2CV Racing

One of the wonderful things about motorsport is that the community is very open, very inclusive and very willing to share. Nowhere is this more true than when a friend offers you a drive in another car, which is exactly what’s happened to me – but no ordinary racing car.

I’m delighted to announce that, come August, I’ll be entering the annual Classic 2CV Racing Club 24hr Race with Team Stinky*, running the car you see here. The car has been owned and raced by Christine Savage for the last 21 years, and has won the 24hr in the past. My entry into the team came via her brother Neil, who you may recall being my nemesis through my years competing in sprints in my E36. It’s always a great compliment to be trusted with someone else’s racing car, but in such a long race where consistent pace is so important, that’s even more true. Between Christine, Neil and Graeme Smith, I’ll be sharing the car with three very experienced 2CV racers so expectations are high – and I can’t actually remember the last time I drove a front-wheel-drive car on a circuit!
*the car smells just fine, but was christened Stinky almost immediately on account of its number plate – and yes, it is still road legal and has been driven to races in the past, so it qualifies the McKee Motorsport principles!

One of the first things you notice about the 2CV is how bizarrely well-suited to racing it is. It’s simple and lightweight, its panels are thin and easily battered back into shape, and any of them can be removed in a matter of seconds. The engine, a 602cc flat twin, can be comfortably lifted by one person and it’s already geared quite optimally for circuit use. Naturally there are a whole host of modifications, most of which are covered on the 2CV Racing Club’s website here, but its layout is still very true to the original – it’s no silhouette racer.

The air-cooled engine is fed by a control carburettor, revs to 7000rpm and produces around 45bhp, enough to propel the 650kg car to a top speed of 80mph in clean air – somewhat more if you’re tucked in the draft of competitor! Most teams carry several engines, and in case of a failure an experienced team can replace it in under ten minutes. The 24hr has been won by teams who had to do an engine change mid-race!

The tyres are control Toyo road tyres, in 135-section. These are perhaps my favourite feature. Despite that the car can corner and brake at 1g on these tyres, they quite literally last all day – it’s possible to do an entire 24hr on one set. If it’s dry all race and you drive it hard, you might need to change the front left. Once. For someone who’s used to tyres being the biggest worry and largest budget-eater, this is a wonderful new world!

Equally wonderful is the fuel consumption through this little Weber. Teams are limited to only adding 20L of fuel per pitstop, but despite Snetterton circuit being over 95% flat-out in this car, that’s good for two hours – even longer if it’s wet, or you have a good draft from other cars. The fuel warning light in our car comes on when there’s six litres left, and then it’s the driver’s call whether to come into the pits. If you’re in a good groove and putting in quick times, you could stay out for another fifteen laps and still have a litre in reserve.

With a lot of preparation and testing to do on the car, and with me very keen to find out what it’s like, we’ve already done a track day at Snetterton. I had no real idea what to expect, even having watched videos of the car being raced in the past, but I was in for a real treat. It’s brilliant fun. It’s amazing how little an issue the lack of power actually feels – you’re still doing all the normal tasks of planning ahead, spotting your markers, getting the downshifts perfect, balancing the car, using all the space available and conserving as much momentum as possible. If anything, having a short break on the straights once you’re in fourth gear is quite pleasant and gives you time to analyse your last few corners and take lessons into the next. That’s a luxury we won’t often have during the race, with drafting and traffic management being absolutely key, the straights will be just as busy as the corners!

I was really pleased with how the car handles, thanks to decades of development work that’s gone into it, and it inspires quite a lot of confidence. You can commit to many corners flat out, and drive the car right to and beyond the limit knowing that it’s low-inertia and very responsive, so any slip can be quickly managed. It seems to really enjoy being thrown at lower-speed corners, and getting the perfect line through faster ones to minimise tyre scrub is very satisfying.

Here’s how it looks from onboard:

Stay tuned for more updates as the race approaches!

Sam

2CV 24hr 2018 – Snetterton

Where even to begin, writing about an event like the 2CV 24hr race? You may already know how I ended up here, though if not, take a look at the background – which also has some more information on the car and some testing footage. The story now resumes on Thursday 16th August, arriving at the circuit to see the car already in its garage, buried in the midst of a paddock that looked entirely more serious than any other club race I’d been to! Everyone seems to have motorhomes, caravans, huge awnings and gazebos, entire kitchens built opposite the garages and almost all the cars were already here. Our neighbours Jelly Snake Racing were already filling the atmosphere with the smell of scorched metal as they took the grinder to the rear of their car at 10pm. The mood was well and truly set.

After a couple of hours getting the garage sorted out and the car mostly ready for the test day that would start on Friday morning, we took advantage of the darkness to set up the headlamp aim in preparation for night qualifying. I got my first taste of the surreal feelings a 24hr race can give you.. Standing in a pitch-black pitlane, a place typically filled with noise and light and people, and drinking in the absolute emptiness of it all.. four hours after everyone would normally have packed up and gone home. Quite a special feeling, and it brought real excitement for the meeting to come. And a real awareness of just how bloody dark it was going to be out there!

Friday was a normal test day, as typically precedes any club racing meeting.. Though despite having been to nine races of my own in the past, I’d never actually run on a test day before! Very different to a track day, this runs essentially like a series of qualifying sessions, with driving held to motorsport standards and groups of comparable cars let out for 30-minute sessions over the day. With no briefing to sit through, live timing permitted and the ability to run side by side with other cars, it was a useful initiation for me, having never driven the 2CV in close combat before.

There was still much work to be done, though – we had three engines with us, one of which we were reasonably happy with, and two that needed setup work on the day. So as well as adapting to the car and circuit, and seeing if our times were in the right ballpark, it was also a day of carb jetting, brake bedding and fault finding, with a customary lunchtime engine change. By 5pm we’d finished our last session and had a couple of hours to grab some food and make final adjustments before day qualifying started at 7pm.

This is when the event started to feel real. I’d already wandered up and down the pitlane and taken stock of the competition – 24 UK 2CVs to the same specification as our car, plus six 1275cc Minis and three Belgian Dyane/2CV hybrid cars running alongside us as guests. The latter are a world away from the near-standard 602cc UK cars, and run 850cc BMW bike engines with full aero packages and sequential gearboxes. They ran Snetterton 200 in around 1:36, with the fastest UK club car lap over the weekend being a 1:51! The Minis were also considerably faster over a lap, so like all good endurance racing, the multi-class element was present and correct. But now, testing was finished and all these cars were lined up the pitlane for the first competitive session of the weekend.. after months of planning and anticipation, it was all about to start.

We elected to run our drivers in the same order we planned for the race, as good practice both for us and for the pit crews adjusting our belts and strapping us in – so Graeme Smith would start, car owner Christine Savage next with me to follow before handing over to Christine’s brother Neil. We’d each run five flying laps, but sending Neil out last meant we could leave him out to the flag after we’d all done our laps – advantageous, since he’s the quickest driver and you can only achieve a really good lap in a 2CV if you have an aero tow from another car, which can take a while to find.

Graeme and Christine both ran good pace for their sessions, and I went out keen to put in a strong performance – but found myself marooned, with no other cars anywhere near me! With contending for the car’s fastest lap out of the question, I could concentrate on attacking the circuit as cleanly and consistently as possible. The lap timer made me smile each time I crossed the line, clocking 1:56.32, 1:56.27, 1:56.43, 1:56.71 and finally making a small mistake for a 1:57.13. The rhythm was very reassuring for putting in a smooth race stint the next day, and I got out quite happy.. Until Neil immediately got under my lap times in clean air, that is! Turning in 18 laps with an astonishing average pace of a low 55, he finally found the perfect tow – behind the slower of the Minis – and turned in a 1:53.92 with 15 minutes of the session remaining. The fastest the car had run for the whole of 2018, it was still only enough to put us 11th in class and 20th overall on the grid of 33 cars. Clearly, the pace of the frontrunning cars – UK pole being a 1:51.21 – was on another plane and we’d need to push hard to stay competitive.

