At one stage I shoved it up the inside of four of them on the way up to rocket one. They are all skilful drivers, saw me coming and gave me room, but even so it must be hard to work on your own lines when you can never get to an Apex because an RGB car is in the way.

Now normally I have a policy of taking the last session easy, but I wasn’t yet fully up to speed and I was sure that there was more to come, so I leaned harder on the car. Again I was consistently in the low 1:17s and high 1:16s and then I banged in a 1:16.2. The car was maybe a little better again. The understeer was mostly cured… except when pushing very hard, and the rear end grip was better although far from perfect.

Best of all I was 1.1 seconds inside my previous personal best (and that itself had been a massive step up last year). And I could pronounce myself “Most Well Chuffed”. Tim, of course went quicker, as did the fast Class B boys at the front of the grid, the whole grid simply gets quicker every year.

But doing a laptime that would have put me on Class B pole last year, and a best theoretical lap of 1:14.3 was enough to make me smile all evening.

Race Day dawned and it seemed the entire Irish Sea had been dumped on Anglesey as it was very wet, very wet indeed. so all of yesterdays carefully crafted settings were not now applicable. Again I have a policy of not changing the car for the wet, preferring instead to adjust my driving around what is normally a predictable platform. So we put on wet tyres we gave that a go. Nope bad idea. The car was a real handful, hugely twitchy, armfuls of oversteer, but also oddly predictable once sliding. The track was now slippery as anything except in the braking zones. The rain had stopped just before we went out and now the pressure of our braking was clearing a dryish surface in these areas. As a result you could leave your braking later and later as the session went on and of course the dry zones also moved later and later in the corner as a result, but if you ran out of the dry bit while still trying to brake hard you immediately ran out of grip. I discovered this to my cost at the banked hairpin when I pushed the envelope just a little too hard, locked the fronts and simply went straight on for a session for grass cutting on the wet grass.

Good job the ArmCo is some way away from the edge of the track, but it was a bit buttock clenching for a few seconds, bouncing over the grass turning the wheel to no effect while the severed heads of clover and buttercups hit me in the visor! Back in the paddock I got a few ribald comments from the guys about charging the circuit for my grass cutting services. But no Harm done. And a nice bit of flower arranging done on the front splitter too.

For the first time I actually enjoyed driving in the wet and eventually managed a 1:30.9. Only 2.9 seconds off John Cutmore in Pole Position, but such is the copetitiveness of the RGB grid that I was actually 17th and directly behind Tim for both races. so overall and given the conditions I was pretty.

For race 1 the condition were again very challenging, but I have to say RGB gave a strong demonstration of how to drive fast and close in full on wet conditions. All but one of the cars that started finished, and that DNF was a voluntary one. We had no contact, no major incidents and no red flags despite being the first race of the day. It really was a credit to everyone.

Unfortunately my camera packed up again and I got no footage, This video from Bob Mortimer shows just how bad it was, and you can even see me in it from time to time.

Starting directly behind Tim I I had an enjoyable race, sliding the car around in the wet. Don’t get me wrong the conditions were atrocious and I was scared, but I’m learning to control my nerves and gaining the skills to deal with them. Before he race we had inflated the tyres by 3 lbs or so as the wet cold conditions had prevented them from reaching optimum operating pressure in practice, we also softened all the dampers by a couple of clicks and softened the front ARB to see if this helped in the wet.

It did… a lot and I was able to drive the car more predictably. In fact I was having great fun trying to find the extra grip off the racing line and was making good progress. I was even deliberately provoking some slides to try and gain some advantage. Eventually though I got overconfident and span on the exit of The Banking with about three laps to go. This let Tony Guant and a couple of other s through before I could rejoin. Having said that I did catch and pass Tony again on the outside at Rocket 1 before the end which was rather cool as he and I are usually neck and neck.

So apart from my spin I was very pleased. we had the makings of a good wet setup, and I had lost some of my fear of racing in these conditions, I’ve finally developed my skills, and confidence enough to be able to tune the chassis and feel the changes. Best of all given the nastyness of the conditions it was nice to bring the girl home in 1 piece.

There followed a day or torrential downpours and my awning came in very useful to help shelter both Tim and Colin’s cars as well as my own