Its amazing where life takes you, and although we are still yet to score an ERC point, I certainly don’t have any regrets about the route we are taking. Its not just the racing in the ERC, its the adventure and experience. Myself and my tiny team have had some money can’t buy experiences over the last couple of years. The stories that come with these are for the most part unprintable, and for some uncanny reason usually involve a Scandinavian or two, or indeed a Celt.

But, of course the reason for doing the ERC is to race, and although more progress is made at some events than others, we have yet to go to an event where we haven’t been able to take massive positives away from it. It must be easy to look at the final finishing order from events and believe that we have made very little progress from day one of our European campaign, but the reality is that when we started we were almost days off the pace, and now we are knocking on the door of a chance at C finals.

We have some significant changes to make, but we have only learnt these from doing the events we have done. They say racing is the best form of testing after all. We are still struggling in two areas, the main one being power. We are giving away over 50bhp to many of our rivals, which is huge. This is being addressed over the winter months, new camshafts are on their way to try and extract more power. Again this is a juggling act, cams are not cheap, so I have had to sell my current ones in order to afford a new set. Of course we are not going to be able to get the same sort of power a the front runners, but if we can make a good improvement on what we have it will certainly help.

We have found that the faster we are making the car go, the more different issues are highlighted. Grip and traction seem to have become more of an issue the further down the development road we have come. Working with what we have I think we have come as far as we can in terms of improving the set up. Don’t get me wrong what we have is good, and cheap, but i feel we are at the point to need better. The dampers on the Clio cost less in total than just one corner of the dampers on a car like Julian Godfreys. Using this suspension has been great, and brilliant for the money, but to make progress we need to be using something better. As usual this is all down to money, and I am putting huge amount of effort into finding the money to improve the car ready for 2012.

I was hoping to race at the Grand Prix at Croft next week, but the Clio’s gearbox developed a problem during the event in Czech so it is back with Gripper being repaired and won’t be back in time. The cost of running a car of this type is apparent at this stage, as the clutch needs a refresh, the clutch release bearing is badly worn etc. All problems that need addressing, and all more expense.

The Czech event itself went well for us, although the pace in Super1600 was mega! The lower-midfield pack are normally those who we race with, and with nobody like that in attendance we were left trying to punch well above our weight. Its the little things you notice progress wise,aside from time of course. A year ago we wouldn’t have even been able to even see the likes of Kalny after half a lap, and this is no longer the case.

The one massive issue in Czech was the way the track was prepared, and the dust that was caused as a result. On Saturday the second free practice was cancelled and the timed practice and first heat were both late, so the dust was soon coupled with low sun. I was in the first race of the first heat, and at the back found the dust horrendous. I had to stop to see where the joker lap was, which in my eyes wasn’t safe. I made my point to Kenneth Hansen, who in turn spoke to the organisers. It was decided that all the races would take place on the Sunday. I was a little taken aback by the decision, based on my assessment of the conditions. I was encouraged that Guttorm Lindefjell and Ludvig Husbedt, a pair renowned for their carefree driving, thanked me for making a judgement on the conditions for the benefit of others, and that it was the correct thing to do. After all, safety HAS to come first. This has become more apparent over the last couple of weeks in motorsport, with the high profile deaths of Dan Whelden and Marco Simoncelli. Its easy to forget that even in Rallycross, we are not invincible.

On a lighter note, the ERC calendar for next season looks good, and for the money-no-object teams it looks great. If I can get the money together I will try and do seven events, I don’t think I will entertain trying to get to the three Scandinavian rounds and this should help with costs massively.

I had hoped that the off seasons might get quieter the more experienced we become at the ERC, and there would be less to do. It is in fact the polar opposite, we are learning more, trying to implement what have learnt and the hunger to succeed grows more and more. It looks like we are going to be busy then…!

As I write this the car isn’t yet ready to go, but then there’s nothing new there. There is just bodywork to finish repairing after Holland, and a few odds and sods to sort out. The only other thing is the suspension geometry, but I am still awaiting the return of the front damper that broke in Holland that has been away for repair, I have been promised it for Wednesday at the absolute latest, which is handy as we are leaving for Czech on Wednesday, so the damper may have to be swapped and the geometry done at the circuit on Thursday night. This isn’t a big problem, one of the nice things about the European events is that there is a lot of time, in the British championship instead of the event being spread over three days, a single day is all you get to do all the administration, practicing and racing, making things far less relaxed.