I was pretty comfortable driving the car in daylight, but night qualifying was next and I had never driven a circuit in the dark before. To give me maximum exposure, we swapped the driver order to put me last after Neil. Everyone else would only do the minimum required three laps to let me run as long as possible – at least, that was the plan until Neil picked up a great tow and carried it for two extra laps to clock a 1:54.95, putting us a brilliant 6th in class for night quali! Watching this was plenty exciting, but it left me more than enough time standing on the pitwall in my helmet and suit, stewing about how dark it was out there and how much was riding on me not screwing up and bending the car.. Apparently this is the face you pull in such situations.

Before I knew it, Neil was in, I’d been strapped in and waved out of the box. You don’t really think, you just put your foot down and drive up the pit lane, with the pit exit into first corner being all flat out up to fourth gear in a 2CV. I did this on routine, figuring the circuit should be where I left it and trying to ignore the nerves – but the moment I turned in and saw the apex kerbs lit up in the headlamps, I felt absolutely euphoric. The car was just doing what it always did, but your visual cues are so limited, everything appears ahead of you just when you need it.. Sometimes slightly after! The darkness forces you to focus on the next job and nothing else. There’s the bollard on the second apex.. there’s the white line on the outside, just picked out at the edge of the headlamps, aim for that on exit.. I can see the brake markers up ahead, I’m pulling roughly the correct revs in 4th.. hit the anchors, drop two gears and turn into Montreal. Look right over through the corner, can’t see the inside kerb yet, just blackness.. it should be there, commit and keep turning.. there it is! Power over it, around Turn 3 and onto the straight.. this is awesome!

I managed to clock consistent laptimes that were on the same pace as the daylight run, so I came in happy at the end of the session at 10pm. We all felt the car was pretty much where it needed to be mechanically, so after a Strategy Group Meeting – drivers huddled around the car to debrief – and a swift beer, it was off to bed to sleep for as long as possible.

Even now, having done it all, it seems surreal looking at the photo of the car sitting there waiting to race for a full day and night..

Race morning dawned late for me, aiming to get to the circuit just in time for the briefing at noon, and to do final prep before the 20-minute warmup session at 13:20. That would be the only running available before the race start at 5pm, so we elected to trial a couple of final carb jet tweaks. I drove, feeling the mounting anticipation, but the car felt good so we settled into final tidying and prep.

Just before the pitlane opened at 16:30, all the cars and teams were brought out of their garages for photographs and an open pit walk for the spectators and supporters. Quite a special moment – yes, they’re only simple little cars and nobody was going to be setting a circuit record that day, but these crews had spent a year preparing to try and do over seven hundred laps of Snetterton, stopping for nothing but fuel and driver changes. An enormous undertaking.

With the fuel tank brimmed right to the top of the filler, Graeme cruised around to the grid before the field were waved away for their green flag lap and the rolling start. Right on cue at 17:00, the lead Belgian cars powered down the pit straight for the first time to start the 2CV 24hr race.

Graeme got on it straight away and kept with a reasonably-sized pack of cars, after a bit of battling for position settling into some good tows and clocking consistently quick laps. Aside from a brief safety car period at Lap 15, the race got off to a smooth start with little incident. We settled into tracking Graeme’s progress from the pit wall, in lap times and gaps to the cars around him, before showing him the FUEL ? board at 7pm, after two hours racing. That tells the driver that the refuelling crew is ready for them, and it’s now their discretion when to come in – as only they know how much fuel they have on board, how the car feels and whether they think it’s worth staying out to take advantage of good track position.

But almost immediately, a problem – Graeme lost two seconds’ pace the lap we showed him the board, and then four seconds’ more the next lap, where he passed us waving his right arm to indicate he was coming into the pits. He arrived in the pit box reporting the engine losing power and unwilling to rev out, and the moment we opened the bonnet the reason became obvious – almost all the oil was spread across the front subframe and crankcase, rather than in the engine. “No decision – we’ve gotta change it”.

Of all the starts we envisaged, this was the very worst! But no time to worry or resent the fact, we are racing, so we pushed the car back into the garage and began methodically stripping the front end off and getting the condemned engine removed. Foresight of many 24hr races had led us to lay out kits of the tools needed on both sides of the garage, so everything we needed was largely to hand, but not remotely helped by being coated in oil! Thirteen minutes after being pushed into the garage, the car fired with its second engine installed. We wheeled it out, refuelled it, and strapped Christine in for her one and only stint. Handshakes all round as she drove up the pit lane, and much further relief when she came past with a thumbs-up out of the window after her first lap!

An engine change was something we expected at some point in the race, it’s not uncommon, but to need one straight away was worrying. At least the car seemed OK, with Christine putting in 62 consistent laps into nightfall before diving into the pits the moment we showed the FUEL ? board. I was on the pit wall, suited up and helmet on ready to get in the car, and partly grateful at not having to wait for lap after lap to get going, but it seemed a short stint at only 2hr08. The moment Christine pulled up, she reported the engine running much too lean – the lambda gauge telling her that the fuel/air mixture was too little fuel and too much air, giving us a risk of overheating and damaging the engine. While fuel was poured into the tank at one end, new carb jets were screwed in at the front, before I could leap into the car and get strapped in. After a few moments’ pause, I was waved up the pitlane to join my first endurance race, my first night race, my first 24hr, my first racing laps in this car…

And man, was it incredible. I was determined to get it nailed right from the off, and put in a 1:56.88 on my first flying lap – with a different engine and now in full dark, that was only half a second off my day qualifying pace, and put a huge smile in my helmet. Adapting to the race traffic at night was easier than I expected, with the noise and the changing light making it quite obvious where cars were around me, but what took more acclimatisation was just how close you can race these things. Being side by side, close enough to tweak a rival’s door mirror, for an entire corner is not at all unusual. Nor is going three-wide into a corner which only has one sensible line! After all the preparation and apprehension, and the early dramas with the engine, getting out there and really racing this car hard felt absolutely amazing. How does it really look? A bit like this.

A full highlights video will come eventually, but this – the first four minutes of the first clip I happened to pull off my GoPro – hopefully gives you some idea. It is unspeakably brilliant. I could wax lyrical for hours on every aspect of night racing, but I’d bore you all in the end, so suffice to say that I punched in 78 laps over 2hr38min, and only came in the pits – still with a healthy amount of fuel on board – because the team signalled me in, thinking I was about to run out! I could cheerfully have run right to the 3hr driving time limit, so fantastic a time was I having.

I jumped out of the car thinking it was still running a little lean, so while Neil was being strapped in, I grabbed the carb jet box and made a change I’d decided on a few laps before – fresh out of the car and still in full race kit, I was surprised with myself getting it done in good time before sending Neil off into the night at thirteen minutes past midnight. The camaraderie of 2CV racing shone through a little when a driver from another team congratulated me on some “top spannering” getting the jetting change done in the dark without a torch to hand – a little boost on top of the massive high I was already on from one of the drives of my life!

Ideally, you’d be asleep or at least resting the moment you get out of the car, such is the need to conserve energy. But funnily enough, when you’ve just been dicing wheel-to-wheel with the leader of the race for an hour straight, sleep isn’t first on your mind, midnight or no! So I did a stint on the pit wall seeing how Neil was getting on – bloody quickly, naturally, but happily for me only around three quarters of a second faster than I’d been going in clean air. A good showing for a 2CV novice, and more than close enough for me to pretend to him that it was down to the improved jetting I gave him..! I then popped up to Race Control to say hello, and finally up to the commentary box, where I found 750 Motor Club regular Josh Barrett, who was kind enough to give me a microphone. I’m quite sure I talked absolute nonsense for the quarter-hour he had me, but I appreciated the conversation and the opportunity to share my very fresh thoughts on how utterly brilliant this whole endurance racing malarkey is.

