As a race report this could be the quickest blog entry ever..... So lets start with the elephant in the room, I had some stuff nicked which made getting home a bit tricky and resulted in me having to stay a little bit longer than I wanted, the upside is everything is now sorted and Lorni is feeling much better thank you everyone for your concern and well wishes.
OK so around 1250 miles on motorbike from my home here in Spain to Santa Pod, I left my hotel in Portsmouth very very early Friday morning...god how do you lot put up with all that traffic, Steve and Dave had already set up camp the day before and changed a few bits on the car that needed it.
I arrived and sat in the car while she was fired up...dam! did she sounded good almost a little frightening we did have a happy engine whatever Steve has done the engine likes it! I noticed that the team had fitted the new chute as the old one didn't seem to want to work anymore.
Just before the first run Steve mentioned that we had a wee problem with the trans brake in that we seemed to have a two step set up which we didn't have??? so I had to hold the button in mash the throttle it will hold at 4000rpm let off the throttle and mash it again and it will climb to over 5000rpm. Right so that's what I did and all hell let loose the earth rotated and all I could see was clouds and a very large wall approaching at a rapid rate of knots so I got off the throttle steered away from danger and just tootled up the track. I now know what Adrenalin smells like...all I could say to Steve when he got to the top end to tow me back was "What the f*^k have you done to my car?" It's now half a second quicker than when I last drove it and in drag racing terms that's a light years difference and boy did I know it.
Before the run I had Steve telling me it's the same car don't worry about it, but I had Dave and Diana telling me that its now a beast and I had better hold on for gods sake when I hit it. OK so the main problem was I had the steering wheel off set slightly so I could get my hand down to the gear lever easily. Steve had found the offset and thought "I'll put that right" so hence my ride towards the wall. Second run I decided to let it go at 4000rpm I got my first ever red light in 8 years of trying the car went through the lights in 9.0 at around 155mph. So feeling a little more comfortable in the car after nearly three years away I told Steve to put the 8,2 tune in and lets go. We towed down but I could hear and feel something not right so I stopped Steve and we pushed the car back into the pits, Steve had found the troubled with the trans brake..a stuck poppet valve and something had gone wrong while testing it. The floor can out and then the back plate of the diff where we found loose teeth where there shouldn't be any we had stripped the teeth from the ring and pinion gear.
Steve tried his best to find replacements parts we phoned everyone we knew then everyone we didn't know we had help from everyone including- to name just a couple John Webster and Matt Wright and at this point I would like to thank everyone who tried to help us get back on the track that weekend but it was not to be.
We put the car back together and did some watching for a change on Saturday we went to pack the car away on Sunday morning but we still had a full tank so Steve fired her up, I could have cried, that engine sounded so strong and even Steve though she was going to PB again.
So that's it for this year we were third int he points up to the HRD but we slipped to fourth but the team are still excited to be running the number 4 next year instead of 64 the best we have ever done in over 8 years of being members of The Wild Bunch, so now time to repair, refresh and rethink ready for next season where once again I hope I will be able to come over at least once and drive the car again...only next time I'm going to fly over and bring Lorni with me. Stay safe folks see you all soon.
