Time Attack - Knockhill .... its started ....

[dynamix]

Well, the time to try my luck at a timed event has finally come.

Having been unable to commit to the full series when funds were needed by the organisers in February I managed to sneak an entry into the Knockhill round of Time Attack as I saw how much fun Mike Payne was having and knowing that some people would deem a near 1000 mile round trip too much for one round a space became available courtesy of Ron Kiddell (thanks Ron )



The last month has been hectic trying to get through the list of things to do to try and eek a little more performance out of the car and a lot more performance out of me With a final shakedown last week at cadwell along with some expert tuition from Maxx, a few minor tweaks were needed such as bigger injectors and more boost to give me the best chance I will have of getting a less than embarassing result up there.

As always before events there is a mad rush to get things done and I feel for Mike Payne (TA) and Bladey (competing in EDC at the same event) whose cars were both finalised yesterday having had recent scares - I believe Mike's was mapped to 2 bar in the early hours of this morning by Zak after having had to strip and subsequently rebuild a lot of the engine to find and cure a mystery noise. Up until 9pm last night Mike didnt know whether he was definitely going to make it I am so pleased that he is - it will be great to slug it out on track with him in what should be two fairly well matched cars (albeit with different driving characteristics)

Well, having had a perfect night's sleep (not) in fact I havent slept that well for quite a while now worrying about the event, the car, me, the weather and anythign else that I have forgotten to do cos my mind has been pre-occupied (sorrry if this affected you) .... up at 6am - not cos I had to but because it was light and I couldnt get back to sleep anyway

The plan today is to make a leisurely journey up to Dunfermline where Mike and I are booked into a fine B&B for the two nights. It looked great on their website, lets hope it is as good as it seems. They have wi-fi there so will post reports from there

Tomorrow is 'the' day !!

The event starts for us with an SIDC Track Morning from 9am - 12 that both Mike and I are booked on to try and gain some experience of the track before the stopwatches come out to play. This wont give us a major advantage over anyone else in TA as most of the competitors seem to be running in it but hopefully it can stop us joining Team Gravel and help us to post some respectable times in the afternoon practice and qualifying sessions

Zak from Mocom will be coming up to assist on the day with set-up, map tweaking, general problems as well as probably stirring the friendly competition between Mike and myself

The afternoon TA Club Challenge is broken down into two groups. Both Mike and I are in the same group and will get 2 x 20 min practice sessions then a 20 minute qualifying session where it is time to stand up and be counted .... our best lap time during that period ranks us for the final later on. During the final we have 1 warm up lap, then 1 hot lap to set our best time

Alyn from ASP is also heading up (I hope the tickets arrived Alyn) and I am looking forward to meeting him and also Dan @ PFC along with many other friendly faces in what is, after all, a relatively small community of track goers, modifiers, tuners and general motorsport lovers.

To say I am excited is a huge understatement.
To say I am nervous is even more so but that will go as soon as on track (i hope)

Bring it on !!!

Will post progress reports and pics in here

[WR1 Bro]

Best of luck for the weekend. Look forward to reading an update

[danr55]

Best of luck mate, sounds like great fun to me.

Looking forward to hearing how you get on

[Houdini]

What a great post! The very best of luck for the weekend. We'll have our fingers, legs and eyes crossed for you. I'm looking forward to hearing how you get on

[Mac-1]

Good luck Duncan

I am sure you will let us know how you get on with yet another word by word account of the events . Keep them coming, it gives me an excuse not to do any work .

The car is looking good

[dynamix]

Arrived at the hotel

6 and a half hour journey isnt too bad at all including a fabulous A road blast up through Kielder Forest ..... awesome .. apart from nearly dying

Hotel is fantastic - just on the edge of Dunfermline 15 mins from the track ... just unloading a few bits and going to wash Mike's car and count the dead flies on mine - then food time

[Houdini]

Can't wait for the next post

[SPIKE LIKE MIKE]

Hi Fella,

How do you find them Yoko's on road? - or are they purely for the track?

I see you use "Mocom" - Ive heard good things about their geometry set ups etc - they are from my neck of the woods - assuming they are the guys based North Weald / Epping way.

Best of luck .

[dynamix]

just got back to the hotel and had a fine scottish curry

what a great day.... toally knackered now but what a day !!!

The day started with the SIDC track morning which Mike and I had booked onto the try and get a bit of practice of this circuit. First impressions of it were .... jeesh

Its only got 7 corners .... how hard can it be ?

But half of those corners are totally blind, flying sideways jumping kerbs and generally hooning around. I came to the conclusion that Mike was more willing to drive closer to the edge than I was quite early on ... more on that later though

I was logging the first track session and came in with a 1min 3 something, which I was quite pleased with after just a few laps. Came into the pits and the story for the day seemed to be my car overheating coming in the pits so plentiful supplies of water were needed to fill it up for the next outing.

Mike and I went out loads in the morning track time to try out various lines, gear choices, amount of kerb taken etc etc.. There are places where you are literally sideways flying with your foot planted to the floor waiting for it to land and drive on .... then there were other corners where you have to be even more committed ... not a day for the faint hearted. I had thought the mike was quick in the morning sessions where my time had come down to 1 min 2 but still hadnt got the hairpin right.

This I was determined to improve in the afternoon TA sessions.

Session 1 Warm up

My transponder wasnt working so the MST timing guys logged me at a 4min 6 lap ... the guy came up and got me to relocate it afterwards

Session 2 Practice (DRY)

Mike was flying clocking a high 59 sec lap which was stunning - my best was 1 min 2 but got badly baulked on a real flyer as the traffic was horrendous through the whole session for me and struggled to piece a good lap together.

It then started raining at the end of the session .... oh dear this will be fun

We came in from this session and the heavens opened on us - it was horizontal rain !!