Finally, my head went down in the tent at around 1am, with Neil barely a third of the way into his stint. He would go on to set the sixth fastest lap of the race, a 1:53.07 – yes, nine tenths faster than we qualified, and yes in the black of night. We’d climbed back to 7th in class despite our engine change. Maybe we could get a result out of this?

I woke a little earlier than planned at 3am. A text from Christine. “Graeme is in the car.. has been since 2:20 but had to be towed back in for a disconnected gear linkage. We’re in 15th”. The heart sinks – all the further when a moment later, the phone rings with Neil: “We’re in the garage, gearbox change – better get ready, Graeme’s getting near his driving time limit”.

A gearbox?! That’s half an hour, and we’re already down in 15th. But the effort put in by the crew, who had already been up for at least 18 hours at this point, was nothing short of stellar and Graeme was back out on the circuit by half three and got 25 more laps done to round out his stint. At half past four, I was out on the circuit and ready to drive on into the dawn.

I’d been a bit worried about this stint, aware I’d be far more tired and prone to errors, but in fact the muscle memory from the earlier night driving was present and correct and I was able to get onto a consistent pace fairly quickly. I was just starting to appreciate the brightening eastern sky, and the ability to see things that were just outside the range of my headlamps, when after 26 laps I saw something far less welcome. Smoke. Oil smoke on the left side, just as I was driving past the pits.. Argh! I gestured wildly to let the team know I’d be coming in, and started short-shifting to nurse the car back. A little dejected by yet another failure, we pushed back into the garage and the crew set about changing to the third engine carefully, making sure everything was exactly as it should be. A fairly shattering process for all involved, by this stage of the race.

At ten to six, I was pushed out into the dawn light with engine number three turning and burning, and powered up the pit lane to finish my stint. The perils of mid-stint engine swaps became apparent straight away when I struggled to find second gear into Montreal on the outlap – whoops – this clutch bites far lower than the old one, and once I get lost in the intricate 2CV gear selection, it’s hard to find the reference plane again! But with that embarrassing episode out of the way, I settled into the most satisfying drive of the race. I had traffic around me, but was faster than every other UK 2CV I came across, carving past slower cars and tucking onto the back of quicker ones for a few laps’ tow before leapfrogging to the next one. It felt fantastic, and was also the most consistent drive I’ve ever done – of the 32 flying laps in that run, 24 of them were 1:56s. The slowest over that hour was a 1:57.1!

The IN board stopped my fun at ten past seven, 2hr40min after I’d first got in the car, but thanks to the engine change only 65 laps further along. 742 miles completed, ten hours’ racing left to go. After checking Neil had settled in OK, it was back to the tent to get some more rest before being due back out at around 11:30.

That didn’t turn out to plan.

The third engine had started to develop a death rattle just before 9am, towards the end of an awesomely fast stint with Neil doggedly dragging us back up the rankings. The team decided to pull it out to save it for the end of the race, to make sure we could finish, and sent Neil back out with the first engine in. It was no good, 18 hours’ cooling down hadn’t saved it, and after one lap it was back in the garage covered in oil again. That was it, no more quick swaps, we didn’t have another running engine..

There was nothing else for it but to try and produce one running engine out of numbers one and two. Stripping them on the garage floor, Neil and Jon found that both had wrecked their right-hand pistons, with excessive knocking damaging them so badly part that the ring lands were gone, letting the oil through.

So it was that the left-hand piston and barrel from one engine became the right-hand of the other! The joys of working with such a simple engine were not lost on me as I got kitted up while this Frankenstein’s monster of a power unit, rebuilt and sealed up on the garage floor, was bolted back into the car for me to go racing again. Try doing that with any other endurance racer…

And you know what, it felt pretty good. A bit tight.. that’s perhaps to be expected.. I had to nip into the pits again for a carb jet change, but only once, which is pretty good for saying this engine didn’t exist two hours prior! I was able to run only two seconds per lap slower than before, no longer able to keep pace with the fastest cars out there, but well in range of towing and dicing with much of the field. It led to a uniquely 2CV game of chess, with a car that was considerably faster than me in a straight line but that I could still just about hang onto over a lap – the battle was to make sure that I used all the other traffic to the absolute maximum, pulling myself along and nipping past slower cars as quickly as possible, to stay in touch. After losing contact and being stuck behind someone else for a few laps, getting back through and back where I needed to be was a fist-pump moment!

Apart from an electrical failure that cut all power, which fortunately happened in the penultimate corner so I was just able to coast to the pits without needing a towback – the points box was the culprit – all went fairly smoothly. I got out of the car for the last time at just gone 2pm, having notched up a total of 185 laps over 6hr10 of driving time and feeling very happy with my endurance racing debut. What’s more, I felt like that engine could actually go the distance. Off Graeme went to put in another hour, before we’d run Neil to the finish. With that final change made and Neil out to bring the car home, I wandered off for a shower, my driving work done for the day and my kit in the worst shape it had ever been, after 26 hours’ wear! Sleep deprivation might be starting to tell, too.. in drivers and crew!

Imagine my dismay to get back at 3:40 to find the car in the pit box, in a cloud of its own smoke. Can we not catch a break?! Engine number four, as I’ll call it since it certainly didn’t arrive with us like that, had brilliantly done three hours before finally expiring in a similar failure mode of huge oil blowby. We parked the car with an hour and a quarter to go, fitted the saved number three engine, and waited for the last few minutes.

A quirk of 24-hour racing is that in order to be classified, you must finish the race – which means the car needs to be on the circuit to take the chequered flag. In 2CVs (unlike Le Mans), you’re also classified if you’ve done 80% of the race winner’s distance, but you can imagine with 6hr40min unscheduled pitstop time this wasn’t the case for us – we had to get over the line. So it was that Neil lined up at the end of the pit lane at 16:57 to get out and do one final lap.

A party atmosphere was already in evidence, with the pit wall crammed with teams waiting to applaud the cars as they came through. The chequered flag came out at 5pm, twenty-four hours of racing complete, and the lead Belgian car came through to take it after 788 laps – 1,576 miles of Snetterton in a day and a night. The winning UK 2CV had racked up 708 laps. Team Stinky crossed the line with 491 laps to its name, making a godawful rattle, but taking the flag to complete the 2CV 24hr race!

Getting back to the pits, on the other hand…

The engine we’d saved had been pulled out of the car not a moment too soon, and expired halfway round Coram on the cooldown lap. Fortunately, the spirit of helping others get the job done is alive and well in 2CV racing, and we were pushed back to the pits and up to parc fermé by our neighbours Jelly Snake Racing. An adjacent team manager summed up the situation when the last car had rattled through: “Right. Let’s get the beer open.”

A disaster it may have been in competitive terms, certainly the worst race Team Stinky had ever known, but we’d got the car across the line and I had had the experience of a lifetime. I’ll never forget that first lap in the dark, and the thrill of night racing – yes, I know I mentioned it – is unbeatable. But more than that, 24-hour racing demands something totally different to sprints or even shorter enduros. While you are racing everyone out on the circuit, that’s not really the job. You’re trying to beat the event. Your job is to get as many laps done as quickly as you can, but you can only do it with smoothness, consistency, mechanical sympathy, and a brilliant team behind you to keep the car out there and pick up the mantle when you’re done. And that means everyone from the drivers, the mechanics, the cooks, the fire marshals, the fuel-fetchers, the poor souls on the pit wall with the stopwatch day and night.. It’s a team sport, and getting through it together is fantastic.

