The build up to the event did not go well, the radiator used to cool the gear box oil had broken in Wales so a replacement was ordered. As the date of the event drew closer, we were still awaiting the part. Eventually, on Thursday we were told that it was despatched by courier to arrive by 10 am next day (the same Friday we were due to depart for Ellesmere!) I received a phone call from Ben at about lunch time to hear that the radiator had been “lost”! After some frantic phone calls, we found that there was a radiator of the right size and specification on the shelf at Demon Tweeks, who as luck would have it, are 15 minutes from the race site at Ellesmere. So we had to depart for Ellesmere with a non-working racer!  Our bad luck didn’t stop with the missing oil cooler, bad traffic in Birmingham saw us arrive at Ellesmere at 1:30 am, and we still had to put our tents up. After some rapid tent building and a swift beer (or two) we eventually got to sleep about 2:30 with the alarms set for 6:30. After four hours sleep Ben and I awoke, feeling tired but ready to Race, if only we had a working car! After getting the coffee on, we woke up our allocated “runner” Steve to go and collect our Oil Cooler from Demon Tweeks. In the mean time Ben and I unloaded the racer, set up the service area and got on with scrutineering and registration. Scrutineering passed with no problems but we were anxiously waiting for news from Steve as to where he was with the replacement part, when we heard he had been successful and was on route back, relief started to set in but we still didn’t feel we could relax until we had the TMC fully functioning. Steve arrived sometime around 9am and it took around 20 minutes to fit the oil cooler, at last we had the car ready to race and just in time for the drivers briefing, and at last Ben and I could look forward to the event. As we sat on the start line for the first lap, we were still riding high on the sense of relief at getting the car ready, but were looking forward to getting going. As we catapulted off the start line, all felt good, but it was instantly obvious that we were short on power. The grass fields were really power sapping, and it was frustrating to feel the power draining from the wheels into the slippery grass. As we entered the first of the wooded sections we were greeted with a slippery track and a lot of very close trees, caution was clearly the order of the day here. Determined not to bend the racer again, Ben steered us calmly through the section and onwards to the next blisteringly fast track. As we headed through and into a sharp right we descended into the first of the rutted sections and got our first taste of the wash boarded tracks (and this was the first lap!) As we enjoyed the next of the fast, but power draining grass tracks, we headed back into the forest and experienced a huge impact over one of the ruts. It felt like the car just went straight up in the air and came straight back down again, as we bounced, it was clear that we had escaped unscathed and came into the finish, happy, relieved and fired up! With the sun shining and a great course laid out before us, this was clearly going to be a great weekends racing.  The next few runs saw us slowly reducing our lap times but it was becoming clear that we were suffering through a lack of power through the grass sections. As we got quicker throughout the day we found ourselves moving up the leader board and thinking about a top ten finish on Sunday. As we completed Saturdays runs, a final service and check over of the car revealed no problems, so our thoughts turned to increasing power for Sunday. Generally there is very little we can do about engine power at an event, but an easy option was to remove one of the two silencers, thus reducing back pressure and hopefully increasing power. At the same time Ben “tweaked” the ECU and the combination of adjustments seemed to drastically improve the engines revving capability, would it actually make any difference? We would find out on Sunday.  Time to relax with a few beers and a spot of curry, our evening, interspersed with a game of Rounders, proved to be very relaxing and saw us settling down in front of a fire for another drink and to further reflect on the days events. Many thanks to the family and friends of Chris Hammond, Ian Rochelle and James Webb for sharing their hospitality with us over the weekend, I feel that there may be a Rounders re-match in Scotland. After an early night and a good long sleep, we awoke raring to go and see how much difference the engine adjustment had made. As we headed off on our first lap the difference was instantly apparent, we were getting the power down much better and really getting more speed up over the grass sections. We also knew that the course had further dried out over night and were aware that we may have been quicker even without the engine changes. As we cam into complete the lap we waited for our time to come up on the display (an new an most welcome feature of the BORC is that our lap time come up as we cross the finish line). 26 Seconds quicker than our bet yesterday! We were delighted but how quick was everyone else? We had been comparing times all day on Saturday with Chris Hammond so as soon as he rolled in I went over to see what his time was. All day on Saturday he had been 10 – 15 seconds faster than us, so to hear that he was only 2 seconds quicker was fantastic and gave us hope to move up the leader board.  The second run on Sunday proved similarly quick and Ben and I both agreed that we had found a good pace to see the weekend out and, try and move up the leader board. On hearing the news that (partly due to retirements and partly due to our improved times) we had moved up to 9th overall and 2nd in class we were anxious now to get to the finish. The third run of Sunday saw our fortunes change as we approached the end of the stage things felt wrong with the car and then Ben announced that we had lost four wheel drive! We came in still in a reasonable time only losing around 15 seconds. After our problems in Wales with the CV’s we were disappointed to think that we were still suffering the same problems but had to get on with the job of replacing it in time for the next run. An excellent job from Paul and Ben saw the replacement CV in place in time to go out for the next run. The problem with the CV? Well this time it seems that the CV was in one piece, but the splines had stripped leaving the shaft spinning! The racer back in working order we finished the service and got out for the 4th run of the day, still thinking about our position and intent on finishing, this run was going to see our chances of a top ten finish literally go up in a puff of smoke. As we headed down one of the forest sections, the car went dead as all of the electrics tripped out. As we tried to get the car re-started we soon noticed a large amount of smoke coming from the back! I was already on my way out of the car by the time Ben had announced it and, managed to extinguish the fire quickly with the fire extinguisher. It turned out that the lid of the metal box that the battery lives in had come open and the catch had come down inside, shortin out on the positive terminal. The resulting spark set fire to the foam protecting the battery. With no permanent damage to the car we resumed our lap, but had to take a maximum. We also caused a fair amount of chaos for the time keepers and organisers, who had to sort out the times for everyone who we held up on stage, but they soon sorted out the time sheets and we were set to start the last run of the event.  The last run was going well as we relaxed and concentrated getting to the finish, although Ben still pushed hard. As we approached the end of the stage we found the course blocked by Ryan Cooke who I am guessing had lost four wheel drive. As he was towed clear of the course I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him as he was in contention all weekend, and to break 400m from the end of the event must be gutting. This time it was us who needed a time sorting out, but as we got to the finish line we were please to have completed the event. With our problems, our position of 14th overall and 7th in class is a good result and, sees another finish under our belts. With a few more teething problems out of the way and more power coming from the engine we can look forward to more success in Scotland.  Many congratulations to Keith and Sally Lewis coming out on top of what was an exciting battle at the top. And, many thanks to Paul, Steve, Matt and Kate for their support and not forgetting all of the marshals, organisers and time keepers, without them we couldn’t race! |
