Tel's Tales Issue 034- Curborough 6th July 2014
Entry posted by Terry Everall
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Tel's Tales 034– Curborough 2 laps 6th July 2014
I spent the week before this event looking at the weather forecast as well as changing my fuel pump, coil sticks, fuses and checking the wiring loom to ensure the Aintree electrical gremlin had been eliminated. Well the forecast was dry am with possible downpours and heavy rain from 1500hrs onwards so the sprint was gong to be tricky. Got up at 0500hrs for the 0530hrs start and met brother Steve at Ferrybridge on the A1to travel in our usual convoy. I was glad I had not got stuck in the Tour de Yorkshire traffic as I live close to the York start and the motorways M18 and M1 were ok despite it being the Silverstone British Grandprix weekend. All went well until the A38 Derby/Little Eaton roundabout when I could not see Steve following me. Guess what.....he had a blow out on the trailer (luckily 4 wheels) so and we quickly did a racing change of wheel and spare, panic over and got to Curborough on time.
Today we had 5 cars in class A, 1 in C, 4 in D, 1 in E, 4 in F and me in G. (16 in all) for the 2 lap course run by Nottingham Sports Car Club. Scrutineering was leisurely but this was fine as the sun was out and the weather looked set for the day …....or was it...? It was good to see several novices out and including James Alexander in his mighty crossflow but I did tell him he should have brought the blade car if he wanted to go really quickly! At this stage as P1 started we realised it was going to be a long slow day but the start line queuing was kept to a minimum. Several competitors had been at the very wet Shelsley Walsh the day before and some only got one practice and they did not want a repeat performance. We were all close together so a good standard of banter was the norm as well as leg pulling. P1 went well for most of us as the dry track had good grip levels from the start and expectations for some quick times were high. I was a bit miffed when Dave Richings (onliestmeg) said he watched my run and it was not up to the standard he expected so I needed to improve. Thanks for the kick up the rear end Dave. The problems started though when Pete Goulding reported that he had a wobbly knob that he could not keep steady even with his hand on it ….I thought OMG but realised it was only a loose mounting bracket he was talking about. Steve E had the rivets and rivet gun at the ready but in the end they were not needed as Pete learned how to use change gear a little more gently. Paul Aspden had changed his half shaft lobros and cv joints after his previous vibration problems but he could not understand why he still had a serious rear end vibration at speed. The lobros seemed to have a slight bit of vertical play in them but were new so that seemed odd. I thought that the noise was coming from further forward as we rocked the car back and forward so queried the prop bolts. Five minutes later saw Paul under the car tightening up some bolts so hopefully that was sorted. I believe both James Alexander and Tim Pennington both faiied the noise test. Luckily Pete Goulding had a supply of Acoustafil and so many hands helped repack silencers and that was our guys still in business. I went off to put my 3rd lot of suncream on to cover my delicate features and protect my soft skin!
P2 commenced about 1130hrs and James Alexander proved he could not handle the power of the crossflow and had a spin without damaging anything but his pride. Jason Brown was annoyed at missing a downshift as he started the 2nd lap at the tight finish line corner. At the end of practice the different classes were sorting themselves out and I was having a personal battle with Dave Cleaver and Pete Goulding, Paul Morcom and Tim Pennington in class F. Leading the way was Dave Cleaver (he has been flying recently) on 57.03 secs, me on 58.07secs and Pete Goulding on 58.62secs so it was close. We were also holding the top places despite the presence of 2 Jedi cars and a twin engined Z car minis. We were now beginning to see that time was against us and we would only get 2 timed runs and due to the weather forecast maybe the first run needed to be a banker.... but how do you gamble to go quick with no mistakes as well as making no errors so you bank a good time...its not easy and its where some of the buzz comes from! T1 was after lunch and the weather the was approaching from the west still looked fine as we started. In class A, Jason Brown did 64.11secs, James 63.65secs but was just pipped by Simon Broadbridge with 63.27secs. Mark Bishop achieved 66.58secs in class C whist vibrationless Paul Aspden recorded a quick 60.50secs. In class D it was good to see Howard Gaskin out and proving he still has the speed he did 59.94secs, Steve Everall 60.83secs, Steve Herbert 61.35secs and Michael Skidmore ( did he make up that surname?) with 65.59secs. The class F times were Dave Cleaver 57.02sesc, Pete Goulding 57.73secs and Paul Morcom 60.83secs ( he claimed he was getting used to his Westfield again after driving the Merlyn single seater at a few events. I was well pleased with my 56.87secs to lead the Westfields and everyone else. As I finished my run I looked at the sky and in the distance I could see rain coming as the clouds built up. Iphone and smart phone forecast were examined and fingers crossed as we hoped the rain would hold off for a while....it didn't and after the first spots car covers went on and we had quite a lot of rain but it did stop fairly quickly after about 15 minutes. Some cars packed up as the track was now wet but those running later did not know whether to run or not as we did not want car damage with Blyton due next weekend. I, along with most other Westfield left it until the paddock marshall called us to decide and we set off. As we got to the start line the track was drying fast in the warm sun and we had a couple of delays. As I set off the track was ok but not perfectly dry and I went slightly slower. The later cars had a better chance to improve and Dave Cleaver was definitely having a go as he did a consistent 57.06secs but he was slower! ( his last 3 runs were
57.03, 57.02 and 57.06secs! Paul Morcom improved to 60.36 secs and Pete Goulding to 57.72 secs. Howard Gaskin got down to good 59.58secs and Michael Skid did 64.05secs. The Westfield guys ended up beating most of the other cars there and for me I was well pleased as I took my first FTD of 2014.
What was interesting is that we were well off the target times in all classes which was a bit of a surprise and we did not bag big points towards the speed series.
Terry Everall
Speed Series Correspondent
Class G competitor
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