here is a quick update to the end of the 2012 season. Snetterton
After most of the season not being quite happy with the handling of the car, we made some changes to bring it back towards the old setup... no understeer
. On Saturday we raced on the 300 circuit and the car was handling awesome. Could not match the pace of scuffers in the exige or the power of Steve Peel in the evo but managed a pretty respectable 3rd place, only 1s behind the 3rd place in pro class, who run on full slicks, not bad on a 3 mile lap. Sunday - 200 circuit- Slippery as an otter in a wetsuit covered in grease. I had been fastest in every wet session all year, except the 2 sessions where I had engine problems. I was pretty happy to see the wet track, tyres were pretty pumped down to budget reasons but I had run stacks of wet days in pumped tyres at Knockhill and never had a problem. 1st wet session was qualifying, went out with the V700 Kumho which were nice and soft, too soft for Anglesey when I 1st used them and took most of the life out of them. The standing water was much deeper on the rest of the track and it was aqua plane central. The back end was all over the place, as bad as the Atom in the cold and wet which was hinting towards rear diff problems. Time for the final and I had made the decision to get rid of the V700s in favour of AO48s. These were pretty pumped but had never been much of a problem at Knockhill. I did have the option of using the brand new road tyres but at the time I did not think the conditions were any worse than I had ran in the past, Jason Ogg had just come in from the club final with slightly better tyres and had found enough grip. Straight out and instantly realised that the tyres were very wrong, any power and the back end was out but that could be dealt with. 150 mph on the straights and the car was floating across all the entire track, completely all over the place. Luckily, I have never had a great sense of self preservation so cracked on flat out none the less. On the 2nd last lap I nailed the braking point perfectly for the 1st corner and was just picking up speed on the rest of the track.... My final lap, knowing exactly where to brake from about 150mph, carrying the same amount of speed as the last lap, I noticed some dryer tar caused by the motorsport wets used by the Pro cars. I followed that line which was a couple of feet further across than my line but I thought there should be more grip, braked in at the same point and the back tyres instantly locked and the car swopped ends (turns out it was where a car had sh*t its engine eariler) the car had always had a decent front bias as I had no bias valve and much bigger front brakes...Thats my racing driver excuse and I'm sticking to it! So, I lost next to no speed as I few of the track, got a nice view of the gravel trap as I slid past it on the grass and twated the barrier. So hard that I bounced back 15ft and back round 270degrees. To add insult to injury, with no decent lap in the final, I scored minimal points and finished 3rd equal in the championship but lost the position due to a count back rule with only 1 win during the season.
The shell was a complete write off, the guys at RA Motorsport had to cut the chassis legs off to get the engine out. The legs had crushed the heads and broke my nice cosworth cams and actualy broke the block. With a business expansion planned for 2013 I decided to take the season out and actually pay attention the business rather than my juvenile pass times.
Wet conditions... Check
Ouch
Anyone have any T-Cut
Fast forward to the the latter part of 2013 and RA Motorsport developments decided to build a brand new demo car on a GC8 (classic) shell. They had decided to go all out on this car and were looking at a spec of around 800Hp plus Nitrous. They needed someone a bit mad to pilot this beast and decided that I was the man for the job.
The car is running ultra wide track/body with an ABW lightweight pannels. 2.35 engine, running a GT40 turbo with Nitrous and a 6 speed Samsonas sequential gearbox. We will be competing in Pro Class in the SLS championship and probably Pro Class in Time Attack. To say that I am excited to get behind the wheel is the worlds biggest understatement. It will take a bit of time to get the car all set up and ready as it is a completely fresh car from the ground up with plenty of custom parts.
You can follow the progress of the car on the RA Motorsport Developments Facebook page and also on my ScottRobsonRacing page.
New hotness
I can't even claim to be that Mike, I crashed in a straight line
