TNT Racing 2008 Time Attack review.
Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 7:55 am
TNT Racing season review 2008
This report is on how the 1st season in the time attack series went for TNT racing together with SHOWTRAX international.
At the start of the season our now EX sponsor top boss performance tuning offered to build us a new engine for our race car However, getting close to the first race at Donnington Park the promised engine did not happen and we were left with our old engine. So the team decided to put some major work into the current engine fixing a few components and resealing parts to stop a couple of oil leaks. We managed to have the car ready for the first round at Donnington Park.
R1 DONNINGTON PARK
With the first round being at our home track we were aiming to do quite well here but after looking around and later doing some research into competitors cars we found out that we had the least brake horse power out of everyone being at least 120bhp behind our closest competitor. So our mind set was to not come last at all. The level from the previous year had been raised by a fair margin but we were optimistic of not coming last. Had the new engine been delivered as promised then we would have been right in the hunt.
REVIEW
What a fantastic day and introduction to the time attack.
Woke up early Sunday morning to find about 4 inches of snow covering the car. My first thought was 'not good', 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 huge test for us and learning curve, we new that we were well down on power as the proposed new engine had not come through . We had set the car up for a wet track with maximum down force 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 . 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 source one from a mate and collected it on the Sunday morning on route to Donnington .
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 greeted with a panic stricken Al. shouting over the radio again .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 No damage done. Wayne then set about sorting out the issues that Alan had raised and managed to get the car all sorted in time for the next session.
Session 3. We decided to take some rear wing off for the final session and after talking to a couple of guys from our club who both advised us on what tyre pressures we should be running we made some adjustments to the fronts. Thanks guys
All that was left was to have a quick chat with 'Herbie' (car #53) 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 In spite of this he stayed on it for another 3 laps setting his fastest lap on lap 9
R2 KNOCK HILL
Prior to this round we decided to have the fuelling checked as we had made some changes to the air intake system in an attempt to find a bit more power. Whilst on the dyno to our shock we had lost some 20% torque & 10% bhp. After spending the whole day at the dyno centre trying to trace and solve this loss of power we were unable to trace the cause. That evening we made a team decision to pull out of this round to give us more time to work on the engine.
The route cause was not traced but as the engine seemed fine and was still revving strong, we decided to go ahead with the next round.
R3 SILVERSTONE
With this being a Japanese show we were the odd ones out but despite this there was a lot of interest in our car with people asking us all kinds of questions about the team, sponsors and the car. However with this much interest and people walking about somebody sabotaged our car by disconnecting the starter motor and hiding the cable under the heat shielding, thus putting us out of qualifying.
REVIEW
As we arrived at the circuit we got a fair few bemused looks from jap car owners
Warm up session - and only 10 mins. This turned out to be too short for us and Alan wasn't able to get enough heat into the front tyres partially due to the fact that is was lightly raining.. However he still managed to post a time of 1:16.299 placing him 11th out of 21 in group B . We were very happy with this as in spite of the car being down on power Alan was very confident that he could improve his time by a fair bit. The only incident for us was that a nut that holds the under tray on had undone itself causing the under tray to flap We decided to remove it.
Practice Session - Things were looking good for this session we had a plan as to how we were going to run this session, Team tactics Things were going to plan until an Evo lost his front splitter and the Saab which was following it smashed straight into it. Session stopped.
The track marshals did a fantastic job with cleaning the debris from the track so quickly. Even though it only took them a couple of minutes Alan still had to pit. The temps had risen a bit so we took the opportunity to check things over all was well. At this point everyone was back out on track, I had been keeping an eye on the runners as I wanted to release Alan into clear air. This was crucial to Alan getting a good lap time as straight line speed we struggle but Alan makes the time up through the bends. I called Alan forward as I was waiting for 3 cars to come onto the main straight unfortunately he misread my signal and went straight out into traffic
Alan soon found himself behind Dave with the Lexus is350 and after a couple of laps Alan decided to pass Dave coming into Maggotts. As Alan did not have his lights on Dave checked his mirrors saw Alan behind him and started to move to the left before the long right hander. At this point Alan had already stuck the nose of the car in Dave's space Alan hit the breaks and moved to the left putting 2 wheels on the grass as he was already on the kerb. At this point the offside wheels were now also on the kerb so Alan just thought sod it and carried straight on bouncing over the kerb ...Kids
Things were still going well and Alan had taken another second off his lap time, then it happened - The Evo crash.