Czech will be only the second circuit we have visited twice with the Clio, the other of course being Lydden. Although we didn’t get huge amount of track time in our visit to Ceska Lipa in 2010, I at least did enough laps to start to find my way around, so hopefully we can build on that experience from the offset. Czech is one of the faster circuits on the European tour, and a commitment track at that. The entry in Super1600 for the weekend looks quite widespread, so we should have some good racing given our form from the previous few events. The entry overall is very impressive, especially in Supercars. I assumed, wrongly, that people might not be so keen on going as it is the last round of the season, a standalone event and all the titles are wrapped up, but the list is very impressive for any event.

Another reason to go to Czech is to research further for our plans for next season, and the changes we wish to make to the car over the winter months. There is no better experience than talking to people who have already made mistakes and changed ideas, and seeing different peoples interpretations of the best way of doing things. On top of this I also have to deliver some cylinder head parts that are heading to Sweden for development.

Over the last few months I have been trying to do more with the promotional side of my rallycross adventure. When I first started with the Clio project I was very good at finding the time to write and publish stuff about what I was doing, but then I had less to worry about, and ironically there was also less to write about and inform people of.  I have recently re-launched my website, and also had flyers made to give out on events. The website is just a guide about who I am and what we have done, and a way of giving something back to my sponsors, and keeping people up to date with news. The flyers are to give out on events, it again showcases sponsors and also gets more publicity, you never know who is going to read or see what you put on there, and it might always land you some sponsorship or support if people like what they see.

Of course, results always help your sponsorship hunting cause, and after this coming weekend we will hopefully have some more good news to send out to people who are on the cusp of giving us some backing for the 2012 season.

With every event we go to with the Clio we make progress, and i’m not just saying that to make myself feel better about things. Belgium and Holland were no different to this form, but there were points during the events that it felt like it wasn’t going so well.

Scruiteneering in Belgium was tough, the hardest we have been to. The Clio got pulled and failed on all sorts of things that have always been fine in the past. One such example was the way ballast is held down and the fact it wasn’t lock-wired. These have been in the car since it was built, but all of a sudden they were an issue. By contrast, scruiteneering in Holland was very straight forward.

Once we did get onto the circuit in Belgium the car was feeling much better again than it has previously. The extra power from the exhaust manifold was making a good difference and we played with the set-up in practice which helped a lot. Sometimes we make a change to improve the set-up and I get in the car and its worse, but if we don’t try we will never know!

One thing the car is great at is getting on the startline. I have to say, throughout my time in Rallycross one thing I have always been good at is starting. People watching comment on the fact that I always move first, a split second reaction to the lights, and the car puts its initial power down well. However, when other peoples greater power and sequential gear boxes come into play we normally get out dragged to the first corner. In Belgium, we managed to still be in the mix after the first corner and this changes the race totally, not always jokering on the first lap and being in the mix a bit more.

 The rain came in timed practice, and during a damp and slippy session we were 22^nd fastest, which was very encouraging. I enjoy the slippy conditions, its not all about power and i’m comfortable with the car sliding around. Having said that, the wet was also my downfall in Belgium, but in a different capacity. We had a good couple of first heats, and in the third I was second for most of the race, until the penultimate lap. The circuit had been watered and was slippy, but when I entered the joker lap I hadn’t appreciated how wet it was, I was carrying far too much speed and ended up in the wall on the outside. I finished the heat, albeit slowly. It was just one of those things and I don’t regret pushing as hard as I did.

The damage was mainly superficial, so we got it patched up the next day at the circuit in preparation for Holland.

One thing of note was that my fastest lap in the second heat in Belgium would have been good enough for forth fastest when the British SuperNationals went to Belgium a month earlier, which gave me encouragement.

The week in between the two events was spent re-preparing the car, and going to the campsite near the Valkenswarrd circuit. It amazing who you meet and who has time to chat and discuss things when a lot of like minded people are together, but without the pressure of race day, and we certainly made some new friends, and weirdly some of those that I have been looking up to and admiring for years.

Holland was much more to my liking than Belgium, and practice in the dry went well. It was good that I knew my way around and I was starting to feel like I was on top of the car. The rain came down hard for timed practice, and we were 14^th (from 40ish) fastest! I was made up, the rain had played its part by falling harder near the end, but as we qued for the first heat it was brilliant being in one of the races near the end, instead on in the first couple as usual.

