Race Report from the National Final, Goodwood on Sunday 15th October 2006
Well the forecast did what it said on the tin, the sun shone! Our usual 6 am departure paled into insignificance on hearing some of the travel epics made by other teams – I thought we were keen! If Goodwood was in the middle of the country it would be much fairer on the northern teams but not even Barry could move Goodwood. Anyway, on to the race….in a desperate attempt to get pre-race data we sent TSR-2 out with two loggers on board, just the two laps were needed and one worked perfectly – the data is up on the site (graph and real excel file if you want to see) down the bottom of the data logging page. It gave us a lap average of 20.5 amps which despite the headwind was well within our power budget. We were lucky to be on hydrogen power and although some teams wondered if it was delivering the goods we monitored the voltage like a hawk and it was steady at 233 all day. If anyone measured the voltage in the mains charging tent I’d be interested to know what it was.
The team got everything sorted and ready for the parade lap and race and I got a photographers ‘bib’ to capture some footage. It should be a bit more of ‘everyone’ this year and at least I think I got every car on the chicane. I hope to get it mixed up over the next couple of weeks and then up on the site before too long.
And so to the race..well we got a flying push start from our experienced pusher (had a look at the start sequence photos – great) but by the end of the pit strait TT had shot past, followed by several others. The race unfolded without any dramas, although a couple of our drivers were being pretty wary due to the heavy traffic and dropped several seconds off lap times. This moved the driving orders on a bit sooner than expected but gave our ‘secret weapon’ lightweight driver a full two hours and the chequered flag. The closing speeds of some cars were pretty scary too (I spent some time actually on the chicane, close up) and sometimes space was not left for a closing car, meaning some hairy moments for some as over-correction or drastic swerving was required. Fortunately, pretty much everyone stayed out of each others way and as the hours rolled on we crept back up the field, eventually managing 9th place and with it, a sigh of relief in that although not as good a finish as we had hoped for - we planned for over 160 miles, i.e. 1 more lap would have been nice but a combination of the headwind and our shy drivers dropped us down by about 11/2 minutes. If we had kept that we would have got another lap on the clock. But at least TSR-2 kept its 100% reliability record – not a single failure all year and 818 miles added to the clock.
As published in the programme, Barry hints to the fact that our ‘aerodynamic changes for 2006’ were still under consideration. In fact, pretty much as soon as the first race started in 2006 (the Handicap) it was clear that we had made a good car sleeker but slower. And so we learnt about frontal area. Knowing that it was not worth pushing against the now substantial wall of air, we elected to run a safe year, resolving all the small issues and trying to sort stuff that we never seem to have time to do properly. As it turned out, our pit to car comms have been a huge success and the team are now all licensed amateur radio operators. Joining the team will require new recruits (if accepted) to take their licence too. The data logging has had it’s moments, proving that TSR-1 could go further at Castle Combe, logging a whole Shell economy run with GPS derived speed (yet to be posted) and not least showing that we could sustain our single tooth sprocket increase for the final. As it turned out, the wind took it back, but at least the sun shone! TSR-2 will be back next year, serviced and loaded with on-car camera and other toys, probably driving around in 1st gear with new drivers but the emphasis will be on TSR-4, now at the advanced panning stage and due for work to start after ½ term. Designed to beat the bubbles (well we can try!!) only time will tell. Either way, we have certainly learnt a lot over the years and now feature in our school prospectus, so the future is looking good. A recently closed sponsorship deal has bought us the gearbox we needed for TSR-4 and I think we have enough electronics that work to make best use of it. What would really help us, and others, is a chance to test more. Whatever, this closed season is going to be anything but slack.
As always, if any readers have questions about our cars, email me or try the forum, apart from a few too many ‘lols’ (;-)) it’s turned out to be a great asset.
RGE
