As is said by many, motor sport is often 90% heartache, 10% totally uncontrollable joy. But despite this, that tiny percentage of joy is so amazingly worthwhile it keeps you going through the rough stuff. Annoyingly for most, a lot of the aggravation in motor sport must be from the length of time it can take suppliers to supply their goods and services. Pat Doran once said to me: “If you order something in motor sport with a deadline in mind, nine times out of 10 you will miss that deadline. In any other walk of life and business this would be totally unacceptable, and yet in motor sport it is just accepted as the norm”. And he’s right. [...] Continue Reading…

Ever get the feeling of deja vu?

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 [...] Continue Reading…

There are 110 days to go, but it still feels like we have only just finished the 2010 season. I returned from India in mid-December to find some of the new parts had arrived, which was great. The last week or two has been a frustrating time though, as making progress over the Christmas and New Year is almost impossible when it comes to ordering things as everybody is on holiday.

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 [...] Continue Reading…

145 Days. Sounds like a long time doesn’t it? This time last year, in the run towards the first round of the ERC, I thought that it was a long time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and as it turned out it wasn’t nearly enough time. This year we are in a much better position. For a start we don’t have half a car to build. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of work to do but it is directed in specific areas. I know we can still encounter a lot of problems, but hopefully we are doing things with enough time in hand to account for such issues.

Progress on the car is going quite well. I [...] Continue Reading…

The plan immediately after the last two rounds of the European championship was to put the Clio away for a couple of months and do my best to forget all about it. Not for any other reason than to have a break from the constant thought process it involves. So, as you can imagine, within a week of being back the plans to improve it for 2011 were being put into place.

As anyone who has read any of my articles about the Clio will know, getting hold of parts for it is anything other than straight forward. Nobody we could find makes vernier pulleys specifically for the 1600 Renault engine, so after sending some standard sample pulleys to Cat [...] Continue Reading…

Racing at an event in Europe for a weekend was initially a daunting thought. Having done one weekend in Germany, I don’t think I appreciated how much harder it is to do two weekends in a row. Many people mentioned the word ‘holiday’ to me surrounding our trip to the last two rounds of the ERC. Be assured that for us it certainly didn’t feel like a holiday. Afterall, holidays are supposed to be relaxing. In September’s issue I suggested that we had learned our lesson about leaving enough time to get to the event with time in hand. Okay, this time we did arrive at the circuit on the Friday morning of the Polish round, but that doesn’t [...] Continue Reading…