The first heat was still wet, I didn’t make a great start for a change and was last coming into the first corner. Everyone was bunching up on the inside, so I decided to try a do or die and go for the outside – and it worked. I ran second for the race, and it was all going really well until the last corner. I took too much kerb next to the exit of the joker lap and got a puncture, I then missed a gear and got very sideways coming into the last corner, and whilst saving it got a hit from behind, and again… and again, and ended up in the wall. I drove across the line but had even more damage and a rubbish time. Being punted me off didn’t even save the other guy any time, in fact it would have been faster for him to have not punted me off at all and followed me across the line, but such is life.

We got it repaired again, and the rain was even harder on Sunday morning. We opted to go for forest tyres for the second heat, and although it was a total unknown it worked, 3 seconds faster than Veltman, who has always been my benchmark and who we want to beat first. The third heat was set up to be good, and I really felt we could beat Veltman through the whole event on merit. I jokered on the first lap, feeling that with some clear air I could catch and pass the people in front, but a slower car behind chose not to joker, I caught them straight up and struggled to get past. I thought afterwards I probably lost two seconds, and that is the time we lost to Veltman, he beat us, but only just.

We want to make a lot more changes to the car, specifically suspension related, but we also still need more power. Other people just pull past us in a straight line. The week in between Belgium and Holland helped on both of these fronts, collecting ideas and help from others, notably some Scandinavian friends means that this winter I want to change the car significantly, and now we have learnt from what we have already done I really think we can find a lot more time yet.

When we started with the Clio we were 12+ seconds a heat behind the C final sort of pace. Now we are within a second of that, but it’s so much harder and more expensive to find the tenths than the seconds.

I won’t be in Austria or Poland, some bills need settling before I go anywhere else, but we are going to patch the car up and go to Czech for the last round if we can, last year was a great event but we didn’t get far due to reliability problems. Then it will be planning for next year … we are defiantly moving in the right direction.

Despite our problems in France, which I highlighted last time I wrote here in Rallycross World, we are making big steps forward at every event we go to with the Clio, making both performance modifications and changes to enhance the cars reliability. So far we have done six ERC rounds, and at every event have made a significant step forward from the last, which is incredibly encouraging. We have made yet more modifications before Belgium and Holland, so I really hope we can see some more improvements there!

After the French ERC round we had a smaller list of jobs to do than usual after an event…or so we thought. The first thing to do was to sort out the engine mount problems we had again experienced in France. We decided not to try and repair the engine steady that has failed on more than one occasion but instead start from scratch. However, the gearbox still had to come out to have the casing repaired again, and the aluminium alternator bracket needed strengthening after the alternator had come loose at Essay. Of course this meant most of the front of the car has to be dismantled.

Once the car was back together it was ready to go to Tony Law Exhausts in Leeds for its new exhaust manifold…or so I thought. After travelling to Belgium to work on the MB Motorsport Audi TT TDI at the British event in Massmechelen at the start of July, I had a good look at several other S1600 Clios and decided that we needed more clearance for the new exhaust to fit between the subframe and the bulkhead and under the car. So, on our return it was decided to move the steering rack down about an inch to allow the subframe to be adapted to give more room for the exhaust. This was a lot of re-fabrication in itself, but it’s always the knock on effect of everything else on these bespoke cars that turns a relatively simple task into hours and hours of fabrication. With the rack moved, the steering column then needed lengthening, and then the angle adjusting since it no longer met up with the rack. The bracket that holds the steering column in place also acts at a clutch pedal stop, but this was now also in the wrong place so the clutch pedal and stop also needed adjusting, as did the bulkhead where the standard seal around the column no longer fitted.

The car then made its trip to Tony Law Exhausts in Leeds, where it spent a week and had a new four-branch manifold fitted. The job Tony Laws did was fantastic and very professional. The exhaust used all the space that we had made available too which made the worth all the more worthwhile. The item is exactly what I asked for, and both interesting and useful was the fact that their ideas were the same as the ideas I had collected from looking at other Clios. (There will be more on Tony Law Exhausts in a feature next month)

Another trip to the rolling road a JabbaSport was then on the cards, since we had the mapping “issues” in France, and the new exhaust manifold was now also attached. This went well again, and although we still don’t have as much power as I would like given how much we have put into the engine compared to what I know others have put into theirs and got more, I am happy that what we do have is very usable and drivable and will ultimately be reliable. There is no way I can afford an engine rebuild every second event if we loose the reliability.