As Alan exited Luffield he saw the Evo coming up behind no lights but he knew that this driver was pushing hard as he had seen him on more than one occasion put two wheels on the grass. Alan moved over to give him the apex i.e. the start of the pit wall. However like several other drivers he wasn't using this line instead he was staying out wide coming into Woodcote. He drifted wide and got all four wheels onto the grass at this point Alan was still on the right hand side of the track.
Watching from the pit wall I thought the Evo was going to hit the pit wall right in front of Alan.
Alan's view - I saw the Evo drift onto the grass as we got onto the start finish straight then he started to loose the back end of the car. The next thing I remember is looking to my left and seeing the front of the Evo coming straight at me My only thought was "Shit this is going to hurt".
Then I heard the sound of the impact and as I looked in my rear view mirror I could see the Evo sliding down the pit wall backwards.
Thank god the driver was ok.
When he came in he was visibly shaken by what had happened, but was also confident that he could still improve his time by a fair bit.
Qualifying - This was it and we were ready.........Nooooooooo. the car wouldn't start We worked frantically trying everything to get the car started but no joy. It turned out to be that the earth strap for the starter motor had been disconnected from the battery.......Session over
Alan was fuming mad and stormed off into the pit garage. Understandably so
We finally managed to get the car started but as we couldn't turn it off we had to make an early departure.
Still what a fantastic day this is motor sport and shit happens roll on Oulton park
R4 OULTON PARK
This was going to be our first visit to this circuit and the weather forecast was not looking good. Late on Wednesday evening me and Alan had an emergency team meeting on the phone. The topic of which was the weather forecast of heavy showers and our lack of running experience with the 888's, this coupled to the fact that we would not be in a pit garage. A historic moment for TNT Racing in as much as this was the first time that we were in complete agreement on two areas in spite of the additional and last minute costs. We would buy a set of T1R's and a gazebo.
Friday morning....The original plan for the day was to fly over to Leicester to collect
some oil, additive and the new diffs, then get back and start on the car. This was now changed I would go to Leicester to collect the oil, additive and diffs whilst Alan would drive to Toyo Tires in Northants to collect the T1R's. We met back at mine at about 11.30, Alan was going to make a start on the car strengthening the under tray, changing the oil, changing the front brakes and put the battery on charge. I was going to get the new tyres fitted, get the anti-fog gel and buy a gazebo.
Saturday and a not too early start, we set of for Cheshire at 06.00 both cars packed and full of fuel. On the drive up to the circuit I was going to bed the brakes in and take the shine off the new tyres. We arrived at about 07.30 to be followed in by Dunc and Phil. On the drive up there was no sign of the forecasted rain and would have to say that it felt more like a Sunday than a Saturday.
Shortly after pulling up in the paddock the rain came so the first job was to erect the gazebo then get the kettle on.
As we were preparing for the warm up session, raining, Alan met Duncan who had just come in, Alan asked Duncan what were the conditions like out on track to which Duncan. Simply replied 'I've just binned it'.I was absolutely gutted to hear that.
Queued up in the pit lane to be sound tested only then for the session to be stopped, red flagged. So Alan returned to the paddock. They finally reopened the track after about 10 minutes, this meant that we were only to get 3 laps in.. The report back from Al. on the T1R;s were that they felt 'bloody brilliant'. Even though he was still being caucious out there
Practice Session and it was still wet so we left the T1R's on. When Al came back in he reported to me that the car wouldn't rev. past around 4700 rpm so he was having to short shift. We decided to check the plugs and re-gap them. Took the first plug out and it was a weird brown colour so I decided to ask the 'oracle of knowledge' some of you will know him by his other name Gary from APT. He took one look at the plug and said that we were using a fuel additive and that it was fine. Cheers Gary.
At the end of practice we were stone dead last and a full 3 sec. off the next competitor, not good.
Qualifying.... The plugs had been re-gapped and the weather was looking to be dry for this session. We were having a chat with Duncan and Gary who both said that we would should switch to the 888's. We went back to our gazebo and started looking at the sky. We had decided to switch to the 888's and had changed one side of the car when the heavens opened, we took shelter in the gazebo and waited for 10mins before making a final decision. 888's it would be.