Yes, Emerald went the distance! As always.

Thank you, Team Stinky. Absurd the name might seem, but great the achievements are. Christine, Neil, Linda, Graeme, Kevin, Jon, Chris, Jesus, Karen, Sarah, and as always Mum & Emily – and all the rest of the paddock who kept us fed, advised, pushed home. Unforgettable. Same time next year?!



This and much of the other great work in here is credited to Joshua Barrett Photography

Sam

Race Eight – Cadwell Park

Cadwell Park is a magical place. I don’t like how far away it is, I don’t like the A46 and I definitely don’t like not having pit garages – but all of the hassle and grumbles fall away the moment you do even one lap around this circuit. It’s just incredible – the best in the country. Tell me I’m wrong. After a year away I almost forget how good it is, and then I get out of the car absolutely beaming after the first session.

That first session on our track day on 9th July, by the way, saw me post a laptime (checked afterwards from the onboard video) of 1:45.6, 1.7 seconds faster than the best we could do at last year’s race meeting. A strong start that only got better through the day, as we eventually got down to a 1:44.6 by mid-afternoon. The car and circuit both felt fantastic, and we were thoroughly enjoying ourselves! We also managed to confirm that the dual fuel pump setup was working perfectly, and we could run down almost to the fuel warning light before we got any hesitation. Since Cadwell has a very long right-hander that’s flat out in fourth, absolute worst-case for starvation, that’s a great result. We finally put our latest weapon, Nankang’s AR-1 tyre, on the car for the last few sessions. The result? Another 1.7 seconds carved out, and a final lap time of 1:42.88. Compared to last year’s timesheet, that was nothing short of remarkable, and I was over the moon with the performance. Here’s that lap:

With that under our belts, I didn’t touch the car at all before the race meeting, being totally happy with how it felt. Less happy was the drive to the circuit, in 32°C ambient and unspeakable cabin temperatures. The car was absolutely fine, even stuck in traffic around Newark, and the SPAL electric fan did the job perfectly – the driver coped less well! It was worrying for race day, as dehydration and heat exhaustion can be real problems even in a relatively short stint, but our worries were short-lived and the weather broke spectacularly the night before the race.

Result: totally green circuit with all its rubber washed away for qualifying. It really showed in the laptimes, with a 1:45.02 being all I could squeeze out of the car on a circuit that felt like it had been greased since I last drove it – 2.2 seconds slower than in testing. That was still good enough for second in class and 9th overall, though, which was very satisfying and set us up well for the race. A long wait until the 15:40 race start gave plenty of time to watch other races and generally lounge around and enjoy playing at being racing drivers..

Come the race, I was to start. I had a clear plan in mind. Class pole was Dan Rogers in his MX-5 (which you might remember from a long battle at Brands Hatch), but there were four Class A and B cars between us on the grid. I needed to jump these guys somehow, and get behind Dan so I could hang onto him. Fail to get that done early and he could he get away, so going maximum-attack straight away was the only option.

Astonishingly enough, after a frantic pullaway from the grid with some cars slow, some off the edge of the track and Dan performing what he described as “the worst start in the world”, I found myself alongside him into the first corner! Try as I might I couldn’t get the pass done around the outside through Charlies corner, and I tucked in behind. There followed the best racing stint I have ever driven. Between battling Dan, holding off Class B cars and then, after losing ground in a pretty scary error in the penultimate corner that almost had me in the wall (7:05 in the video), trying to re-pass them, it was non-stop action. Raving about it in print won’t do it justice, so here it is…

I had a non-stop run of battling other drivers, driving at qualifying pace (and faster, now the circuit had rubbered in!) lap after lap to keep in touch with Class B guys ahead, with lairiness and incidents aplenty to watch from cars around me. It was equal parts punishing in terms of how hard I had to drive and how near the edge I had to push, and incredibly enjoyable for being rewarded by close, clean racing. It’s exactly what we put in all this work for, and it felt absolutely fantastic.

After 15 minutes, other cars were out of the way and I was hot on Dan’s heels again. He bravely ran away, pitting as soon as the window opened! Deprived of the opportunity to overtake him but promoted to the class lead with a relatively clear track ahead, I pushed as hard as I dared to try and build a gap. What’s not obvious from the video is I was also trying to shake off the very quick Mini Cooper S of Andrew Stacey and James Cameron, which was filling my mirrors and occasionally my side window!

I came into the pits to hand over to Adam with 26 minutes gone, having maximised the clean air ahead of me. We got the car out in the class lead after a perfectly timed pitstop with 60.6 seconds spent stationary (minimum requirement 1 minute), and Adam set to work bringing the car home.

There was no small task ahead of him, though. A few minutes’ clear lapping was all he got before Dan’s second-placed MX-5 loomed in his mirrors, and a daring move up the inside into Hall Bends got him through, with Adam fighting to keep the car on the circuit!

His wrestling the car wasn’t done, though. With eight minutes to go, rain started to fall in the pits, and unbeknownst to me on the pit wall it was much heavier around the back of the circuit and starting to make things slippery. We were also about to be struck by one of every racer’s biggest fears – we ran out of brakes. The first Adam knew was trying to pass Esther Quaintmere’s Nova up the inside into the Mountain complex, failing to get the car stopped and sailing incongruously straight onto the grass (41:40 in the video). A bemused Esther got herself around the corner just fine, and drove past to unlap herself! It became clear over the next two laps that this wasn’t Adam’s error, but the front right brake pads wearing out completely, leading to a particularly scary moment trying to stop the car from 110mph down to 60 or so to turn into Park corner. With only a lap to go, he was able to nurse the car home without further incident.

The result? Third in class, and ninth of 28 starters overall! We were extremely happy to not only have beaten ten cars in our class, but also fought at the front and with cars above our class throughout the race. Our first silverware in 2018 felt very sweet indeed, especially after so much work before and during the race to make it happen.

Next up? Replace what my brake pad supplier tells me was a very old-spec compound sent in error, tidy up the car after a slight altercation with a bollard at three-figure speeds into Coppice corner, and then try my hand at sprint racing. I’ll be competing in the newly formed BMW CCR championship at Donington Park on 1st September. Can’t wait! For now, congratulations to Adam on your first-ever race podium, and to #36 for proving she can make it in Class C. Emerald approves.

Sam

 

Race Seven – Rockingham

Ah, Rockingham. You wouldn’t expect an infield circuit pegged inside what’s primarily an oval course to be much good, but actually, I really enjoy the challenge this track offers and the car has always felt happy – and fast! – around here. It has a bit of everything, from awkward off-camber entries to a low-speed, high-grip chicane, and one of your few opportunities to commit to a turn flat-out in fifth gear.

As always, despite both being quite familiar with the circuit, we did a track day before the race meeting to make sure we were happy with the car and get our eye in. This was also the debut of McKee Motorsport Budget Solution #17, an alternative to the thousands you can spend on pit-to-car comms from Autotel. Very straightforward – a pair of standard Cobra two-way radios that might normally be used by hikers, and a pair of headsets aimed at motorcycle use. These came with surprisingly high-quality earpieces and microphone, with a remote push-to-talk button. Once each helmet was equipped, we could connect to the car by plugging in just one cable to access the radio and the PTT button.

Amazingly enough, for a total outlay of £55, it works brilliantly and we could communicate around roughly two-thirds of the Rockingham circuit! This not only makes conversation and planning during testing far easier, it also means there’s no need to try and get lengthy or complicated messages onto a pit board. Very pleased, and all the more so upon finding that the extra fuel pump meant we could run the car halfway into the red zone of the gauge before getting any starvation.

