T Break thread 2023

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

How can a motorbike engine be a derivative of the original car engine? But regardless, I do think that they do permit other cars in an invitation class when the cars are in "the spirit" rather than original.

As I read it if the original car ran a bike engine then it can run in the class, and it can be a modern version thereof. I think it's a case of 1500 gt Anglias being able to run a Ford twink or a pinto engine but not a bike or Nissan engine.

[Mike Harte]

Sorry if this reads as though I'm just trying to start an argument, but I've taken this from the CSCC's official report of their meeting this year at Mallory which I think supports my response:

"Regular pacesetter Andy Southcott secured pole position with the day’s first 100mph lap in a truncated session. His MG Lenham Midget circulated in 47.309 seconds, almost 5s clear of Thomas Carey’s BDG-powered Honda CRX silhouette special. "

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

Sorry if this reads as though I'm just trying to start an argument, but I've taken this from the CSCC's official report of their meeting this year at Mallory which I think supports my response:

No problem. Was the Honda an original race car with that engine?

[andy97]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

Modern as in derivatives of the original.

No, modern as in modern, thus a Duratec engine could be used in an Anglia if you wanted, in the “modern engined class”.Dont see any reason why a Nissan engine Midget could not compete in the relevant CSCC Special Saloon and Modsports class.
The car could also race in the CSCC “Open Series” as, by definition, that series is open to any closed wheel saloon, sports car or Gt that does not fit in to any other CSCC series.

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by Peter Mallett

No problem. Was the Honda an original race car with that engine?

Peter, and Max, the answer to this question from Dave Smith is as follows - from the CSCC FB page:

Hi Mike, i can back what Mark has replied with that there are now no restrictions at all regards what engine goes in what car or which end of the car i guess. The only thing I can add is that if the engine is a relatively new style engine ( not used before 1993 ) the car thts using it will be put in what we call the `Modern` Engined class( es) which runs parallel to the existing `classic` engined classes.

Hope this helps.

[midgetman]

Mike thank you so much for asking - your FB question was the first item on my FB feed when I got home from work tonight!

I should have been more specific. MiniMM was building the car for the Midget Challenge and as such is pulling 80bhp on 5.5" List 1 tyres. He doesn't fancy taking on slick-shod mega-motor modsports hordes, although that was offered to him!

The original brief was to build an alternative to the "road going" class A-Series engine, the Nissan conversion has worked out about half the price of a decent 1380. He'd been originally accepted in the Invitation class, although there had been a hiccup along the way he was hoping to be reinstated under the MGCC but CSCC have said not in the Midget series.

It's fine, it's not a biggie, I'm still a huge supporter of all the CSCC does.

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[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by Mike Harte

How can a motorbike engine be a derivative of the original car engine? But regardless, I do think that they do permit other cars in an invitation class when the cars are in "the spirit" rather than original.

My point was that if the car originally raced in period with a bike engine, as many did, then a derivative of that engine would meet the regs. But, as you say they've changed the rules (not regs) to include "specials".

[Mike Harte]

I saw that yet another driver who caused death by dangerous driving plus whilst under the influence of drugs has been given a sentence of only 9 years. Why so short a period?

The sentencing guidelines are a maximum of only 14 years, and I wonder why it's so low? Surely the offence is just as serious as manslaughter, for example, which can carry a sentence of life imprisonment? OK, I know that that is not a whole of life tariff, but at least we could bang up these individuals for a really long time because they care not a jot for the general public, especially up here in West Yorkshire.

[midgetman]

Originally Posted by midgetman

I've just watched the first part of Disney's Keanu Reeves documentary about Brawn GP.

A proper, serous programme about F1 at last, no "sleb" interviews or silly gimmicks to ramp up the artificial tension, just the personalities involved. Looking forward to the rest of the series when I get chance to watch it.

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Just watched Part 2. So well put together. Very interesting and everything we suspected about the FOTA/FIA "war" was true.

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[Tel 911S]

Originally Posted by Lancsbreaker

Having left the EU (pace all Remainers ) UK is at least spared the Vnuk insurance requirement for race cars.....although a fair chunk of a race entry fee does of course go towards the MSUK's insurance.......


I'm sure for many Clubmen the trend identified by CSCC, whereby the same number of racers continue, but competing in less events per year, thereby saving on one or two event entry fees, plus the associated transport and accommodation costs, is the only viable solution. It does of course mean that all the non-event specific costs - PPE, licence, medical etc are spread across less events so each event is more expensive, but something has to give....