My trip to Belgium for the British event gave me a good look at the circuit. Belgium and Holland will be the first ERC rounds I have done outside the UK where I have had prior knowledge of the circuit. I last raced at both in 2007, albeit in a stockhatch class Peugeot 205 GTi. The joker lap in Belgium has changed recently and it looked very rough three weeks ago, but otherwise the circuit is the same as it was. Valkensvaard in Holland has also got a new joker lap, which I am yet to see, but again I don’t think the rest of the circuit has changed. This will certainly be a help for the first practice sessions at the events, as I won’t be spending those valuable few laps feeling my way around quite as much.

Unfortunately there has again been no chance for testing, but every time I get in the car I am more confident in it. This isn’t a good reason not to go testing of course but the situation is such that we have once again run out of time.

Ultimately the best testing is racing, and as I have said before we take every event as an another extended test, so fingers crossed for two good weekends racing and in Belgium and Holland where we can hopefully have some good racing and make more good progress with the car.

The build up to Lydden Hill was frantic to say the least. With 15 or so days to go the car still hadn’t been rolling road tested and I still didn’t have my dogbox back from Gripper. We eventually got to the rolling road at JabbaSport where the mapping went well, and although there wasn’t any more power than in 2010 the vernier pulleys have made for a much wider power-band and a much more drivable car.

Back at the workshop, there was still the issue of affording to get to Lydden, I still had to pay for my gearbox and all the work that had been done to it. My trailer has been getting a bit long in the tooth for a while, so I spent some early mornings tidying it up and duly sold it to try and find the budget to race. I had to borrow the money for the gearbox, thanks to MB Motorsport (again!), which arrived on the Monday before the event. The last week was a mad dash to get the car ready, fitting the gearbox, painting and fitting all the panels on the car and sorting out the hundreds of little jobs.

Incredibly we did get to Lydden, thanks to a lot of help from so many people, and a lot of very late nights and even earlier mornings. To add to the issues, with a week to go the brakes on my van decided to play up and despite trying almost everything we couldn’t solve the problem. British championship racer Phil Chicken kindly came to my rescue and, despite already lending me a trailer since I had sold mine, also provided the use of his Transit van.

During practice at Lydden the car felt much better than it had in the previous year, the better gear ratios and bigger power band made for a much more drivable car. Before the weekend we hadn’t been able to get the suspension geometry exactly how we would have liked, but we had spent a long time setting it up and it certainly seemed to have made a big difference.

During the second practice session we broke the same engine steady that we had broken at the last event of 2010 in the Czech Republic. The repair done by Gripper hadn’t worked. It was either finish there and then or improvise. We decided to make a new engine mount, finding steel in the paddock wasn’t too hard, but finding somebody with a welder was incredibly difficult. Almost all the teams had most parts of a welder, but almost always were missing something crucial. We did eventually get a new engine mount made, and although it needed strengthening over the course of the weekend it certainly did its job.

We missed timed practice as a result of having to make an engine mount, so it wasn’t until the first heat that we discovered the suspension travel was bottoming out over the bumps especially at the bottom of the hill, the back of the car was all over the place so that knocked my confidence a bit. We raised the car quite significantly overnight, and in warm-up on day two it felt much better. Heat two was then our best race to date, I took the Joker Lap on the first lap and once Willem Veltman had also taken the alternative I was able to stay within a second of him for the rest of the race, only his power advantage keeping him ahead. I have always seen Veltman and Harrie Deelen as the first on our ‘to beat list’. In Poland last year I was 11.5 seconds behind Deelen over a race distance. In the second heat at Lydden, after we both had clean runs, I was just over a second behind. To have found 10 seconds over the winter really made it all worth while, and made me even more determined to find more. The third heat wasn’t so good, a suspension top-mount broke which made the handling interesting to say the least, but we left the event very happy overall.

Portugal – too far to race

The next event on the calendar was Portugal, and I had decided long before the season started not to even try to race in the championship’s most southern event. It appears many other people felt the same, with only 16 cars in both Supercar and Super1600 and eight in Touring Car. I went to the event to work for the new RallycrossWorld.com news site, and the general feeling in the paddock was that Portugal is just too far in these financially difficult times. Kenneth Hansen confessed to enjoy the event Portugal, but suggested that the ‘last 1700km’ killed it for him really. Says it all…

Freestyle mapping

France was my next port of call, but again this wouldn’t have been possible without massive generosity and help from a number of people. The first thing we had to do was make a new engine mount, repair the old one and with the two working together hope it would be much better. We also made some big changes to the rear suspension geometry, and for the first time in many events actually achieved the set-up we desired. Adding weight was also on the list, all the lightening we had done over the winter had actually put the car under the weight limit, so some big weights were placed in the car with the help of the corner weight scales to help put them in the right place. The final part of the pre-France jigsaw was the fuel tank. Each FIA tank is homologated for a certain period of time, and as I bought mine second hand, it ended its homologation at the end of April. You are able to get a two year extension but it has to be inspected by the manufacturer in order to do this, which is a time consuming and expensive process. It arrived back just in the nick of time.