With a successful test day in the bag, two days later qualifying was upon us. Finally, a chance to find out how the newly upgraded car would perform against the clock! Adam went out first and produced a 1:47.32, before handing the car over for me to take a longer run at a quick laptime. Consistency was no problem with five 1:45s rattled off, but I could go no faster, posting a 1:45.02 which had felt pretty good. I was a bit gutted to see P4 on the board as I drove past, but found that the next two cars – Liam Crilly’s RX-8 and the ever-quick Orr/Winchester E36 Compact – were only four tenths away.

Come 2pm, Adam’s first-ever race start was looming. We got him strapped into the car and settled nice and early – nerves can be a real struggle for your first few races, and starting mid-pack at a circuit with a tight first corner is a tough gig. The best thing is to stay methodical and avoid being rushed. After a last chat with girlfriend Natasha, it was time to ride around to the assembly area.

The long wait while the previous race finishes can be nerve-shredding if you don’t have some company – or so I told myself, sitting in the car taking photos after running through the start procedure one last time!

Finally though, it was into Adam’s hands alone as he sat 19th on the grid of 27 cars to take the start. Rockingham offers us a great vantage point on the roof of the pit building, so I could see the clean getaway and, even better, his unscathed progress through the first corner – but only one turn later there was some drama to deal with as the BMW 130i of Colin Gillespie fell victim to a tankslapper and spun across the field.

Adam kept his cool and guided the car around the wreckage in something of a baptism of fire, but it wasn’t long until the safety car was called out to give the marshals time to clear the circuit. He was afforded just a couple more racing laps until another safety car period to clear a Seat bizarrely abandoned at the pit entry. The time window for mandatory pitstops opened with the safety car still out, and the pitlane suddenly became busier than the circuit as everyone dived in to take advantage! Aware that it was strategic suicide, I left Adam out on the circuit as long as possible so he could do some racing. This gave the unlikely, but brilliant outcome that Adam was the outright leader of the race for a lap and a half!

Finally, I called him in at the very end of the pit window, taking over the car with 16 minutes left to run. It’s sometimes nice to have a lap or so of clean air to bed yourself into the car and the circuit, but I was given no such luxury – the moment I left the pits, I had the #101 BMW 328i of Nik Grove and Carlo Turner right on my tail!

Nik, feeling like all his Christmases have come at once

The pressure Nik poured on straight away was phenomenal, and against a car that had qualified 1.7 seconds quicker, my only option was to give it everything right from the start. In this sort of situation it’s important to try and avoid “driving in your mirrors”, reacting only to what the car behind does, but with feints to the inside and attempts to move around me at almost every corner, Nik made it extremely hard not to! It was all I could do to keep hitting my marks, control the car’s inherent oversteer and keep him behind. I did finally relinquish the position to a classic move into Tarzan, and lost the chance to fight back by locking up the brakes during the heavy stop into Deene.

The battle was so intense and enjoyable that it couldn’t really be captured from my car alone. Thankfully, Nik shared his footage with me, so we can show split-screen action from both cars together! Below is our whole race onboard, from Adam’s evasive start through some quick, clean laps and into that battle after the driver change at 29min30.

This meeting really stands out for me because troughout the day, the support we had in the garage was absolutely phenomenal. Adam’s parents made the trip down from the Scottish borders and actually got to see him race this time – unlike the cancelled Donington meeting! – but that’s far from all, with my ever-dependable mum and grandad in attendance, and more friends than we could have hoped for. Sav, Urvi, Calum, Joe, Courtney, Tyrrell, Geoff, Neil and of course Em and Natasha – thank you! It’s amazing to be able to share this with you.

The final tally shows we finished 5th in class, and a respectable 13th of 29 starters overall. Not the result we’d hoped for, but given the conscious decision to give time away under the safety car and an apparent lack of straightline speed, we were happy enough. I put the car on the dyno after the race, and it delivered only 204bhp and 274Nm – a significant drop from the last time it was tested, and meaning we raced at 164bhp/ton in a class that would allow up to 180. Diagnostic work and a proper ECU calibration on the dyno is needed to put that right for next time out, but it underlined the great effort in staying competitive!

Next up, Cadwell Park in late July. We’ll have more power, stickier tyres, and a shot at some silverware…

Sam

Recurrence Prevention

There’s little doubt that buying a pre-built race car offers far better value, both in terms of cash and the time you need to invest, but I really enjoy competing with a car that I’ve developed and prepared myself. It does, however, mean that the time between races is filled with work to improve it – after every meeting, even if the car’s performed well, I find myself pondering the next few upgrades. My aim is the make sure the car is faster, better to drive or more durable every time it goes out.

It’s also nice if I can make it prettier, too, so it’s about time the crash-damaged nosecone and kidney grilles were replaced. A pattern nosecone cost the princely sum of £38 on eBay, and the fit was surprisingly good! It even painted up sort of OK, and I finally got around to painting the splitter too. The matches are far from perfect but I think the result looks far more cohesive than before.

But now, the focus is on the fuel system. The appalling fuel starvation issues we suffered in the last race at Brands Hatch were down to a combination of factors: the E36 fuel tank is fundamentally unsuited to race use; the poor-quality fuel pump was nearing the end of its life; and the heat of the day and temperatures inside the car in racing conditions meant hot fuel, making it even harder to deliver the required pressure. So here’s a DIY on how to do a dual fuel-pump conversion on an E36.

The fuel tank is a saddle type, with two main chambers separated from each other by a high, narrow section straddling the driveshaft. Sensibly, the filler runs into the side with the engine’s supply pump, but dynamic motion and the returning fuel from the rail both conspire to keep fuel in the other side. It’s pulled back over by a siphon pipe that sits right next to the pump inlet, but it turns out that when you’re really throwing huge volumes of fuel into the wrong side of the tank by repeated high-G right-hand turns, the siphon arrangement can’t cope. Result: you have loads of fuel, but all in the wrong place, and even with as much as half a tank onboard the engine starves right when you need it least.

There are a number of solutions – I went for the simplest. This is where the original siphon pipe feeds, into the reserve sump directly under the fuel pump (removed). To get more fuel across, rather than relying on the depression caused by the main pump pulling fuel through this siphon, we can force it through with a second pump. Lucky for us, the E36 is designed with exactly the same tank fittings on both sides. As standard, there’s just a sender unit and the fittings for the return pipe from the engine – but instead, we can fit a lightly modified pump.

This standard E36 pump should be pulling fuel from the bottom of the tank and feeding it through the corrugated plastic pipe to a little nipple in the top of the housing, to the engine feed hose. Instead, it’s fitted on the “wrong” left-hand side of the tank, and the engine return flow comes through the corrugated pipe towards the pump inlet. The return flow, and the other contents of the left-hand side of the tank, are pumped into a length of hose that runs to the opposite side of the tank and into that reserve sump that used to hold the siphon.

A general view showing the hose running across, before it’s cut down and slotted into the reserve sump:

An important note at this point is that if doing this approach with a hose inside the tank, you must use hose to SAE J30 R10 spec. Most fuel hose is not designed to be submerged in fuel, so it’s only coated on the inside, not the outside. The fuel will attack and degrade lesser hoses over time. I’m using Cohline 2190, which was £18 a metre on eBay. I needed 900mm to get across the tank. For the transfer pump, I used a £38 pattern part as I’m not relying on it for supply to the engine. For that, I fitted an OEM-spec Siemens VDO pump which cost £109.

The most elegant wiring solution I’ve seen is to take a positive trigger from the main supply pump, so that the transfer pump won’t run unless the engine’s running. Supply power from your favourite big positive cable, and fit a switched earth so you can turn the pump off when not required – such as motorway cruising, or when you have ample fuel in the tank. I added a 15A inline fuse, as with the standard pump setup, but I can’t imagine ever tripping it. I’ll need to get out on circuit to prove the system works properly, but on the road it seems to function as intended.