Session 3 Qualifying (WET)

Again Mike was throwing caution to the wind and chucked his car into the corners with bigger balls than me. I was airborne several times a lap and sideways a lot but Mike seemed to be able to hook it up better than me in the wet. Having said that he hooked it up better than anyone in the wet coming in with fastest Club Challenge Driver, with me in 6th. I was delighted with this and Mike was like a schoolkid ... lovely to see someone so happy - well done Mike.

As for the hairpin, this comes at the end of the straight and is a heavy braking zone (yes pf brakes worked again) but i had a choice to try and get as much speed as possible for the uphill section:

Option 1 - trail brake into it keeping it tidy and then apply power when at the apex to bring the speed onto the uphill straight

Option 2 - brake in a straight line get a good line in a drive fighting some understeer until you can get on the power

Option 3 - stand on the brakes and turn in whilst at the same time burying the right foot to bring the car sideways within an inch of the edge of the exit kerb and gravel trap to the delights of the crowd.

Unlike my normal smooth driving style, weirdly I chose option 3 as it seemed the quickest and certainly made me laugh all the way up the start/finish straight and that was important to me ... love it

Then, just as we thought we knew what Scottish rain was like ... it well and trully lobbed it down ...... hmmmm

TA Final (WET WET WET)

The hotlaps were decided to allow 2 hot laps following a drivers meeting to allow for some degree of tyres warming up. This was good as we got two goes to post a good time.

We queued in the Pitlane and were supposed to head out onto the track in reverse seeding from the qualifying session. This would have put Mike running last and me 6th from last - on a drying track this would have been good.

As it happens, Mike was first out on track. A drenched, puddly, wet slippery water fest of a track. I was sitting in the pitlane ready to go out 4th and saw mike go steaming through on his first hotlap - looked great. Saw him come past for the second time, this time slewing sideways one way then the other entering the downhill, off camber, blind series of corners called Seat Curves.... he didnt appear round again hmmm. I was worried... really worried. The the marshall said GO - so off on track for my laps. It was slippery, really slippery but full of confidence from the previous wet session, I made swift progress and caught the person that had set off in front of me. At least I didnt come last

Anyway results ....

TA Club Challenge

Mike Payne 6th Place from the one hot lap and some gravel to take home with him for the second (well done )
Duncan Graham 14th Place

I believe that there was over 30 CC competitors so overall well chuffed with it and had a ball - what a great circuit (well worth the long trip even for a track day IMO)

[dougie549]

HI Duncan

Nice car m8 and it looked good round Knockhill.

I know where you are coming from that it sems a small and easy cicuit, but when you have those kind of corners it really does make it fun

Hope you dont mind but i put up a couple of pics from the day









Cheers Dougie

[dynamix]

thanks Dougie - great pics ... can I be cheeky and ask whether it is possible to get some large versions of them?

Love the circuit - got to do that one again

[danr55]

fantastic work, Duncan sounds like awesome fun to me, and a good result

what tyres were you using in the wet?

[dynamix]

Yoko A048

Not ideally suited to it, but they coped very well really. Managed 6th quickest in the last qualifying but only 14th in the final as was 4th out on the wet but drying track. Real pressure but great fun.... loved the showboating

[dynamix]

Some showboating pics when it was lobbing it down

[dougie549]

HI Duncan

Of course you can be cheeky and ask its your car after all M8

Send me your email addy to dg549@btinternet.com

Cheers Dougie

[dynamix]

yhm

[danr55]

some nice sideways action shots there mate

[Houdini]

Great write-up, Duncan, and congratulations on your results . I used to do a lot of race marshalling at Knockhill in the 90's before moving south, so I know the track very well. I'm not sure what they've done about the run-off for the rivers of water you used to get at rather strategic points of the track, but to get that kind of result in the wet, 4th car out, and on your first racing visit to the track is an excellent result.

Pity about Mike but hey, that's racing. Seat curves wasn't always a bad point for water though. Worst places I used to find were the exit from Carlube and entry under braking for the chicane. Of course all the names for the corners have completely changed since I was last there. I had to go to the knockhill web site to find out what this year's versions are!

When is your next event/outing?

[dynamix]

I made a mistake at Carlube on the second flying lap running wider onto the exit kerb as I had gone in quicker - it just span all the wheels and couldnt put the power down until I backed off. From the split times and sector analysis that they give you this cost me about .5 sec so a bit disappointed.

Had a ball of a time showboating for the crowds - I know how boring it looks watching shopping cars going round a race circuit at relatively slow speed, so wanted to have some fun and give people something to bring a smile to their faces. It worked for me as I was peeing myself laughing all up the straight to the start/finish. I had a number of comments afterwards from people in the crowd to say that they enjoyed it so I guess I made an impression

Next outing is next week at Snetterton (hopefully in the dry)

[WR 1mposter]

Well done matey impressive stuff

[Houdini]

I made a mistake at Carlube on the second flying lap running wider onto the exit kerb as I had gone in quicker - it just span all the wheels and couldnt put the power down until I backed off. From the split times and sector analysis that they give you this cost me about .5 sec so a bit disappointed.

Had a ball of a time showboating for the crowds - I know how boring it looks watching shopping cars going round a race circuit at relatively slow speed, so wanted to have some fun and give people something to bring a smile to their faces. It worked for me as I was peeing myself laughing all up the straight to the start/finish. I had a number of comments afterwards from people in the crowd to say that they enjoyed it so I guess I made an impression

Next outing is next week at Snetterton (hopefully in the dry)

A good crowd at Knockhill is always worth .5 second. A big smile on your face up the start/finish hill must be worth the same amount

How annoying about Snetterton ! I go past there both today and Thursday (as I'm working in Norwich) but the weekend will be back in the Midlands, I'm afraid. What's on?