Quote:
Originally Posted by geordiecriag101
Had a cracking day at Brands, another stunning drive by Frank Bird and Jack Morton to a very easy win in the end. There was a great scrap for second between Barry Morris in the Darrian T90 GTR+ and Tony Robinson in the Proton Satria S2500 all day long only settled right at the end by a retirement for Robinson at the last stage. Another stand out drive was from the Newton brothers in their 1400 Nova, they won their class by over 3 minutes and set 5th fastest time on a cold and icy SS1, just missing stage win by 3 Seconds!
Anyway here's a quick vid from the day if anyone interested:
https://youtu.be/mlofQ3PbLtU |
Quote:
Originally Posted by justracing
As you say a great day yesterday and good video, thanks. The Newtons really punch above their weight but I thought some of the stages were just too fast for the lesser classes, the speed advantage of the top runners is too much in my view.
Quick turn round for me today to get to Brooklands for the VSCC driving tests, always entertaining!
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I'll have a watch of that video later
The entry was very strong at the front of the field (even with the no-show from Desi Henry) and the pace reflected that (after the oddity of stage1
). I got to see a bit of the front runners in action and those cars really are something aren't they?
The Proton looked like it had run out of electricity - it was parked up at the start of the last stage with jump leads attached to it. The Newtons are always rapid, talking to them beforehand we said the conditions suited them and stage 1 proved that! It's a well sorted car and very well driven.
We had an interesting day, the car dropped onto 3 cyclinders on stage 1 but a change of plugs cured that. We had a huge moment at Paddock - broadside down the hill, the car was full of tyre smoke for the next few corners, certainly gets your attention! We also had a rather lurid spin in the outer paddock (full 360).
The alternator belt went awol part way through stage 6 and took the power steering belt with it (that caused us problems with the hairpin - after wrestling the car through the chicane James didn't have enough momentum to handbrake it around the hairpin and the steering lock on the Astra isn't great so we lost a lot of time there. We replaced the alternator belt ok but didn't have a belt for the power steering - we eventually fitted an alternator belt we got from the guys with the classic Mini (what are the chances of that fitting!). The alternator belt came off again on stage 7 but the power steering stayed with us, after sorting the alternator belt again we managed to get a finish
Pretty happy to get to the end - James is still learning the car (he'd done one stage in it prior to Brands) and at the start of the day neither of us were comfortable in the car - both seats were out and refitted at different points during the day to try and help our backs, both of us were suffering a bit!
So a huge thank you to the organisers, marshals, rescue crews, all the people we begged parts from to keep us going and Martin for servicing (we kept him busy!)
