David and Goliath at Quick 60
It felt like the car was a dinosaur compared to the age and technology of the other cars at this event and even the commentator mentioned that the Datsun must be the most historic car there, having been racing for nearly 50 years, but it was an incredible event to be part of and I was using it as a test session for the new set up after the long rebuild
I had changed the pads for a different compound to see if they would pull up better on first application, and in a bid to get the car handling better on the new Bilstein shockers I had reduced the spring rates significantly so really had no idea on how the car was going to perform.
I still had the fuel pressure issue that has been baffling me for months.
The class consisted of
Bev Fawkes in the mighty Blue Thunder 500+bhp twin turbo scimitar
Ian Medcalf in his amazing Mighty Mouse spaceframed Fiat 500 powered by a swift tune 1300 mini engine with 140bhp
Richard Turnock in his space framed Skoda 110r with a flat 6 Porsche engine
I was running some old slicks that Bev Fawkes had given me as they were past their best and had given up trying to keep the Scimitar on the tarmac.
Practice runs in the morning showed that the Datsun was handling like a dream with a very neutral feel. I was also running the big rear wing that Janspeed ran in the 70s for the first time and had expected it to maybe introduce some understeer but thankfully the car turned in to the high speed corners as well as the slower ones.
By lunchtime I was a couple of seconds behind the Scimitar and a few hundredths ahead of the Fiat with the Skoda struggling as he only had his wet tyres (cut slicks).
The afternoon consisted of 2 runs with the aggregate time giving the class position and the top 60% of the class going through to the next round.
My first run was a good clean run with confidence building and a little more knowledge of the track. But the second run I had decided that rather than try taking the hairpin in 3rd I would drop to 2nd to get a bit more punch out of the corner. It worked well until I went to grab 3rd and got 5th instead. Cursing myself I found 4th and planted the throttle and then 5th while dropping down into devils elbow and pushed hard for the finish.
Convinced that this would be a slower time I was really surprised to find it was half a second quicker again which left me 1.5 seconds behind the Scimitar and just ahead of the fiat. It was enough to get me into the class final against the Scimitar.
The final run sadly was half a second slower again back to a 1 min 5 sec and I don’t really know why but with the best will in the world I was not going to win the class unless the Scimitar either fell off or broke something.
Having said that, the fuel pressure was rising so rapidly now during the run that whenever I was off throttle I was flicking the pumps off momentarily to allow the pressure to drop so maybe that could be my excuse
It was really good to see some friendly faces come and say hi in the paddock and thanks for coming along. Hopefully you had a good day as well