The car was going better the tyres coming up to temperature and Alan steadily getting quicker, until coming out of island bend and under acceleration there was loud bang which as Alan put it sounded like gunfire and every time he tried to accelerate it did it again. Time to limp the car into the pits. As Alan drove past me in the pits he signalled that all was not well so I ran back to the gazebo to meet Alan and to be greeted with smoke coming out from under the bonnet. Not sure what's happened but the car drove back home with no mishaps. The more pressing point was where did we finish so we made our way over to wait for the time slips..................We weren't last and only 0.5 sec. behind the next place.
We are at the bottom of the table but competition is still fierce even down here as no-one wants to finish last. We are very happy with how the day went and achieved our current goal, which is not to finish last.
R5 BRANDS HATCH
While attending a Ford event at Silverstone in September the car developed an over fuelling problem this was diagnosed at the event but unfortunately on the journey home this problem cut the fuelling to the engine. The problem was intensively investigated, checking and changing every aspect of the fuelling system. Again noted and documented but unfortunately due to running out of time to get the car fuelling set up and checked again this put us out of this round.
R6 SNETTERTON
After a visit to top boss performance for an inspection of the whole fuelling system to make sure all was fine and safe we made our journey back home, however just a few miles from home the car over heated in a big way. After a conversation with top boss performance it was said that the engine had expired and a new engine had to be fitted. At this point he offered to build us a 2.9 24v engine. The engine would be built free of charge with us only having to pay for fabrication work, an ECU and a few other bits. But as the way with our agreement with top boss performance he left us high and dry. After we had laid out some money.
We as a team we made a decision to part company with top boss but with the last event so close were unable to compete but did attend to support friends that were competing.
Moving Forward
In preparation for the 2009 season we had been discussimg the development of the car , we knew that we needed to be 4-5 sec. a lap quicker. After several months of research and prior to top boss offering to build us an engine, we had put together a layout and engine specification based on a developed version of our current engine.
Following on from our split with top boss we have decided to revert back to our own plans
We are fully aware of the fact that this engine will not produce the same level of power as the competition but we are fully confident of being able to achieve our target. We have looked into all aspects of performance and not just engine power, We recently fitted new differentials and in an unofficial test carried out in 5th gear from 50
This report is on how the 1st season in the time attack series went for TNT racing together with SHOWTRAX international.
At the start of the season our now EX sponsor top boss performance tuning offered to build us a new engine for our race car However, getting close to the first race at Donnington Park the promised engine did not happen and we were left with our old engine. So the team decided to put some major work into the current engine fixing a few components and resealing parts to stop a couple of oil leaks. We managed to have the car ready for the first round at Donnington Park.
R1 DONNINGTON PARK
With the first round being at our home track we were aiming to do quite well here but after looking around and later doing some research into competitors cars we found out that we had the least brake horse power out of everyone being at least 120bhp behind our closest competitor. So our mind set was to not come last at all. The level from the previous year had been raised by a fair margin but we were optimistic of not coming last. Had the new engine been delivered as promised then we would have been right in the hunt.
REVIEW
What a fantastic day and introduction to the time attack.
Woke up early Sunday morning to find about 4 inches of snow covering the car. My first thought was 'not good', 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 huge test for us and learning curve, we new that we were well down on power as the proposed new engine had not come through . We had set the car up for a wet track with maximum down force 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 . 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 source one from a mate and collected it on the Sunday morning on route to Donnington .
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 greeted with a panic stricken Al. shouting over the radio again .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 No damage done. Wayne then set about sorting out the issues that Alan had raised and managed to get the car all sorted in time for the next session.
Session 3. We decided to take some rear wing off for the final session and after talking to a couple of guys from our club who both advised us on what tyre pressures we should be running we made some adjustments to the fronts. Thanks guys
All that was left was to have a quick chat with 'Herbie' (car #53) 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 In spite of this he stayed on it for another 3 laps setting his fastest lap on lap 9
R2 KNOCK HILL
Prior to this round we decided to have the fuelling checked as we had made some changes to the air intake system in an attempt to find a bit more power. Whilst on the dyno to our shock we had lost some 20% torque & 10% bhp. After spending the whole day at the dyno centre trying to trace and solve this loss of power we were unable to trace the cause. That evening we made a team decision to pull out of this round to give us more time to work on the engine.