Totally off topic , but was going through some old rally details recently and came across your name listed for events . Like YPRES in 1989 , among others .
https://www.ewrc-results.com/
Quite a good site , but it does not have all events on there , about half of the Internationals I did are not shown , but still interesting and a bit of nostalgia .

[Lancsbreaker]

Originally Posted by Tel 911S

Totally off topic , but was going through some old rally details recently and came across your name listed for events . Like YPRES in 1989 , among others .
https://www.ewrc-results.com/
Quite a good site , but it does not have all events on there , about half of the Internationals I did are not shown , but still interesting and a bit of nostalgia .

Yes its quite a good site, I actually looked myself up on it a bit ago which helped me remember a few details about events I'd done.....I'd been trying to retrospectively build up a record of my rallying years - because of course back in the day I never thought to keep much by way of records.... I've got about 42 listed so far, but my earlier ones (pre-78 are lost to my shonky memory and the fact that results weren't computerised back then! And of course the earlier ones were mainly smaller events - and its mainly the larger, National or International ones that get recorded.....

[GORDON STREETER]

Is it it just me ? or do any of you have difficulty in speaking to call centers ? especially when they are Indian ? I was trying to make some changes on EasyJet's site where I actually needed to speak to a "person" and I could not understand half I what she was saying. I found myself apologizing and constantly asking her to repeat some of her speech. In the end I gave up !

[Gerard C]

Talking about what can be found about a said driver, this reminded that I was sometimes said "consensual" (flat wallet in French!). Those journalists… https://www.yumpu.com/fr/document/re...news-n012-vdev

[Mike Harte]

Originally Posted by GORDON STREETER

Is it it just me ? or do any of you have difficulty in speaking to call centers ? especially when they are Indian ? I was trying to make some changes on EasyJet's site where I actually needed to speak to a "person" and I could not understand half I what she was saying. I found myself apologizing and constantly asking her to repeat some of her speech. In the end I gave up !

No, Gordon, you're not the only one. I recently needed to speak to a call centre that was obviously based somewhere in the Indian Sub-continent, and I was getting increasingly irritated, yet having to apologise constantly because I couldn't understand half of what the person was saying.

And a couple of months ago, my son had ongoing problems with the Mobile arm of Virgin Media who, without any warning, cut off his mobile because he used an e-sim that was supplied by them because they suddenly decided to cease using them because there were technical problems that they couldn't solve. What made it worse, he is now living and working in Japan, and he relied on his mobile to receive texts from financial service companies for the unique security numbers required to be able to log on to his various accounts here in the UK.

The Virgin Media call centre was somewhere in the Far East, he thought, and rather than helping him, he felt that they were merely patronizing him, and offering no solutions. What is ridiculous about this is that Virgin recently merged (bought out more like, I think) by/with O2 who do offer e-sims, and without informing my son, they terminated his mobile contract and transferred him to O2. Luckily, their call centre is in the UK and a fairly short call to them sorted out the problem, although, for reasons best known them, they couldn't email him the required security bits, even though they already had that information, and instead posted it to me so that I could do that.

[justracing]

Originally Posted by GORDON STREETER

Is it it just me ? or do any of you have difficulty in speaking to call centers ? especially when they are Indian

Absolutely agree, I find them impossible to understand and this is no way intended as a racial comment, I just find their pronunciation impossible to understand.

[midgetman]

Me too.

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[Mike Harte]

I don't know if anyone else has been watching the two series about the race for supersonic passenger transport that was fought between the UK/France, the USA and Russia that was on Channel 4; quite interesting to watch.

One sort of amusing anecdote that I have about Concorde was when I was taking a trip to our factory in Germany, flying with Lufthansa to Düsseldorf in one of their 737s where I was sitting in the front row. After push-back, we joined the taxiing queue immediately behind a Concorde bound for the States and when that plane held waiting for clearance for take-off, our pilot stopped on the taxi-way in a position so that most of the passengers could see out of the windows the Concorde taking off.

As Concorde blasted down the runway, our pilots briskly took their position on the runway, and the purser called out to me that he bet that the captain was going to do something different. How he convinced Air Traffic Control to allow him to do it, I don't know, but as soon as he was given clearance, the captain spooled up the engines to almost full power with both pilots applying as much pressure as they could on the brakes, released them and then we just tore down the runway. At the point that they should have let the aircraft fly, they pushed the nose down for a few more seconds until they had to let it go up.