Mr Chicken very kindly again gave me the use of his van and trailer for France, although this time he drove it, the first time I have done a Rallycross event in my life and not had to drive to the circuit myself. We arrived on Friday lunchtime, after travelling all night to minimise time away. Scrutineering went fine, and all looked good.

On Friday evening there was a lot of talk in the paddock about how strict the French are on noise limits. My car pops and bangs on over-run, but my ECU does have a feature with which to turn this off. I plugged in the laptop and did this, but the car wouldn’t start. I must confess to never having done anything with mapping, and it appears some misunderstanding between me and the guy that mapped the car had led to me wiping out all data contained in the ECU…

Lots of phone calls back to England, and nowhere could we find the back-up for the engine MAP. At midnight – after borrowing Derek Tohill’s hirecar (sorry about the puncture, Derek!) – I was in a friend’s hotel room using the wi-fi and downloading the original base map we had used to first get my car running. But this wasn’t even for my engine and we didn’t know if it would start. The car did start, but we were concerned about it damaging the engine. The general consensus was that it was better for the fuel mixture to be too rich than too lean to avoid melting a piston, so over the course of the weekend, after advice from lots of people in the paddock we continued to develop our guess-work map, making it run the engine richer, to try and avoid the massive expense of an engine failure while also trying to mke it run competitively. The first couple of practices felt okay, we were amazed the car was running at all but we were a long way off the pace. The first heat felt better, but after riding the kerb a bit hard in the first corner we again broke the engine steady, and this then tore the threads off the new front mount.

We reverted back to the improvised mount we had made at Lydden Hill and, in warm-up on Sunday, the car felt good, although down on power compared to Lydden. It was riding the bumps and kerbs really well and gave me a lot of confidence in the fast corners. The second heat went even better, but I was racing with a lot of cars that hadn’t got a time in the first heat and would normally belong much higher up the order, so I did my own thing and set an alright time.

The third heat was much better still, I got a brilliant start and lead into the first corner. A big push up the back gave me the hurry up and I got my head down to try and pull out as much of a gap as I could. Now, the Joker Lap had been very, very slippery all weekend, requiring the handbrake to get round. As I Jokered on the last lap there was much more grip than before, I made a mistake and wasn’t as tidy as I could have been, and only just lost the lead. That wasn’t important though, we had led our first ERC race on merit, and even more importantly, lead Deleen until I’d made a mistake.

I will be missing Norway and Sweden for the same reason as Portugal, on a very small budget they are just too far away. My dream of racing at Höljes will have to wait for at least another year.

What we did do is leave France knowing is that the car desperately needs more power. Handling wise it is really good, but we do need more power. Somehow I am going to have to find the money to have a proper, Super1600 style exhaust manifold made for it before it has to be re-mapped, and then I really am hoping to test before Belgium in August (sounds good at least!). Aside from that there are a few repairs to do but nothing major, just the usual crazy amount of time that these cars require in running repairs.

There are always loads of people to thank but a few have really gone out of their way to help me start this season. They all know who they are and I hope they all realise how amazingly grateful I am!

Today, as I write this, there are 22 todays to go. I still have no gearbox, the engine in the car is running, albeit currently on the old inlet manifold, and time is disappearing fast.

The new inlet manifold is almost finished, hours and hours of fabrication have gone into it, of course the benefits will overweigh anything else in the end, but you do question what you are doing when you are porting lumps of aluminium at 6am, before real work starts!

Real work has meant the Clio hasn’t had full attention over the last few weeks, the priority has been to finish MB Motorsports’ cars for the first round of the British Championship at Lydden Hill last weekend. Now that is out of the way the Clio my priority. Jabbasport is having the car on its rolling road on April 7 – six days from now. Hopefully this will be problem free, but you can never be sure until you have finished and on the way home with the end result.

