TNT Racing - Donnington
Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:41 pm
What a fantastic day and introduction to the time attack.
Woke up early sunday morning to find about 4 inchs of snow covering the car. My first thought was shite the front splitter is only about 3 inches off the ground.....snow plough..... Then a sobering thought came to mind, cut slicks, snow and ice didn't make for a good start to the day. By the time we left the roads were clear enough that we didn't have to remove the front bumper
But why for the love of god had they not gritted the roads 
When we got onto the A42 it went from clear to wet to snow to ice
This was going to be a hugh test for us and learning curve, we new that we were well down on power as the propsed new engine had not come through
. We had set the car up for a wet track with maximum downforce as we can adjust this front and rear. The tyre situation was going to be very hit and miss as we have never used these or tyres like them before.
Session 1 lasted all of 3 laps before Al. came in saying that the temperature gauge shot up and then dropped again. After checking everything over we were able to determine that it had been caused by low oil level :roll: . Due to us arriving late as a result of the weather we rushed to get the car out on track plus the slight matter that we had not been able to check the oil level properly as Bart Simpson (Alan) had managed to forget to put the dipstick back after taking it out to check the plugs and lost it. Luckily we were able to sorce one from a mate and collected it on the sunday morning on route to donny
.
Session 2. The car ran with no real problems although I did have Bart shouting in my ear on our radios that the grip was shite, it wasn't pulling high up in the revs and the clutch was starting to slip. When he finally came in I was greated with a panic stricken Al. shouting over the radio again :roll: .This time with good reason as he slowed in the paddock he had noticed smoke coming out from under the bonnet . The fault was traced by Wayne, the heat wrap around the plug leads was smouldering....quite a lot :lol: No damage done.
Session 3. Decided to take some rear wing off for the final session and after talking to Phil (Dill) and Stuart who both advised us on what tyre pressures we should be running we made some adjustments to the fronts. Thanks guys :thumb:
All that was left was to have a quick chat with 'Herbie' letting him know that this was what it has all been for and it was now time him to makes us proud.
Herbie did us proud as did Alan, one slight mistake.......sorry guys.......I didn't put enough fuel in the car and on lap 7 Alan started to get fuel surge
Inspite of this he stayed on it for another 3 laps setting his fastest lap on lap 9
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 7&hl=en-GB
Woke up early sunday morning to find about 4 inchs of snow covering the car. My first thought was shite the front splitter is only about 3 inches off the ground.....snow plough..... Then a sobering thought came to mind, cut slicks, snow and ice didn't make for a good start to the day. By the time we left the roads were clear enough that we didn't have to remove the front bumper
But why for the love of god had they not gritted the roads When we got onto the A42 it went from clear to wet to snow to ice This was going to be a hugh test for us and learning curve, we new that we were well down on power as the propsed new engine had not come through
. We had set the car up for a wet track with maximum downforce as we can adjust this front and rear. The tyre situation was going to be very hit and miss as we have never used these or tyres like them before.Session 1 lasted all of 3 laps before Al. came in saying that the temperature gauge shot up and then dropped again. After checking everything over we were able to determine that it had been caused by low oil level :roll: . Due to us arriving late as a result of the weather we rushed to get the car out on track plus the slight matter that we had not been able to check the oil level properly as Bart Simpson (Alan) had managed to forget to put the dipstick back after taking it out to check the plugs and lost it. Luckily we were able to sorce one from a mate and collected it on the sunday morning on route to donny
.Session 2. The car ran with no real problems although I did have Bart shouting in my ear on our radios that the grip was shite, it wasn't pulling high up in the revs and the clutch was starting to slip. When he finally came in I was greated with a panic stricken Al. shouting over the radio again :roll: .This time with good reason as he slowed in the paddock he had noticed smoke coming out from under the bonnet
. The fault was traced by Wayne, the heat wrap around the plug leads was smouldering....quite a lot :lol: No damage done.Session 3. Decided to take some rear wing off for the final session and after talking to Phil (Dill) and Stuart who both advised us on what tyre pressures we should be running we made some adjustments to the fronts. Thanks guys :thumb:
All that was left was to have a quick chat with 'Herbie' letting him know that this was what it has all been for and it was now time him to makes us proud.
Herbie did us proud as did Alan, one slight mistake.......sorry guys.......I didn't put enough fuel in the car and on lap 7 Alan started to get fuel surge
Inspite of this he stayed on it for another 3 laps setting his fastest lap on lap 9 http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc ... 7&hl=en-GB