2021 Time Attack Championship Round 7: Brands Hatch

The penultimate weekend of this years Time Attack Championship.

Warm Up

Jonny is very familiar with Brands Hatch, so after few gentle laps to get a feel for grip levels and check the oil leak had been fixed it was time to start pushing for quicker lap times.

Time where indeed dropping throughout the session and Jonny ended warm up with a time of 53.627, positioning him not just third in class but third overall! As a result, our expectations for later in the day where high. Although, on returning to the pits an oil leak was still present.

After stripping down the car, it appeared the seal for the oil pressure sensor had failed. Again, this wasn’t a major issue as we always carry a box of copper seals and it wasn’t too tricky to access.

Practice

With the new leak now hopefully fixed, it was time to head back out and build on what was a strong warm up session. With the overall aim of getting the lap time down to somewhere close our target for the afternoon.

After 3 laps, Jonny returned to the pits just to make sure everything was ok. On inspection, although the leak wasn’t as bad, it was still present. We made the decision to head back out and inspect again at the end of the session.

By the fifth flying lap, Jonny’s lap time was down to 54.094. Unfortunately on the sixth lap is where things started to unravel. Entering Mcleans, the back end of the car stepped out. Jonny nearly saved it but sadly ended up in the gravel trap, consequently ending the session.

It was now time for the big clean up, getting as much gravel out of the car as possible. We don’t think we have ever seen as much gravel collected after an off as this! It’s amazing where gravel can end up.

We then had to take two tyres over to Pirelli to get gravel removed from the bead. After that was sorted we focussed on finally getting to the bottom of the oil leak. This time it was coming from the hard-line oil feed to the turbo. Something that couldn’t be permanently fixed track-side.

To try and survive the day, we removed the pipe and used some 2 part resin in an attempt to slow down the leak. This had appeared to fix the leak, at least for now so it was time to get the car back together for qualifying.

Qualifying

With not much time to relax it was time to get back out on track and hope everything held up. Unfortunately Jonny couldn’t get the car to click, it simply didn’t feel the same as it had done all year and had become very unpredictable through corners.

The car was going sideways through pretty much every corner, including an excursion onto the grass at the exit of Graham Hill bend. At the end of the session Jonny had managed to set a 54.156 lap time. A long way off what we where aiming for.

With only 40 minutes until the final, we quickly checked the car for any obvious issues. With nothing visibly wrong we had to hope for the best and trust in Jonny’s driving skills and experience.

Final

The final was expected a very tricky session, without confidence in the car it’s very hard to set fast lap times. Jonny was finding it very hard to get below a 54 second lap time, never mind the 52’s we hoped for.

Jonny found himself in the gravel trap once again on lap nine at Graham Hill Bend. luckily, Jonny managed to drive through it and recover back on to the circuit before limping back to the pits.

Thankfully there was no damage and we where able to send the car back out. Within two laps Jonny dipped into the 53’s before finding the gravel again on the exit of Clearways! Jonny managed to get himself out but that was our day done.

The whole event was far from ideal and had put an end to Jonny’s fantastic run of form but that’s Motorsport and things never work out the way you plan.

It’s not more important than ever to strip the car down post event. Not only to resolve the oil leak once and for all but get to the bottom of the handling issue. We have 4 weeks to get the car ready for the final weekend of the championship. A Snetterton double header over the weekend of October 23/24th.