Bob's FuryBusa Site - Cadwell Park July 2008

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Thursday 3rd July, 2008

With everything loaded up I trekked off on Thursday after work. I'd booked into the cheapest place I could find near Lincoln which is about 230 miles from home and 30 from Cadwell Park. I'd booked the full day testing Friday and was booked into the All comers race on Saturday and the 2 RGB races on Sunday. After the overnight stop I got up at 6 and was at Cadwell at 7.30, it was a lovely warm sunny morning although the weather forecast for the weekend was a bit dire.

I went and signed on and was told the car had to be noise tested before going out. The final instructions for the race weekend had said we'd all be tested and it was another thing for me to worry about. As if I needed more. So I got the car off the trailer and decided I may as well get the noise testing out of the way. I drove round to the scrutineering bay and was asked what engine I had, I was expecting to be asked what my redline was (MSA Blue Book says the limit is 105dbA @ 3/4 maximum revs) but the scrutineer said to hold it at 5,500 until he tapped me on the shoulder. it's quite tricky holding steady rpm on a bike engine with your foot and I did see 5,800 on there before he tapped me. It had registered 102 point something and passed so that was another little milestone out of the way.

I now had plenty of time to prep the car. I realised I'd forgotten my tyre pressure gauge and nice new foot pump so I borrowed off my neighbour, a friendly German racing a Morgan. I did see a few of the other RGBers arriving and going down for noise testing.I went over to say hello to Henry Carr whose FireBlade engined car had just registered 115! I thought it had sounded noisy from where I was. The scrute had said to warm it up and go back which he did and passed. Bit weird really - as I understand it the decibel scale is logarithmic so 115 is actually 10 times louder than 105! Henry suspected that when warm the exhaust seals up a bit better which sounds reasonable.

Anyway, to cut to the chase our lot were out at 9.35 so I headed down to the assembly area, got my helmet and gloves on and set the video recording and off I went. I was taking my time, getting used to the car again and learning the circuit. It really doesn't matter how many laps you've watched on YouTube, you still have to find your way round. I could remember which way all the corners went without a problem, it's deciding how fast to go into them that's the issue! The car was fine and feeling better than at Anglesey, it didn't seem to be understeering and the back end felt much more planted. The faster RGBers were flying by me and there wee a few MR2s out - I was much faster than them on the power but slower in the twisty bits so I waved one through accepting that I'd need to back off on the straights. I really enjoyed it and started finding my way round and carrying a bit more speed. I eventually caught up the MR2 again and passed him. Sadly my lap timer wasn't showing anything so I had no idea how many laps I'd done or how fast I was going. At Park corner there was a waved yellow so I backed off and at Chris curve a yellow Fury had gone off and looked in very close proximity to the barrier. There appears to be quite a bit of run off there but I'd already worked out that it's a fast section (top of 3rd gear for me) and the grass slopes away form the track down towards the tyre wall, so not a good place to fall off. not that there seem to be many good places to fall off at Cadwell. At Mansfield there was a red flag so just before the Mountain I pulled off onto the escape road and back into the paddock.

I checked the car over and half an hour later we were out again. In the meantime I'd asked about the lap timer beacon and the guy said he's check and make sure it was one for the next session. I was definitely going quicker this time, pushing a bit harder, getting slightly braver at the end of the start/finish straight at Coppice. I now had a few of the corners sorted out in my head and felt I was getting nearer to the limits of me and the car - Charlies 2, Park, probably Chris Curve although it's a funny one as it seems to me you can stay mid track without really apexing as such, the Mountain, Hall Bends and the Hairpin. As for the rest I was getting quicker but every time exiting the corner knowing that I was nowhere near the limit! Coppice is scary as I was coming into it at about 120 and it looks like quite a sharp corner. Every time I gritted my teeth and turned in to find I had track and grip to spare - as soon as you round the apex it goes steeply uphill and as a consequence I was always coming into Charlies 1 too slow and accelerating all the way round to get to Charlies 2. I was still pretty conservative braking into Park but was getting the apex speed sussed. I was starting to grab 4th gear round Chris Curve and felt I was improving there but was coming into the Gooseneck to slow - the car's unsettled coming into it, it's over a crest and feels like you're driving over the end of the world. Each time I came round it to find I didn't need to go near the exit kerbing. I did have one 'across the grass' excursion after going into the Mountain too quick but after that I was fairly happy with my braking point into the section. Hall bends I got better and better, ditto the Hairpin but I never got Barn sorted and clipped the apex kerb each time knowing I could have gone faster as the corner opens up quite a bit. Still no lap times though.

After a few laps I was coming down from the Gooseneck into Mansfield and was aware that there was more backlash in the transmission than before. On the exit from Mansfield it was definitely very clunky so I backed off a bit but it all got worse and I ended up limping back slowly in second gear. Back in the paddock I jacked the car up, removed the tunnel top and bodywork and carefully inspected the prop bolts, diff mountings, drive shaft bolts etc. Everything looked hunky dory, all my paint marks intact, no slop on any of the shafts etc. All I could see was wrong was that there was quite a bit of free play turning the prop back and fore and if I turned one of the back wheels the other didn't turn. Which isn't a good thing. I asked Andy Bates to come and have a gander and he reckoned perhaps the slipper unit had failed. anyway, it was a terminal injury with no way to fix it right now. Andy suggested trying to ring one of the guys who no longer uses a Muffett to see if he'd bring his diff for me to swap it in. I decided against it. My worst nightmare would be borrowing a diff off someone and breaking that leaving me with an even bigger problem. I decided that the Muffett must go. I had a chat with Andy Bates about the relative merits of Sierra versus Freelander and apart from anything else a major factor is that everyone else is running Sierras - as Andy pointed out if I had a sierra diff that had failed he had a spare one in his van that could be used.

So I rather sadly packed all my stuff up, loaded the car onto the trailer and set off for my 260 mile drive home :-(

I do have some video but it looks like the camera's been switching off and on which has broken the video up into loads of small chunks. I'll have to see what I can stitch together. The second session is badly affected so I may not be able to get any lap times off it. I did have a quick look at my data log in the evening and so far as I could see it looks like my fastest lap was about 1:47, so about 6 seconds quicker than my fastest in the Megablade 5 years ago. That's encouraging as I know I was only just starting to make progress in my second session and reckon that had I been able to run the other 4 sessions on Friday I could easily have brought that down by another 3 or 4 seconds.

Here's a bit of video - the first bit is a lap in the first session, about a 1:53, the second is about 1:47 from the second session and I've had to splice a couple of bits together cos of the camera cutting out.