Bronte - The Return

When you heard from me last I was eagerly and nervously awaiting yesterdays rally to put what I had learnt into practice. On Saturday morning we went down on the stage at 5:45am to take pace notes as the later part of the day was packed with other commitments. This was my first time on the stage in this configuration. While doing pacenotes I couldn't help but notice that the cost of making a mistake while taking Barry's advise was high. Apart from the occasional messed-up corners like the 90 left at the bottom of a gravelly hill that quickly follows a blind crest, there were countless culverts tucked away in the ideal driving line waiting to take out an unsuspecting driver as it did in on a number of ocassions in August.




Making proper notes was key!


Anyway so we reach the stage, check in, get scrutineered, the usual stuff. I was being nonchalant but I had intentions of pushing hard and putting licks on some people but the car had a slightly different idea.


So Stage 1... 5, 4, 3, 2, 1... "Stay centre into 90 right uphill bumpy"... As I hit the bumpy section the shifter came out of the gate and the gear jumped out so I put it back in and I'm driving up the hill holding the steering with my right hand and keeping the shifter in with my left hand. This continued for the rest of the run so most of it I did with one hand which contributed to a run off or two ;-).


We had this problem before and thought it was the shifter bushing and made some adjustments to the rod to compensate but there was nothing more we could have done in the pits.

For the second run we decided to go with the voice activated shifter. Ancil held the pace notes in his left hand and the shifter in his right hand. As he called the pacenotes I clutched and called the desired gear. That worked pretty well but half way through the stage we started to lose power. To be safe we limped to the nearest checkpoint and pulled off the road (big up to the marshals on checkpoint 10). On first check we saw that the tensioner for the alternator had broken (leading to the loss of power), this was caused by a broken cam cover / engine mount (it's a french car...don't ask), which was caused by a broken rear engine mount which is what was probably causing the gears to come out. Luckily, because we pulled off there was no further damage.


Next Steps...

1. verify that  there was no further damage
2. check the box of spares
3. Get the replacements online or get them fabricated if necessary

Photos courtesy Trinituner and Nicholas "Dumplin" Bhajan

TTRC Test and Tune

Today TTRC had a test and tune day so naturally I took the car down to get some much needed seat time.

When I arrived there were fewer cars than expected which suited me just fine. Before getting into the high speed part of the days proceeding I invited Ainsley Lochan, one of our top three drivers to run through the stage with me giving me pace notes as he would have done it. This proved very useful as his style of pace notes was a lot simpler than mine while being more descriptive. This is definately one of the changes I will make going forward.

Finally it was time for the high speed stuff. I started off relatively slowly and increased my speed bit by bit as I got more used to the stage.














Upon returning to the pits for a break, Barry McKenzie, another one of our top 3 drivers gave me some pointers on how to make the "90s" faster. "Turn in, tap the hand break (rather than holding it as I did before), turn out and turn back in. So I went out for a few more runs with that in mind.

After the lunch break I went back out with Barry navigating...that was an experience. He explained the science behind his "balls to the wall" style and insisted that I try it. While he's shouting "keep left" and "don't lift...DON'T lift" over a semi-blind crest my mind is thinking "It's Barry...he knows what he's talking about" while my right foot is thinking "flick both of you..I'm coming up". On each subsequent run I got my right foot more and more under submision...

In fact now looking back, the two times I nearly ran off the road was when I lifted...

A few more days like this and I should be good to go....for now I'm looking forward to the next event on September 19th to start putting what I learned into practice.

Photos courtesy Nicholas "Dumplin" Bhajan