The gearbox manufacturers had finished the new differential, but had a problem with heat treating the pinion, so that was no good. They are now putting everything they can into getting the gearbox built and sorted for the end of next week … I’m told. So it won’t be in place for the trip to Jabbasport but it should be in not long after.

Testing is now, at best, unlikely, but that isn’t something I’m unused to. When we got to Lydden last year we didn’t even know if the car would go around a corner, never mind if I would actually be able to drive it. I am a lot more confident about driving the car, and with the improvements we have made over the winter we should have a much more competitive package.

The car currently looks more sorry for itself than ever, although new panels are either waiting to be painted in a slightly new design or are on the way here. We do now have an incredibly lightweight fibreglass door, which I collected at the British event at Lydden Hill, (thanks to Adam Walker). With all this we should be somewhere near the weight limit this season.  With the limit being raised by 50kg and my car having been  on a bit of a diet, I think we are going to have gained almost 80kg on those who were on the weight limit last year.

Earlier this year “Mad Mark” was joking around and asked me “are you going to race this year, Hal, or are you just going to write about it?” It’s sad to see that Mark probably won’t be racing now, but unless I dash now and get some work done, I’m in danger of joining him on the sidelines!

See you all at Lydden Hill for the first round of ERC 2011, I will be doing everything I can to get there as a driver!

I am yet to get my gearbox back from Gripper, but the specialists there have now solved the issues that brought us to a halt in Poland last season, and are now in the process of making a new crownwheel and pinion for the differential to cure the gear ratio problems. The calculations have been done: last season at 8000rpm in fifth gear, the Clio would have done over 140mph! Not what you need in a Super1600 Rallycross car on European Rallycross circuits.

While I have to wait a little longer for the gearbox, I now have the con-rods for the engine, and the correct bolts as – surprise, surprise – the first ones supplied were wrong. The engine should be back in the car within the next week or so. I then have to sort out some pipework for new oil pressure gauges and the like before, hopefully, a trip to the rolling road. Unfortunately  I don’t think the gearbox will be back for another couple of weeks, so the car will be mapped without the close ratio dog box, but I am very keen to get the engine sorted as soon as possible so we can have as much time as we can to try and iron out any problems that may occur. Then, once the engine is mapped and the gearbox is back with us, I intend to take the car testing on at least one occasion before the first round of the ERC.

However, my testing will be weather dependent, and if that  doesn’t improve in the coming weeks I may not be able to get too much ‘loose’ testing in. I’m still woprking with MB Motorsport and, a couple of weeks ago we took an Audi A4 rally car to Blyton in order for Michael Boak to give some driver tuition. The car only did a handful of laps before we experienced clutch failure. Even with the small amount of laps involved the circuit was so wet and muddy that it still took me almost three-hours to pressure wash the car, and it still needs more cleaning yet. I don’t fancy trying to test the Clio on what was a half ploughed field to learn little and spend countless hours trying to clean it again. So we could well find ourselves testing at a kart circuit a couple of times prior to Lydden, but any testing will be 100% better than what we managed last year – absolutely no testing whatsoever.

More bits have been arriving for the car over the past weeks in the usual sort of way I have to do things. I bought four new wheels, for instance. These came fitted with road tyres which were taken off and sold to ease the cost of the wheels.

Oh, and the fitness training has been going well as a whole, although I fear the nearer we get to the Rallycross season the amount of time available for this will decrease in direct proportion to the number of hours required to get things ready on both my car and those of MB Motorsport’s customers.

The season is drawing ever closer, I won’t jinx anything by suggesting how things are going but I’ve got everything crossed that we have it a little bit easier in the run up to round one. But you know what they say about not counting your chickens…

One last thing, I want to wish Adam and Gemma Clark all the best for the future following their wedding last weekend. I’m sure they will both have a great time racing in the Swift Championship this season, and on to bigger, better, European things in the future!

One evening not long after I had written the last shoestring I was sorting spare parts for Dave Tulett’s newly bought Seat Ibiza SuperModified car when I got a call from Frankie Boak, who builds my engine. “Are you sitting down?” said the voice on the other end if the line. I must say at this point that I am no longer surprised by this type of conversation, given the trials and tribulations with building the Clio. “The con-rods don’t fit, they are too small on the little end!” continued the Geordie.

Incredibly irritating, but not something I was surprised by I have to say. Getting back in touch with the people in France who made them was of little help, all of a sudden their English had totally collapsed to the completely unclear, this again didn’t surprise me given my experience of interviewing French Rallycross drivers who can speak perfect English when they want to chat, but when they don’t appear unable even to be able to say hello in anything other than their mother tongue.

