Paul Butcher

Subject to change, but I’m assured that no changes are expected. All meetings are double-headers:

10/11 April – Silverstone National
8/9 May – Croft
29 May – Rockingham (single qualifier)
12/13 June – Brands Hatch
14 August – Oulton Park International (single qualifier)
11/12 September – Cadwell Park
23/24 October – Snetterton

Apparently there’s a chance that we might get an extra meeting at Mallory sometime in July as well.

As you can see, it’s all concentrated very much in the “middle” of the country – apologies to those of you in the North or the West Country. No Donington, Croft, Castle Coombe, Thruxton

In some respects, we’re the victims of our own success – we have enough entries that we can only go to circuits which can cope with large grids. As it is, we’re likely to need heats and a final at Cadwell as we won’t all fit on the track at once.

I’ve dragged myself into the 21st century and created one of them new-fangled “blog” thingies!

Apologies to all who have been following my increasingly erratic race reports – I will try to do better in the future now that they have a spiffy new home

The first race (at Silverstone) was something of a damp squib. I booked a
place in the Friday practice session mainly to shakedown the car after its
winter rebuild (many thanks to my father for all his help with that!).
Unfortunately the engine developed an oil leak from the output shaft seal
and that was the end of that

The next race was a double-header at Pembrey. Everything that could go
wrong, did go wrong. The minor issues included the door falling off the
motorhome, the fridge not working, the awning falling off the trailer, the
solenoid failing so we couldn’t start the engine and the oil-pressure
warning light burning out.

There were two big problems though. The first one was the worst – the towbar
fell off the motorhome. Luckily, it went at 10mph while I was turning into
the circuit. I’ve been having nightmares about what would have happened if
it had failed on the M4 at 60mph – it doesn’t bear thinking about. Anyone
want to buy a second-hand motorhome (absolutely fine as long as you don’t
want to tow anything with it)?

The second problem was another oil leak during qualifying – which this time
turned out to be a result of the camchain tensioner falling off. By rights,
we should have been going home with a wrecked engine, but somehow the
camchain managed to stay where it should and apart from a huge cleanup job,
all we needed to do was find a replacement tensioner. We did, but it was at
a breakers 60 miles away. When they heard that we needed it to go racing,
however, they dispatched a rider with it, who met my father halfway at a
service station on the M4

By contrast, the racing went incredibly well, especially given the fact that
I shouldn’t really have been able to race at all! I qualified 7th, and in
the race found myself in a 5-way battle for 2nd place. All of us were
lapping within a couple of tenths of each other, and the battle went all the
way to the last lap with places changing several times. I ended up finishing
4th, which I was delighted with.

The second race was largely a repeat of the first, with five of us again
fighting for second for most of the race. I finished 4th again, so clearly I
need to work on my racecraft, but the fact that I’ve got the pace to be in
the middle of the battle is fantastic and bodes well for the rest of the
season!

Full results [here](http://www.msttiming.com/meeting.asp?event=61932&source=brscc2006&eventtype=brsccclub)

Last weekend, we were at Donington (thanks again to my father who towed the
car there, given that the motorhome isn’t capable of towing anything any
more!). I have mixed memories of Donington – I’ve only ever raced there once
before, when it was soaking wet. I was in the lead and pulling away, when a
halfshaft failed depriving me of what would probably have been my maiden
win.

Qualifying was dry, but by the time the race started it was thoroughly wet.
I was fifth on the grid, but got a good start and was second going into the
first corner behind Nigel. Nigel was clearly having problems (I found out
afterwards that he had got the gearing wrong) and I passed him at the end of
the first lap and started pulling away.

For a while, I managed to extend my lead, but after a couple of laps, Frazer
also got past Nigel and started closing on me. He was on my tail after a few
more laps, and passed me into the chicane. This allowed me to watch his
lines (one of the problems with leading in the wet is that you have to work
out how much grip there is for yourself without any references). I followed
him for a couple of laps, and was starting to think that I might have an
idea about how to do something about him, when the halfshaft (yes, the same
one that failed the last time was at Donington) failed. You couldn’t make
this stuff up!

