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Last  on
Curborough Sprint, April 25th 2004
Wow, what a day. Who'd have thought that the new suspension would have made such a difference to my times? My PB at Curborough was 39.39s from the 2003 season, with a car that wouldn't go round corners. And gradually today, lap by lap I managed to go from 40.07s, to 38.53, to 37.61s, and finally down to 37.29s. Thats a massive improvement over last year, particularly considering it is April, which isn't the warmest of months. Though having said that, we did see 21.5°C during the day, and had to keep an eye on the tyres as the warmth kept raising the pressures from the ideal 21.5psi. My first run was ruined by the old gear change problem though. I changed down from 3rd to 2nd, instead of up in to 4th, and I buzzed the engine, but yet again, she survived the abuse. I've a new B&M gear shifter to fit for the next event, which should cure my achilles heel, which has always been gear selection problems. The shifter (Part #45096) was ordered from www.summitracing.com and only cost £135 at the present exchange rate, cheaper than you can buy it anywhere in the UK.
I'm ecstatic. The XR2 is finally becoming a competitive car. I can carry so much speed through the corners now, and the clips from the video's show that the inside wheel is around 1 to 2" off the ground, which means the anti-roll bar is working, and the camber on the rear wheels is really helping too, as all the load is transferred to the outside wheel, the 1.5° of camber helps transfer even more grip through the tyre, down to the ground.
I was up against a space framed Fiat 500 all day, running a 1300CC engine from a Mini, and with slicks, he was just 1/10th of a second quicker than me. And I'm on road tyres don't forget, so with slicks I would have run rings round him. So, a 2nd in class, and a titanic scrap for first. An excellent days motorsport. And I've started to overcome this problem of the red mist decending, and getting more and more ragged. I think I can be very pleased with todays performance.
In preparation for the event, I'd removed the handbrake lever and cables, to save some weight; fitted 20mm bump stop rubbers to the front shock absorbers to prevent the tyres from catching the inner wings on full travel; I've lowered the rear of the car by 10mm by removing the rubber caps that normally sit atop the springs; I've sprayed the front wheels with PTFE spray so the brake dust is more easily removed; and I've cleaned the car of all the iron powder, that had been deposited from the last event at 3 Sisters.
Times were as follows:
40.07s 1st practice
38.53s 2nd practice
37.61s 1st timed
37.29s 2nd timed (New Personal Best)
Result: 2nd in class.
Weather: Warm, dry, sunny, some cloud later in the afternoon, approx 20° C
Tyre pressures were 21.5psi all round.
Rear anti-roll bar was on the 2nd softest setting. (5x stiffer than standard ARB).
Front shock absorbers dropped from MAX-1 to MAX-2 for the final run to soften the front.
Some of the photo's from the event
Here is a PDF file with the report that appeared in Nottingham Sports Car Clubs 'Spinoff' magazine, and Loughborough Car Clubs 'Backfire' magazine.
RaceTechnology DL90 datalogger from the six runs. (Files are in Race Technology's own .run format, for use with DL90 software)
Practice run 1 [78 KB]
Practice run 2 [166 KB]
Timed run 1 [167 KB]
Timed run 2 [156 KB]
If you have difficulty downloading the .run files, simply right click on each link, and choose Save As. Then open the file from within the DL90 software.
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