The problem with the con-rods isn’t the end of the world. The bore of the small end is too big. We can counteract this by fitting a phosphor bronze sleeve to make up for small amount of difference there is between the con rod and the gudgen pin for the piston. Fortunately I am good friends with Gareth Graham, who restores Vintage and Edwardian racing cars, so he is on the case of making some phosphor bronze bushes to make the rods fit.

Obviously this is a problem, and will cost even more money. Although we are behind we are not yet so far behind that we can’t catch up again before the chance to go testing and racing… fingers crossed, touch wood, etc.

We are still waiting for the return of my gearbox from Gripper, I am promised it in the next few weeks so that will be holding us up once the engine is together later this week.

On a more positive, the boot floor of the car has now been adapted, thanks to the help of a retired panel beating friend, although the car is not currently at its prettiest, a distinct lack of panels doesn’t help its aesthetics, this isn’t crucial to having a trip to the rolling road or indeed to do a private test.

As I wrote last month, my fitness level is slowly improving, and more squash is being played by the week. The time has now been found to do this, so there really is no excuse not to although the aching the next day is a tedious side effect!

As anyone in my situation of trying to race above the level they can realistically compete in, there are sacrifices to make and pride has to often be put to one side in order to make steps forward. Begging, borrowing and stealing is the name of the game. Begging support from people; I am currently on the verge of securing some support from various people. These are not multi-thousand pound deals that will see me being paid to do the ERC, they are small things like having a sponsor for the lubricants used on the car throughout the year. This sort of thing would make a massive difference to my season. Borrowing; harder in many ways than begging. The situation around borrowing is that you normally know the person you are borrowing from in the first place and I really don’t like asking favours. Without people helping and allowing me to borrow things, however, none of the 2010 season would have happened! Stealing; the things that get stolen are ideas, how to adapt the car as cheaply as possible to improve it, be it looking at other Rallycross cars or other engineering innovations and looking at ways to improve the set-up as a whole, be it van, trailer, or awning.

I have secured the use of a race awning for this year. It was bought second hand by a friend and I have the use of it on the basis I repair the damage for it to be used by him in the British championship, an ideal situation.

On a final note of borrowing, I would like to thank a few friends who have made big offers for both the British and French rounds of the ERC 2011 which will not only allow me continue the dream and be racing in the 2011 European Rallycross Championship, but perhaps in some comfort. That would certainly be a nice change, one I’m sure my mechanics will approve of even more than myself.

The new con-rods for the engine have arrived, so apart from a few gaskets and seals the engine is ready to go back together. Hopefully this will be ready before the end of January.

The gearbox issues have been discovered by Gripper, and are being resolved. Within a month we should have the box back and ready to bolt onto the engine and into the car, at the same time we can be altering the boot floor and the exhaust.

The flanges and material have arrived for the inlet manifold so the new one can be made in readiness – barring any late issues – for a trip to the rolling road.

There are still lots of odds and sods to get for the car, but hopefully by the middle of February we will be able to start testing in time for the start of the season. That should leave us plenty of time to sort out any problems, assuming they don’t cost a fortune of course.

We have also started to look more into the 2011 calendar. Obviously I don’t have the money to do the whole season, but we would like to make a plan and try to stick to it, although that is harder than I first anticipated. Deciding which events to try and do is not easy. Lydden is a must, and France, Belgium and Holland are easy as they are ‘local’. Of the far away events, I can’t do Portugal due to work commitments in the British Championship, and Czech being all on its own at the end of the year isn’t too appealing, but depending on what the situation is at the time I could be persuaded…easily. I really, really, really want to race in Sweden, but the trip so far north to Norway would be both time consuming and expensive. Being in Scandinavia for over a week will just be expensive because of the exchange rate, never mind the amount of distance there is to cover. I also really want to do Poland, as I loved the track in 2010, but that is paired with Austria which I am not too fussed about for some reason. Also, the journey to Poland is epic in the van, as we found out in 2010 travelling non-stop for 38 hours to get there. The issue with the calendar is that there are events I want to do, but none of them are in pairs. In my position the best and really only way to do as many as possible is to do the events in pairs because you are not travelling all the way out to Europe twice. So a compromise will have to be met, and one of the long haul journeys will be dropped I fear.

The pleasing thing is that I have driven on half the circuits of next years championship, and visited three more of them, so I have prior knowledge of most of the venues of 2011 in some capacity.

