Oulton Park September 2009 -
Race Progress Report from Andy Shepherd

Qualifying the Seven on the Saturday of 'Gold Cup weekend' was uneventful - and to some extent, unsuccessful... The Elans are just getting quicker and quicker, particularly on tracks where their higher power and lower drag can outweigh the Seven's superior cornering abilities, as is the case at Oulton. But besides Andrew Marler and Paul Tooms we had Simon Crompton in an AC Cobra, Julian Dodd's TVR Griffith and Dave Randall's Ginetta G4. And I couldn't even get on the third row of the grid thanks to Martin Halliday, who has been getting the better of me most of this season in his Seven S3. The good news was that the second-hand Yokohamas I'd bought from James Bilderbeck cleaned up well and didn't seem to lose any balance - they'd had a lot of softened rubber spread around their tread when I got them.black and white photo

I made a half decent start, but so did Mike Eagle's Milano on my left - and then Paul Tooms and Dave Randall touched at Old Hall, and Martin backed off a fraction in anticipation of a potentially blocked line. I didn't, thinking this might be an opportunity rather than a threat, and so had stolen Martin's sixth place as calm was restored in the rush through Cascades. We'd been warned in the collection area about some oil dropped between the Shell Hairpin and the chicanes, but our steady pace on the green flag lap had not revealed any problem.
However, the bunched field now rushed into this zone at racing speed - and the cloak of invisibility descended! It was very scary moment as the leading bunch simply disappeared into a dense cement dust 'cloud'
along with the track and everything else... I valued my car and my health too much to simply plunge in blind, hoping they'd all got safely through the chicane, and so did Martin Halliday behind me in his S3 Seven. I hope the marshalls will be a shade less generous with their cement dust in future - removing one hazard by creating another isn't what they intended, I'm sure! (Some spectators - Sharon and Paul Walker - kindly emailed me the attached picture, which gives a hint of what it was like for the Seven on the opening lap.) The leading bunch pulled away from Martin and me by several seconds as a result of this incident, but the gap to them was to grow more progressively for the next twenty minutes...

My line through Druids, my favourite corner, didn't seem to be quite as quick as I thought it should be! As a result, at 90 plus mph, the Seven was approaching the grass edge earlier in the curve than intended. Lift off the throttle in such circumstances and you're certain to spin off towards the hedge, so the easing of velocity has to be incredibly delicate. Adding extra steering lock to try and stay on the tarmac has an equally damaging consequence, as whatever grip you have is called upon to exert an even greater force at the tyres to cope with a tighter curve - "Velocity squared divided by the Radius"
determines the force needed... The one thing that doesn't happen in recovery mode is any acceleration through the corner, and so exit speed suffers while heart-rate soars. The second time I did this at Druids, on lap four, Martin pounced on the ensuing run towards Lodge, executing a perfect inside move. I wasn't too upset about this, because at least we might have a bit of a dice together - the leaders were now out of sight.

But Martin wasn't making any errors and wasn't slow either, as evidenced by his 2m 4.6s qualifying time, nine tenths ahead of mine. I couldn't make any impression on him, even when on lap eight I posted my fastest lap, Martin did too, both of us managing 2m 3.9s. Then I began to suffer from my ignition cutting out on hard right hand corners... It turned out my wiring loom was moving under peak cornering G-load and breaking contact at the ignition switch! I managed to make it to the finish, even shrinking the gap a little on the tenth and last lap, when some back markers got in Martin's way.

The first eight cars in qualifying finished in the same order they started, apart from Andrew Marler's Elan getting under half a second ahead of Dave Randall's Ginetta to steal second place, but Dave clocked an amazing 1m 59.8s in the process, bettered only by the winning Cobra.

The 23's first event since the Brands Hatch cylinder head failure began with a running in of the gearbox, on blocks in the paddock, and then the running in of the engine in the half hour qualifying session on track. The culminating single quick lap at the end of qualifying revealed a slight top end misfire, and when I returned to the paddock the engine bay filled with steam, indicating another head failure - temperatures had been fine throughout. And the gearbox had retained all its oil, for the first time in ages. But that was the end of our Gold Cup weekend!

Andy Shepherd