Adding this second pump weighing 800g has the unlikely effect of making the car 18kg lighter – we can now run with 25 litres less fuel onboard, perhaps more!

A final treat remains in the bag. The well-recommended and very helpful Enda Ward of EndTuning had the opportunity to prove his business card correct:

An ECU recalibration to take full advantage of the M50 inlet manifold was well overdue. As well as a dramatic increase in torque across the rev range, to now hit the 220bhp target figure for Class C, we also have an increased rev limiter from 6500 -> 7000rpm, and the idle raised a little from 650 -> 750rpm. The former actually increases top speed, as so short is the diff that we’d hit the limiter in fifth at some circuits, and also lets us “stretch” gears a little for those times where it isn’t worth changing up before a corner. The latter is to get a bit more water pump flow rate and give the alternator an easier time running the fan at idle, but it also reduces vibration with the polyurethane engine mounts, which is nice in traffic.

As an aside – since so much has changed this month! – the front lower wishbone rear “lollipop” bushes are now eccentric M3 parts in Powerflex Black, forty whole pounds courtesy of Lloyd Chafer. It took a vice and some big plates to get these rock-hard bushes in the carriers, thanks to Latham for that! A good sign, since these react much of the steering torque. They also add significant caster, a trip to the geometry ramp is in order to find out how much.

So, all in? We have a car with more power and more feel that should be able to make far better use of its fuel, while looking much nicer at the same time. Our Rockingham track day on 7th June, only two days before the race, will show just what we’ve managed to achieve!

Sam

Race Six – Brands Hatch

Photograph by @photojcs

We have a special treat to go with this race report – a behind-the-scenes look at the car in the pit garage and during prep to go out for a session, and lots of on-track action during qualifying and the race itself. Alex Baldwin was on hand to film parts of our meeting, with Jon Simes taking still shots. Alex very kindly shared his edit on YouTube, offering an uncharacteristically high-res look at our activities!

Normally I don’t favour motorsport in a heatwave, but after the snowed-off Donington Park meeting, any weather that absolutely guaranteed we’d get the chance to go racing was more than welcome! The first race of the 2018 season became Brands Hatch Indy, and we arrived feeling well-prepared after racking up 140 laps in varying conditions on a track day beforehand.

Scrutineering in the sun on Friday evening passed without a hitch, and Saturday morning saw us unloading and preparing the car in plenty of time for qualifying at 10:40. It’s moments like these that I need to pause and really appreciate the capability of this car. I’ve driven it here to race it, and yet it’s entirely self-supporting – absolutely all the equipment needed to run a race weekend, from tyres and tools to camp chairs and the kettle, travelled to the circuit in the race car. And it’ll all go back in to drive it home, barely an hour after it takes the chequered flag. It’s hard to grasp that level of versatility until you see it laid out in the garage around you!

With 38 cars sharing 1.2 miles of circuit, qualifying was never going to be anything but busy, and the biggest challenge was finding enough space for a clean lap. The car felt good but the circuit was slippery, particularly on the exit of Druids hairpin and the long sweeper of Clearways. After seven or eight laps of diving in and out of traffic, it became apparent I wasn’t going to get space for a clear run, so I came in and handed the car over to Adam to clock up as many laps as possible. I was astonished to find that my time of 57.21s had us provisionally fastest in class, and only Dan Rogers’ MX-5 was able to best it by 0.55s by the end of the session, which was sadly cut seven minutes short by a red flag. Less warmup than we’d hoped, but P2 of 15 Class C cars in our first dry qualifying session – I was over the moon!

The car was weighed after qualifying, and clocked in at 1274kg, heavier than expected. Given that it currently only makes around 213bhp, that’s 167bhp/ton against a class limit of 180 – in other words, we managed to put it second in class despite a 15bhp deficit! Lots of potential to unlock for the next race.

Photograph by @photojcs

With the car running nicely through qualifying, the break until race start at 3:05 was relaxed and left some time to watch other series qualifying and competing. Then we were off to the assembly area, with me to start the car from 14th on a grid of 34.

Having done a few races now, nerves don’t tend to hit me in the assembly area, nor on the green flag lap. But sitting on the grid waiting for the cars behind to form up, looking at who’s around me and really feeling how narrow everything was and how busy it was going to get into Paddock Hill bend, I almost had time to worry before the lights went out! Here’s the video…

After a hectic start with numerous attempts to get around the outside of battling cars – with mixed results! – it was a straight fight between me and Dan Rogers’ MX-5 for the lead of Class C. I seemed to have a bit more performance in a straight line, but his superior tyres gave him cornering speed I couldn’t match.

We traded yards for lap after lap as I gave chase, making a few attempts in the process, but I finally overheated my rear left tyre and had a big slide on the way out of Clearways. That gave Dan the opportunity to break away, and once no longer having to watch his mirrors so closely he pulled a small gap.

At 17 minutes, the safety car came out, so I dived straight into the pits to try and take advantage of the slower pace on circuit. Our pitstop ran smoothly, with Adam strapped in and on his way 62 seconds after I stopped the car – about right, it’s not worth picking up a penalty by accidentally clocking 59.99! – but then every strategist’s worst nightmare struck. Adam made it to the end of the pit lane before the safety car came back around, exactly as planned, but rather than being allowed to rejoin in our rightful place behind the four cars that were following it, we were inexplicably held for 40 more seconds through a huge gap of empty circuit, until a train of another 13 cars passed, all gaining a position over us.

A few laps of hard driving followed as Adam fought to make up the time we’d lost, showing some brilliant technique in heavy traffic on his race debut, not least a spectacular offense on the #48 MR2 of Mike Nash entering Druids.

But with twelve minutes still to go, another disaster – fuel starvation. Even with over half a tank still on board, the combination of a failing fuel pump and Brands Hatch’s challenging left-handers and huge gradients meant Adam was left quite literally powerless on the exits of Paddock Hill and Druids. Running in higher gears helped, but time was lost hand over fist, with nothing to be done but nurse the car to the end with the fuel pump screaming in protest. I find the last part of the footage hard to watch, I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have felt – it will not happen again.

Photograph by @photojcs

As the chequered flag came out, we crossed the line 16th of 34 starters, and 6th of 15 in Class C. Mixed emotions for us both – we’d shown we had the pace to fight right at the front, and Adam had brought the car home to a good finish after a really challenging debut, but we both knew there was so much more left out there. More careful strategy and some work on the car before Rockingham on 9th June will put us right back at the sharp end next time out!

Thanks again to Alex and Jon for coming along and giving generously of your great work – we hope to see much more of you over the season!

Sam

“Race Six” – Donington Park

Not a moment too soon, the car is ready and our story comes up to date. A few finishing touches were still being made on Friday morning before I headed to the circuit for the first race of the season. It felt great being back in the paddock, and even before that driving the car to a race meeting has a nice sense of purpose to it. It seems to be attracting more attention with its aerodynamic appendages, too – I’m sure more kids point at it than before! I got signed on for the meeting and went down to scrutineering, getting chatting to a gentleman racing an AC Cobra-looking machine with a 7.0 V8 producing 657bhp. The car weighs 1100kg. Such is the insanity of the wonderful Bernies’ V8s series!

As usual, the car passed scrutineering without a hitch. Even when you’re happy with your preparation and not expecting any problems, it’s always a sigh of relief to find you haven’t overlooked anything! I got myself set up in a garage, and immediately found my shopping list expanding, as I was sharing with Imran Khan’s very serious 328i coupé. Running at the front in Class B, Imran was all too happy to show me how you get one of these cars down to 1090kg with half a tank of fuel on board, and making 260bhp to boot. Nothing like realising how much work you have left to do than being presented with the same car, but 130kg lighter!