Overall, a very encouraging weekend. I led the race on merit and was
fighting for the lead when the car failed. It does make me wonder if
Donington has something against me though!

[Results](http://www.msttiming.com/meeting.asp?event=62131&source=brscc2006&eventtype=brsccclub)

The next event is at Snetterton on June 24th. It’s going to be a busy day,
as its going to be a one-day double-header. As always, anyone who fancies
coming along to spectate, pitcrew or laugh as I disappear off the circuit
backwards is very welcome!

The main feature of the Castle Combe event was brake problems. The brakes
were completely unpredictable – sometimes the car would stand on its nose,
and on other occasions the pedal would go long. And Castle Combe is *not* a
circuit where you want to have a lack of confidence in the brakes (it’s very
fast, and there’s very little runoff)! In retrospect, this problem might
well be the reason why I ended up in the kitty litter at Brands in the
previous event

The net result was that I qualified 8th and finished 5th. Not a bad result
(and I did at least finish!) but I inherited the positions I gained as a
result of people dropping out for various reasons and wasn’t able to drive
the car as I would have liked.

It turns out that I’m not the only person who’s been having these kinds of
problems with the new 6-pot front brakes. John Corbyn of Jedi has been
trying to diagnose the cause, and came up with a theory. The 6-pot callipers
need more brake fluid movement to work properly than the 2-pot callipers on
the rear. This meant that the front and rear brakes were acting in very
different ways (the rears were engaging before the fronts even started
working).

So before Silverstone, I fitted a larger bore master cylinder for the front
brakes. It was a bit of a “punt” as we wouldn’t have time to test them
before qualifying, but worth a go.

I’d been looking forward to the Silverstone event ever since I heard about
it. It’s extremely rare for club racers to get a chance to race on the full
GP circuit (exactly the same circuit as is used for the British GP).

Qualifying was always going to be interesting, given that I would be
learning the circuit and testing the brakes at the same time! As it happened
though, it was much more difficult than I expected. Firstly, the traffic was
awful – we were sharing the grid with much slower Mono1600 and Mono1800
cars, and it wasn’t at all unusual to come across three cars across the
track, all trying to overtake each other, and find nowhere to go. And then
with just a few laps gone, I spotted clouds of smoke pouring out of my car
in my mirrors, so pulled into the pits

It turned out that the oil filler cap had vibrated loose, spraying oil all
over the rear of the car and the exhaust (hence the smoke!). Luckily I’d
spotted the problem before the engine spat all of its oil out, so no
permanent damage done (although there was *lots* of mess to clear up!).

I’d managed to get one half-decent lap in before pulling into the pits, so
ended up 9th on the grid (not as bad as it might have been!).

We were scheduled to be the 2nd to last race of the day. The race was
supposed to have been 15 minutes (which is only 8 laps because the circuit
is so long!), but as the day went on it became increasingly clear that we
were running out of time. Sure enough, while we were sitting in the holding
area, we were told that the race had been reduced to 10 minutes

In the race, I got my trademark terrible start (I just can’t train myself to
be as brutal with the clutch as you need to be with flatslides), but quickly
started making up places. At the end of the first lap, I was lying 5th, a
few seconds behind the lead group of 4 cars. Over the next couple of laps, I
gradually gained on them, but then all of a sudden the chequered flag was
waving. Three laps and the race was over There were some very unhappy
people after the race – it’s a lot of money and time for 3 laps!

On the plus side, the brakes were much better (still not perfect – they’re
suffering from pad knock back, the pedal goes long if I run over the kerbs)
and the handling was much better than last year – I was able to “play” with
the attitude of the car with much more confidence in how it would behave.

And then when I got the results sheet, I had a very nice surprise. I’d set
the fastest lap of the race, and as it was the first time that Mono had run
at the GP circuit, that meant that I was the lap record holder Which is
a nice consolation!

The next race is a Formula Jedi race at Pembrey on the 14th and 15th of May.