VF-Racing: Classic Thunder @ Brands Hatch

[Jonathan F]

Brands Hatch 15th May 2011 “Classic Thunder” Round 4

Vaughan Fletcher: No:16 Class A4 Subaru Impreza

Brands Hatch History

Located in the “Garden of England”, Brands Hatch in Kent is one of the world's most recognised circuits, and is hugely popular with fans and drivers alike. From its humble beginnings as a dirt track bicycle circuit in 1926, Brands Hatch has continued to grow. It hosted the British Grand Prix between 1964 and 1986 and today it holds many British and international car, truck and bike events.

Originally used as a military training ground, the first circuit was carved out of the dirt in 1926 for local cyclists.

Within a few years, the circuit had grown to allow the running of motorcycles, which ran a ¾ mile anti-clockwise track in the valley.

Brands Hatch remained in use during the 1930s, but due to being used as a military location, it was subject to many bombing raids during World War II.

Since the 50’s, the circuit has seen all the motoring greats line up on the grid.

The likes of Stirling Moss, Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell and Jenson Button, have all raced and won here.

For round 4 of the “Classic Thunder” Championship, the shorter “Indy” layout (1.198 miles) was being used, which is located entirely within a natural amphitheatre, providing views of almost the entire circuit.

Home to the iconic and fearsome “Paddock Hill Bend” the circuit was all geared up to provide some close racing.

Pre Race:

Following an incident in another race series the weekend before Snetterton, it was decided that we would sit out rounds 2 and 3 as there was too much to do in order get the car ready in time.

Having been used by another driver to help slow them down, the rear of the car required some repair work. In addition to this the same shunt had bent the exhaust, causing an increase in back pressure and a reduction of power.

As a result, the exhaust has now been replaced with a “Mongoose” system, which has helped bring the car back to full health.

The engine, gearbox and differential oils were all changed to help keep everything in peak condition. Due to the increased loading on the engine and running gear these tend to suffer during each race.

To help improve the airflow through the radiator, and in turn the cooling (which blighted the cars performance last time out), the oil cooler has been moved and fitted with a dedicated air intake, which feeds directly from the old front fog lamp position.

Also, to help prevent the air filter suffering from heat soak, it has also been moved to an external position where it will pick up the cold air it needs to feed the engine.


Race Day:

Having raced at Brands Hatch a number of times of the past couple of years, we have built up a library of suspension settings, and we used these for our qualifying run. We would check the data after the session to see if any changes were needed though.

The Toyo 888’s that the car had travelled down on were swapped for the slicks, and the car was given a final check in readiness for qualifying.

A couple of late additions to the entry list showed that Stacy Vickers in his RX7 would be taking to the track, along with the Brands Hatch supremo Rod Birley in his 600+ bhp monster WRC Escort Cosworth.

Qualifying:

Class A4 was made up of:

12. Ian Froggatt Subaru Impreza RA
16. Vaughan Fletcher Subaru Impreza RA
44. Rod Birley Ford Escort WRC Cosworth

With a grid of 14 cars we wanted to get a position for the start of the race.

We found ourselves joining the track behind the Sierra Cosworth of Alexander Owen, and the Seat’s of Brian and Ilsa Cox with Rod directly behind us.

With the allocated time upon us, all cars were waved out on track for the 15 minutes of track time.

Pic thanks to Karl Ladd

Giving the car time for everything to come up to temperature, Vaughan piloted the Subaru cleanly around the circuit. After about 4 laps, the tyres were up to temp and the job in hand could get underway.

Pic thanks to Jon Bryant

Ilsa Cox was soon struggling with her sickly Seat, which looked to be a carry over from the day’s previous race at Donnington.

With the exception of one incident, the session for the team was trouble free, and the car ran well.

On the run up to “Druids”, the Sierra of Brian Lilley had a problem with a sticking accelerator, which meant avoiding action was needed. With the brakes locked up, Vaughan pulled over to allow him past without damage to either vehicle or driver.

When the results came in

Qualified 2nd in class
Qualified 4th overall

Fastest lap: 51.653 sec on lap 16 of 17

Rod Birley had placed put his Escort on pole with a sub 50sec lap, with Neil Philpotts in his more reliable of late Mitsubishi Starion in 2nd and Joss Ronchetti in 3rd.

Back in the paddock, the tyre temperatures and pressures indicated the need for some fine tuning, but other than some extra fuel, nothing else was needed.

With a 7 hour wait to race, the car was jacked up and all wheels were removed. Given the cloudy nature of the weather we would be quickly able to decide on the best tyres down to the wire.

Round 4:

With the weather looking like staying fine, the slicks were put back on the car and both it and driver were sent on their way to “holding”.

Placed in 4th on the outside of the grid, Vaughan needed a good start to make sure he wasn’t hung out to dry on the 1st run into PHB. With “Ronchetti” alongside and the quick duo of “Froggatt” and Whittaker behind, there would be a lot going on during the first few corners.

Pic thanks to Karl Ladd

With Rod dictating the pace of the rolling start, everyone held their position until the red lights went out.

With the lights out, the race got underway with the fire breathing Philpotts taking an early lead over the black Escort of Birley. Keeping ahead of the chasing pack, Vaughan tucked in neatly behind Ronchetti to hold position and follow the leaders up to Druids.

Just behind Garrie Whittaker in his BMW M3 spun on cold tyres, but thankfully managed to come out unscathed, and rejoined at the back of the grid.

On the run into Surtees, Joss was held up by Neil and Rod which allowed Vaughan the opportunity to take the Sunbeam for 3rd place. On the drag back down the Brabham straight, the roles were reversed and Vaughan was back into 4th.

Over the next 4 or 5 laps the Subaru kept in contention with the lead 3, but it was soon apparent that they had the extra speed on the straights to pull out a decent lead.

Pic thanks to Jon Bryant

With a comfortable position of nearly 15 seconds over to a well recovered Whittaker, it looked as though this would be the limit to our battles. That was until we started to see and hear the problems that Neil was having in his Starion.

Birley and Ronchetti had pulled cleanly away to leave the 3rd place man limping around the circuit.

Pic thanks to Karl Ladd

With a misfiring engine, Vaughan was able to see that he was closing on the stricken Philpotts, and was reducing the distance between them lap after lap. Unfortunately for us, the chequered flag came out a lap too soon to allow us to make one last ditch attempt at 3rd place, and crossed the line 1.5 seconds adrift.

Finished 2nd in class
Finished 4th overall
Fastest lap: 51.654 on lap 6 of 24

To put this into perspective, the last time out at Brands the car lapped in a 53.723 sec. so we were really pleased with a new personal best.

Back in the garage, the suspension settings from the morning had proved to be spot on with excellent even temperatures and tyre wear across all 4 wheels.

Summary

Despite the mammoth wait between qualifying and the race, it was a great days racing with excitement throughout.

It’s pleasing to see the car and driver have improved their lap times by over 2 seconds, and most of all there were no mechanical issues.

We are out at Castle Combe in a couple of weeks, and we’ll be back out for the Autoglym Classic Festival in June.


Jonathan Fletcher

[stirling lost]

Great write up, enjoyable read I was at Brands on Sunday but had to leave early and missed the race hopefully get to see you race at Combe.
stirling lost

[Minicross424]

Great report, always enjoy reading them.
Best of luck catching Rod Birley!

[andy robinson]

Nice report, superb lap time, well done
& on Joss's video saw you breifly in front on the 'bullet'