Leaving the circuit for the night, it still felt like beer garden weather, so it was hard to take any sensationalist reports of the notorious “Beast from the East” returning very seriously. But man alive was it cold when I went back in at 7:30, with snow flurries dropping every half hour! Nothing settled on the circuit, so we didn’t worry and I got the car set up for qualifying. By 10am we already had a remarkable support force of friends and family, despite the cold, and were feeling ready to see what we could do on the track. Here’s the qualifying session:

Astonishingly enough, what we could do was place third of the ten cars in Class C. This was a far better showing than I’d expecting, knowing we were making a big leap up to this class and that the car was well down on the power-to-weight limit. Despite the sub-zero temperatures, the car felt great on its Nankang NS-2R tyres. I was very pleased with the 1:55.19 we clocked up, and with Adam’s performance on his very first sight of the Grand Prix loop – we’d only been able to test on the National circuit. We’d sit 22nd of 36 cars overall.

Some race schedules leave you a long gap between qualifying and race, but we had only two and a half hours to wait – barely enough time to worry after we’d gone to the drivers’ briefing, had some lunch and refuelled the car. Perfect. Things started to go a little awry as the next session was delayed and cars held in the assembly area while another snow flurry blew over, though. Rather than send the cars out, an early lunch break was called, through which we could hardly say the weather improved…

But, as snowy as the pitlane and car park looked with nothing moving, the track surface was clear and we were itching to get out and race. We filled the time by making yet more tea and triple-checking everything on the car, the garage full of a dozen expectant supporters.

It wasn’t until Andy Marston and Brett Evans switched their Class A M3 over to full wet tyres at around 2:30 – half an hour after our billed race start – that I felt moved to go and have another look at the track surface. I got on the pit wall just in time to hear commentator Josh Barrett announce that the entire race meeting was being abandoned, Saturday and Sunday, with no prospect of any cars going out again that weekend.

The sense of deflation was profound. All that rush and prep and nerves and buildup, but no chance to go out and race. I felt worst for Adam, who’d got himself properly psyched up for his first-ever race to then have to go through that process all over again for the next meeting – closely followed by his parents, who’d travelled down from the Scottish border! It was a real shame letting down all the family and friends who’d come out to support us. The only thing to do was pack the car up and call the post-race BBQ early – and indoors – and get everyone back home and in the warm.

Thank you to all the friends who came to Donington – your support meant so much to us, it was a real boost having you along, and if you’ll brave it another time your tickets are on us. That means you, Sav, Shiv, Calum, Jack, Adam and Jack!

Next stop, Brands Hatch. It had better not snow in Kent in mid-April…

Sam

Into 2018

Present day: Just in time for the first race of 2018 – tomorrow! – our story comes up to date. This afternoon I’ll be driving over to Donington Park to sign on for tomorrow’s meeting, and try to update live as much as I can. But what happened over the winter?

After a couple of months’ well-earned rest, by Christmas time work had already begun on making the car better to drive, more durable and of course faster. We’d be contesting 750 Motor Club’s Roadsports series once again, with Adam now driving alongside me, but this time in Class C. This meant much more than just going from 160 to 180bhp/ton. The competition is much fiercer in Class C, with a lot of very well-prepared and proven race-winning cars from other championships, and budgets are larger. So every area of the car needed to improve if we were to stand up to the test.

This started with a significant amount of undressing! I had three reasons to remove the whole front end of the car. First, I wanted to replace more of the crash-damaged components. Second, there are parts in there  (AC condenser, for one) that we don’t need and are adding needless weight. But third and most important, I wanted to fit an oil cooler and this is the best way to achieve access to do that.

Once we’re in this state of undress, it’s relatively simple to remove the standard M52 engine’s oil filter housing and replace it with the part from an S50, a 3.0 M3 engine. This already has a feed and return to an oil cooler that’s factory fit on M3s, and bolts straight up to my engine block. I could then mount a Mocal 13-row air blast cooler in front of the radiator, hanging from the (new, uncrashed) slam panel on rubber bushes. I used a new slam panel to further straighten things up, and reassembling without the AC condenser, drier, electric fan and the cross-brace to support them all saved me 8.7kg.

Removal of that electric fan that hung on the AC condenser left me with no active cooling at all, since the viscous coupling fan driven by the engine was damaged in the accident and removed. So I added a 12″ SPAL high-power electric fan (1.6kg), mounted directly to the back of the radiator. The car doesn’t need this when out on track, but when in heavy traffic or idling for long periods, it helps manage the temperatures in the rad. I wired it to a simple switch in the cabin so I can turn it on from the driver’s seat when required.

That’s engine cooling taken care of, but what about more power? The 328i is in the fortunate position of having a very simple solution to gain significant power. Due to German tax laws in the 90s, when BMW replaced the 190bhp 2.5-litre 325i with a 2.8-litre 328i, it produced.. 190bhp. Far more mid-range torque, yes, but no more peak power to avoid heavy taxation. This was achieved by restricting the size of the inlet manifold runners. Happily, an unrestricted 325i manifold shares the same bolt pattern to the cylinder head, and requires only some playing about with breather hoses, oil separators and vacuum lines to fit. It helps if you have a James on hand to guide you through the process – thank you once again! The difference is plain when you have the parts side by side:

This lets the engine breathe more freely, unlocking additional power and a much more linear feel as it pulls towards the rev limiter. A typical gain once properly mapped on a rolling road is as much as 25-30bhp. Time didn’t permit getting the car set up ideally for this manifold, but we still pulled a healthy 213bhp on 750MC’s dyno, giving us a target weight of 1183kg to hit the class limit. In the end we got to 1194kg without any fuel, so there’s some work to do over the season to gain some power and/or lose more weight!

Power, as we know, is nothing without control. That’s where these Gaz Gold coilovers come in.

With 750lb/in front springs and 350lb/in rear, they’re not only stiffer than the four-year-old HSD Dualtechs that were fitted until now, but they have vastly superior dampers with a much wider adjustment range. The quality of these parts was impressive, and they felt worth every penny of their £1200 price tag. The reduction in body roll was so stark you could see it from trackside, and after a bit of work getting the car set up right, it felt immeasurably better to drive

Finally, you’ll notice some extra appendages on the car…

As much as it pained me to step away from the “standard road car” aesthetic, performance needs to come first sooner or later, and a race car isn’t complete without some aerodynamic enhancements. Wanting to keep things period and correct, I chose a front splitter and rear wing that are replicas of the parts used on the M3 GT road cars, a “homologation special” for BMW’s touring cars of the time. So not only do they look right on an E36, their function is proven, unlike many aftermarket alternatives.

There’s been a whole host of other little changes and improvements over the winter, culminating in a successful test day at Donington Park last week. We had a little bonus play at Silverstone’s Grand Prix circuit as well, courtesy of RMA Trackdays – here’s how the car looked there.

Now, I’m off to get the car finished and ready for tomorrow’s race! Hope to see you there…

Sam

The Team

A review of the 2017 season could never be complete without acknowledging the wonderful people who help me get out on the circuit and play at being a racing driver. Sometimes people ask “have you done all this yourself?”, and the answer’s not simple. Yes, it’s my own car and I’ve decided and driven everything that’s gone into it, and done a lot of the work myself. I do lead the events and planning, from race entries and kit lists to what time the car needs to be ready for each session. There’s no team principal, no payroll of mechanics or race engineers, and nobody else calling the shots. But the reality is that I could never have achieved any of this without my stunning support cast. So the McKee Motorsport team:

It’s fair to say that my mum Joy is responsible for, well, pretty much everything you see here. She’s indulged my passion for cars and driving for as long as I can remember, from teaching me to drive her Audi A6 when I was 14, through putting me through my first ARDS course to get my race licence at Silverstone aged just 16. She’s always been there, at every event, always fussing and making sure everyone has everything they need – and always putting up with mass BBQs back at her house after a nearby race! She’s certainly handy in the pit lane, having been watching and attending motorsport events for longer than I’ve been alive. But it goes deeper than that, and her unwavering faith in my ability to really get out there and do this is largely to thank for me ever being brave enough to take the plunge. Thank you, always.

