LMA Eurosaloons & Sports Cars - Anglesey 4/5 April 2009

... or if you ever needed a reminder that Motorsport is a "team effort"


Our weekend started with a 5 1/2 hour drive to Anglesey on the Friday before the races where the car was waiting for us courtesy of Jetstream Motorsport. We'd booked a test for the Friday afternoon and after a few laps we'd got big problems with overheating coolant and a head gasket looked the likely culprit.

The rest of the team arrived at about10 pm and in the paddock, in the rain, in the wind, without an awning (!) proceded to dismantle the heads to find that both gaskets were blown. At around 2:30 am they called it a night and then started again at 6 am.


Loosing a vital washer slowed down procedings but Dave from Jetstream eventually retrieved it from the sump, having loosened engine mountings and gearbox first to get the sump off. For the rest of the morning the driver stood quietly like an expectant father waiting to see if his baby would be ok for qualifying at midday.



Well, the engine was turning over at 11:30 am but with no compression accompanied with dejected looks from Adrian, Trevor and Dave. Ok, we'd missed qualifying so back to basics, strip it down and start again. After a rethink and reassembly the engine spluttered into life just after 2pm. The race was scheduled to start around 3:15 pm so having found we could run the car around the paddock and that we could start the race from the back of the grid the car was fueled, tyre changed, checked and re-checked and the driver instructed to "take it easy at first".

Race 1 (Coastal Circuit):

Assembling on the grid for the rolling start was accompanied by smoke from the rear clam, then smoke in the cockpit. I guessed rightly that it it was serious there'd be more smoke and much waving of flags and that it was just a small spillage of oil onto the exahust from the reassembly work. So off onto the rolling start lap we went and the smoke thankfullly dissapeared.

The start was taken gingerly picking off slower cars and checking engine temperature frequently. Boost was on switched low for the first 5 or 6 laps (wastegate limited) until I got more confidence and flicked the switch to "high". On catching up a couple of super tourers (John Hammersley following Bernard Hogarth) I saw that Mal Davisons's leading Noble had pulled of the track and was on fire. The Safety Car and flags came out and that was it, the race was red flagged with 7 minutes still remaining.

Result: 8th overall, 4th in Class A - 14 points

Mal was fortunately ok and his Noble was a bit singed but otherwise fine ... except that to my knowledge the fire had been caused by a head gasket failure and an overflowing oil catch tank and that ended Mal's race weekend.

All of us needed a beer after that race day!


Race 2 (International Circuit):

Onto Sunday and free practice and qualifying. We're running a new brake system this season with brake bias adjustment and revised rear brakes so free paractice was used to get the front/rear bias right and brake temperatures correct. Qualifying happened almost straight after free practice (they brought the qualifying time forward) and got us a bit rushed but we were able to get pole position with a time of 1:32.671 followed by the Nissan Primera ST of Peter Challis on 1:34.056 and Andy Harvey's Subaru Impreza on 1:34.572.

The race start was pretty good, getting into the first left hander in front of Challis and thereafter maintining a gap over the chasing Nissan until it broke a rose joint going over the kerbs several laps later, effectively ending his challenge for the lead. We crossed the finishing line over 6 seconds from the 2nd place car.

Result: 1st and fastest lap (1:33.196) - 22 points



A BIG thankyou to everyone who helped over the weekend especially Dave from Jetstream Motorsport who must have a secret stash of pro-plus pills!

Also well done to Joe Walton in his Clio Cup car getting 2nd and 3rd in his first ever races.

One of this seasons mods is longer range fuel tank (80 litres):-


Race Report
Timings