We are working on some sponsors for this season, and the feeling I am getting from people is positive, so all will become more certain in the next few weeks I’m sure. Aside from that and the car there is another area I think there is massive scope for improvement for this year. That is my fitness. I don’t think I’m unfit, but certainly nowhere near as fit as I could or should be. I have never been one for spending hours in the gym, although I used to play a lot of squash and football, but you have to make time for these things, they don’t just happen. This spring I am going to make a concerted effort to make time for these to improve my fitness. A fitter body means driving the car isn’t so tiring, and your mind will stay more alert. Every tiny thing counts, if you have the best car in the world but are too wrecked to drive it then you are wasting your time.

The opposite side of that is my side, the car might not be the fastest in the field by any means but if I am physically and mentally as strong as I can be then you can get the most out of what you have available to you. This, coupled with making the effort to learn the circuits in more detail with the help of some ‘Supercar’ friends and it should be another little advantage we have over last season, and another small step in the direction of scoring those valuable ERC points!

Progress on the car is going quite well. I didn’t expect to have so many of the things that we want to improve on in place by this point. The new con-rods should be arriving any day now, so we have all the components for the engine. We have also got the parts required to make the new inlet manifold: a standard Renault inlet manifold which will be machined to be provide one flange (the cylinder head end), and a Ford Pinto DCOE manifold that will provide the flange for the throttle bodies. So it’s just a case of making the tubes to join up. I say ‘just’ but this is one of the trickiest jobs on the car due to the angles involved, but it is one that I am sure the ever resourceful Michael and Frankie Boak combination will be able to achieve with apparent ease. I suppose it is the difference between being a professional and not, but they make the hardest of jobs look very easy!

The other main part we are waiting for is the gearbox. Gripper has stripped it and found a couple of minor problems so they are redesigning some of the parts. Once this is sorted, and they have changed the gear ratios with a new crown wheel and pinion we will have the gearbox back, just after Christmas I hope.

Once we have the engine and gearbox back in the car we will re-visit the rolling road, and hopefully come away with more power. To aid this further we are going to take the spare wheel well out of the rear of the car as this will allow us to have the exhaust go straight through to the rear without any big bends. Hopefully the flow will be less effected, and give us a tiny bit more power (every one counts!).

The Super1600 2011 regulations have some brilliant news for me: the weight limit for the class has been raised from 950 to 1000kgs for 2011. I can assure you we were the heaviest car in the class last season, so with the addition of the new glassfibre tailgate and passenger door that are being made for me by Magnum Motorsport, we should be right on the weight limit. With many other cars having to put weight on to meet this limit we will have gained on everyone in the class by virtue of the regulations, so that will give us a massive help going into 2011 too!

As I write this I am in India, with a project based on a some English teaching and photography. Being here has made me realise how lucky we are in Europe to be as affluent as we are, and that we have the opportunities that we do, racing in Rallycross for instance. There are a few similarities between here and our sport though. The roads in India make even the roughest Rallycross track look like a billiard table. Coupled with that, there are next to no rules on the road. One driver said to me “We drive on the left hand side – some of the  time!”. On a road the size of a B road in the UK, I have seen two coaches side-by-side going in one direction, avoiding a truck, two motorbikes and an Auto-rickshaw going in the other direction. And it’s not just other road users you have to avoid. Cows, people and dogs also cause a hazard on the potholed roads. It’s like the chaos theory, somehow it just works. I think a lot of the drivers here would make great Rallycross drivers.

A quick mention for my two of my closest friends in Rallycross. My mechanic since I started Rallycross in 2005, Dave Tulett, made his own Rallycross debut at the Rallycross Superprix at the end of October. He borrowed a clubman modified Seat Ibiza, won his first heat race, and had a fantastic day. I told him before the event that once he had tried it that he would want more. I think he doubted me.

It’s a funny thing motor sport, he is now selling his road car to fund buying the car. So when he isn’t at the ERC with me in 2011 he will be racing in the BTRDA SuperModified Championship. The other person who I wanted to mention is Michael Boak, who also made a debut at the Superprix. Still using his trusty Audi TT, but now with a TDI motor – the first of its kind in the sport. You will be able to read more about this car in the press in the coming months but I know it will be doing very well sooner rather than later. The thing has enough torque to tow the entire workshop to events I would think!

Things are coming together nicely for 2011, hopefully we will be at round one of the championship having completed some testing. Stranger things have happened, but then again, they probably haven’t.