Never far behind my mum in always being there to support is my grandad David. At 85, it’s still no trouble to be out in the freezing cold and blowing gales attendant at every circuit, and seeing his smile when I bring the car back after a session or a race makes me feel like a superstar. An absolute icon, loved by all. Even when he’s stealing your chocolate bars.

And of course there’s my long-suffering partner Emily. Starting the season engaged, we married on 10th August 2017 in Scotland and honeymooned for a week in Barcelona. That’s why we missed the Silverstone round of Roadsports, it took place the day after we arrived back at Glasgow airport at 11:30pm. It says all you need to know about Em’s support of my passion (and early gambit for the “coolest wife of the year” award) that she was straight on Google Maps trying to work out whether we could get to the circuit in time to still race, because “it’d be awesome doing that straight after our honeymoon!”.

Another core part of the team, is Em – she can be found on the pit wall with the live timing screens open on her phone, frantically slotting data into the pit board as I lap the circuit!

There follows a small army of friends whose support has been absolutely invaluable. From things as simple as a message to say “this is awesome, so happy that you got to follow your dream”, to giving up days of their time to help me work on the car or support it at a race – there’s many a time I’d have been buggered without the help of a friend, and I’m so lucky to have it given so generously on so many occasions. Even when not actively helping out, just coming to races to support and be there is a fantastic boost. So, in no particular order:

Before even the first race, old friend (and best man) Adam had called to volunteer his services as a race mechanic for the season. He cheerfully drove himself across the country at his own expense to come and support me and help me run the car, a generosity I’m now only starting to be able to repay by putting him in the car himself for his racing debut in 2018! Having someone I know and trust to work on the car as if it were his own gives a peace of mind that’s hard to convey, especially when I’m so used to doing everything myself. Half the reason I got into motorsport at all was to share experiences with my friends, and this has been top notch for it.

Ever self-deprecating but vastly more useful than he thinks he is – my friend and housemate Kevin, who selflessly gave a weekend to supporting us at Donington for that first race, covering everything from chauffeur to pit boss to mechanic. That’s not to mention the countless times he’s lent an extra pair of hands in spannering, or served as a sounding board for some of my more outlandish engineering ideas. It was the least I could do to have Kevin try the car for himself on a track day after the end of the season – and pretty handy he was too, so maybe there’s a future prospect there!

The car might get out and race without friend, colleague and fellow E36 addict James Butt, but it certainly wouldn’t be anywhere near as fast. He’s been fettling these cars for years longer than I, and his expertise has been invaluable when tackling the bigger jobs. Never afraid to give up an evening by coming straight over from work to get on the tools, his eternal optimism overcomes my fear of potentially knackering perfectly serviceable parts in seeking performance! Special mention also needs to go to our expert phone-a-friend Sam Carpenter of JustDeutsch – what he doesn’t know about an E36 is barely worth knowing.

The list could go on and on, from the brilliantly personable Chris Stevens of Autosport to those who’ve come along to watch and support. Andy, Emma, Shiv, Nicol – thank you.

Oh, and James – I reckon we did OK in the end, didn’t we? There’s plenty more where that came from!

Sam

 

Race Five – Rockingham

September 2017: Our final race of the 2017 season would take us to Rockingham, a technical infield circuit inside an oval. James and I both knew the track quite well, but I’d made some changes that warranted testing – one was finally moving to full-specification racing brake pads, fitting Performance Friction 08 endurance-compound pads in place of the Z-Rated that had been in before. The other was far more invasive to achieve, and dramatic in performance enhancement…

One man’s misfortune is another’s gain, and Brian Love’s E36 race car being broken for parts gave some very interesting options. I picked up oil coolers for both engine and differential (neither fitted for 2017), but most importantly a freshly rebuilt 3.91 ratio medium-case diff with four friction plates. This would give an enormous gearing reduction from the 3.15 I’d been using up to now, and far better locking performance too. A two-man job to install, made possible only by the selfless and knowledgeable James Butt! I also failed to mention the new seat in the Cadwell race report – among the best money I’ve ever spent on this car was a Cobra Evolution Pro. The support and control this offered was truly priceless.

When testing the car before I race, I generally find myself worrying or hunting for issues or obsessing over the onboard footage to find the best line around the circuit. Rockingham was the first time for a long while that I just got out of the car smiling. At long last, it felt like a racing car. The directness, the feel, the aggression the diff allowed you to use, the sheer power and impact of those brake pads.. Incredible. All through the development of a car, you only get a few moments like that where it all comes together and makes sense, and it’s a brilliant feeling. I couldn’t wait to get out there and race it.

Race day started out dry, and the car felt great through qualifying. We were both able to get some good space and put in good laptimes, with both drivers clocking best laps within a second of each other and putting the car on class pole for the fourth time that year. I was particularly pleased with my quickest lap, a 1:46.42, putting us 20th of 27 cars on the grid overall. Here it is:

We’d been gifted a dry morning to really feel the performance of the car, but the weather quickly turned threatening, with downpours through the earlier races of the afternoon. We weren’t too fussed, as we knew the car suited the wet quite well and we were both very familiar with it, so we were happy with our abilities in challenging conditions. Challenging, however, quickly became absurd – it’s hard to convey just how black the skies became before our race start, but I hope these two images go some of the way!

Almost every race before us was red-flagged at least once due to incidents, and when our time finally came, James was to lead. The circuit had mostly dried out since the last downpour, but the intent in the skies was clear as James made his way to the grid:

A slightly slow getaway at the start left some work to do, but after only a few minutes’ racing the heavens opened. I was on the pit wall at the time, and the rain came down so hard it actually hurt – you can hear it hitting the car in the onboard video, even over the noise of the engine at wide-open throttle. The race was brought under safety car after just seven minutes, a decision warranted by a Ginetta in our class spinning directly in front of James even with the race neutralised. The safety car stayed out until the 24-minute mark, long through the pitstop window opening. This left me a difficult decision to take – all of our key competition was pitting to take advantage of the slower pace under the safety car, but James had barely had any race time. I left him out in the hope he’d get some chance to drive the car properly, and after the race went live again, I called the car in at the last possible moment before the pit window closed.

There followed one of the best driving experiences of my life. I joined a drenched circuit, so wet that even pulling second gear in the pitlane led to wheelspin, with small rivers crossing the track in half a dozen places. Being the only ones pitting outside the safety car period, we were at the back of our class and, briefly, dead last overall. I had fifteen minutes to fight back.

The circuit was treacherous, faster traffic was coming through, but I felt completely in touch with the car and was comfortable taking it well beyond the grip limit for lap after lap. Racetracks are generally extremely slippery in the wet, and among them Rockingham is famously lethal, giving the impression of driving a colossally powerful car with nowhere near enough tyre to control it. In short, exactly my idea of a good time! The conditions made all sorts of new and interesting passing manouvres possible, including going around the outside of competition, and in the end I was able to fight all the way back to second in class and twelfth overall. Here’s the race video:

I got out of the car feeling absolutely elated. Not only was it a truly wonderful drive to finish on, but we’d made it through the season. This leggy old 90s repmobile had been reborn as a racing car, and two novices had not only got it to the chequered flag in every race, but it had finished on the podium every time as well. The final tally from five races was two class wins, three second places, four poles and four fastest laps. In short – beyond my wildest dreams.

All that was left to do was load the car up, drive it home after the most successful year I could have imagined, and start planning for the next one…

Sam