I think that we then climbed at a steeper angle of attack than I can recall, certainly in a 737 and carried on in this fashion for a couple of minutes. At that point, the captain came on the public address, and told passengers on one side of the aircraft that if they looked out of their windows they may see Concorde about 500 feet below us. At which point the purser said "See, I told you he would do something crazy!"

I must admit I was surprised that the captain had his fun because back then in the 80s, the pilots at Lufthansa used to earn bonuses based on fuel savings and also limiting tyre wear. The two airlines that I used the most were KLM for all my long distance flights and Lufthansa when going to Germany and onwards from there to other European countries. And the two airlines had very different philosophies in those times; KLM followed normal flight paths and trained their pilots to go for positive landings so that the pilots were sure that the aircraft was down, whilst Lufthansa trained for the opposite; seek permission to come in down a very gradual glide path and try to achieve the softest touchdown possible, thus earning bonuses for the pilots on any savings made.

[E.B]

Originally Posted by Gerard C

Talking about what can be found about a said driver, this reminded that I was sometimes said "consensual" (flat wallet in French!). Those journalists… https://www.yumpu.com/fr/document/re...news-n012-vdev

Great article Gerard. I was away at PI yesterday on an Alfa Club day so just seen it now. I will open it on my PC this evening where I have a bigger screen and makes for easier translation. Making up the championship points deficit you had by winning the last race of the season (Val de Vienne 3 hours) in style no less!

I dread to think what the next pages have in store! .

[Gerard C]

So, I have a reader, glad its you Chris! I learned on the hard way that there is a diffrence between winning a race and a championship. Having missed quite a lot over the years I found that the state of mind is the key factor. We made the same with my Corvette co-driver, winning the GT class during the last race of the CER. Believe me, for a French catching the famous fighting spirit is a hard task… Still I wonder how they found the rare picture of the Lola at LM.

[E.B]

Originally Posted by Gerard C

Still I wonder how they found the rare picture of the Lola at LM.

The side on picture of the car I know is originally from an unknown photographer but held on lemans-history.com.

Go to that website, click "Editions", then click 1970's and then 1974 . Click on 1974 race film (it isnt a film!) then scroll down to car#28 Lola T284... and voila!

or go straight to the link to the pic I found
http://lemans-history.com/imagens/1974/1974_028.jpg

I did find another paddock shot with no driver but 'some French blokes' with Marcel on their shirts pushing it!

[Gerard C]

Wonderful, pure gems! Thanks a lot and much more. Mind you, I forgot about the Marcel T-shirts and dunno where it came from. Scary for a newby at night in the straight, she was rather fast (circa 316 when my old bloke Jaussaud did 330 with his Matra). I do remember my neighour at infirmerie, for the mandatory doctor check, was Mr De Cadenet himself. Souvenirs, souvenirs.

[Gerard C]

Just keep this one somewhere in a cabinet (not very accurate I'd say):https://www.befr.ebay.be/itm/Bizarre...-/273353540610
What is fun nowadays, during an historic meeting, is that we're not that many drivers having raced at places like Le Mans (the real thing), Charade, Rouen, Spa (the real thing too), Montlhéry (all layouts). Only H Pescarolo, G Larrousse and Th Perrier are still with us and able to race again.

[Lancsbreaker]

Not strictly speaking racing related, but I'm sure many will share my sadness at hearing that Rosemary Smith, famous for winning the Tulip Rally at the wheel of an Imp, but noted for driving a range of rally cars, has died aged 86.


I met her on a number of occasions (as I'm not only into Alfas but also Imps), and she was a great character in the Irish tradition.



She, aged 79, had a test drive in a Renault F1 car - there are a number of videos about this - here is one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHL7...nnel=RenaultUK


A great lady who'll be sadly missed.

[John Elwin]

Very sad news indeed. I never met Rosemary but was very well aware of her driving career. Another of the good ones gone.

Unfortunate spelling mistake in your last line, Richard. The thought of Rosemary Smith being confused with that ghastly little goblin.....ugh!

[Peter Mallett]

Originally Posted by John Elwin

Very sad news indeed. I never met Rosemary but was very well aware of her driving career. Another of the good ones gone.

Unfortunate spelling mistake in your last line, Richard. The thought of Rosemary Smith being confused with that ghastly little goblin.....ugh!

Edited