We've been running the Global this year, and it's been a trying time, but, it was £5250 and came with £2,500 of dampers on it. So it was a bargain from that point of view.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and if we had done the redesign we are currently working on to it at the start of the season then i think things would be massively different, but, you live and learn.
Our driver in his first ever race (of any kind) qualified 5 seconds a lap faster than anyone else in class, and for once there were 6 or so cars in our class so it was pretty impressive. So we were pretty pleased with the cars performance. Giving a few of the average Radicals a beating as well.
Reliability with the car is a massive issue as the car is just too small to fit everything you need into it properly. We've done most of the design of a all new bikesports car, but, at present it seems more practical to encoporate some of our new thinking and learning into redesigning the Global to achieve some of what the new car was going to give us for a fraction of the cost. We know we are super competitive if we can keep running long enough, and with the new car design we have developments we can incorporate anytime we start to struggle with competitiveness.
If Bike Sports can keep a decent grid turning up each meeting then we stand a chance to win the championship overall with this updated Global.
I'm doing some freelance design work on another bike sports car that'll be out next season and there should be another new manufacturer out next season too, so the grids are likely to be better than this year, and more competitive.
So at the moment we have a new longer wheelbase, narrower chassis'd Global on the jig and new ZX10 engine waiting to go into it. Seem to have some interest from other Global owners as well so hopefully that'll help get some of the 40 odd cars that exist back out and racing, if they've been put off by the sort of problems we've been having.
I'm a big fan of the championship. I'm not convinced about the bike engines in cars thing yet, but, i'm hoping these latest changes might help convert me
D.