The route cause was not traced but as the engine seemed fine and was still revving strong, we decided to go ahead with the next round.
R3 SILVERSTONE
With this being a Japanese show we were the odd ones out but despite this there was a lot of interest in our car with people asking us all kinds of questions about the team, sponsors and the car. However with this much interest and people walking about somebody sabotaged our car by disconnecting the starter motor and hiding the cable under the heat shielding, thus putting us out of qualifying.
REVIEW
As we arrived at the circuit we got a fair few bemused looks from jap car owners
Warm up session - and only 10 mins. This turned out to be too short for us and Alan wasn't able to get enough heat into the front tyres partially due to the fact that is was lightly raining.. However he still managed to post a time of 1:16.299 placing him 11th out of 21 in group B . We were very happy with this as in spite of the car being down on power Alan was very confident that he could improve his time by a fair bit. The only incident for us was that a nut that holds the under tray on had undone itself causing the under tray to flap We decided to remove it.
Practice Session - Things were looking good for this session we had a plan as to how we were going to run this session, Team tactics Things were going to plan until an Evo lost his front splitter and the Saab which was following it smashed straight into it. Session stopped.
The track marshals did a fantastic job with cleaning the debris from the track so quickly. Even though it only took them a couple of minutes Alan still had to pit. The temps had risen a bit so we took the opportunity to check things over all was well. At this point everyone was back out on track, I had been keeping an eye on the runners as I wanted to release Alan into clear air. This was crucial to Alan getting a good lap time as straight line speed we struggle but Alan makes the time up through the bends. I called Alan forward as I was waiting for 3 cars to come onto the main straight unfortunately he misread my signal and went straight out into traffic
Alan soon found himself behind Dave with the Lexus is350 and after a couple of laps Alan decided to pass Dave coming into Maggotts. As Alan did not have his lights on Dave checked his mirrors saw Alan behind him and started to move to the left before the long right hander. At this point Alan had already stuck the nose of the car in Dave's space Alan hit the breaks and moved to the left putting 2 wheels on the grass as he was already on the kerb. At this point the offside wheels were now also on the kerb so Alan just thought sod it and carried straight on bouncing over the kerb ...Kids
Things were still going well and Alan had taken another second off his lap time, then it happened - The Evo crash.
As Alan exited Luffield he saw the Evo coming up behind no lights but he knew that this driver was pushing hard as he had seen him on more than one occasion put two wheels on the grass. Alan moved over to give him the apex i.e. the start of the pit wall. However like several other drivers he wasn't using this line instead he was staying out wide coming into Woodcote. He drifted wide and got all four wheels onto the grass at this point Alan was still on the right hand side of the track.
Watching from the pit wall I thought the Evo was going to hit the pit wall right in front of Alan.
Alan's view - I saw the Evo drift onto the grass as we got onto the start finish straight then he started to loose the back end of the car. The next thing I remember is looking to my left and seeing the front of the Evo coming straight at me My only thought was "Shit this is going to hurt".
Then I heard the sound of the impact and as I looked in my rear view mirror I could see the Evo sliding down the pit wall backwards.
Thank god the driver was ok.
When he came in he was visibly shaken by what had happened, but was also confident that he could still improve his time by a fair bit.
Qualifying - This was it and we were ready.........Nooooooooo. the car wouldn't start We worked frantically trying everything to get the car started but no joy. It turned out to be that the earth strap for the starter motor had been disconnected from the battery.......Session over
Alan was fuming mad and stormed off into the pit garage. Understandably so
We finally managed to get the car started but as we couldn't turn it off we had to make an early departure.
Still what a fantastic day this is motor sport and shit happens roll on Oulton park
R4 OULTON PARK
This was going to be our first visit to this circuit and the weather forecast was not looking good. Late on Wednesday evening me and Alan had an emergency team meeting on the phone. The topic of which was the weather forecast of heavy showers and our lack of running experience with the 888's, this coupled to the fact that we would not be in a pit garage. A historic moment for TNT Racing in as much as this was the first time that we were in complete agreement on two areas in spite of the additional and last minute costs. We would buy a set of T1R's and a gazebo.
Friday morning....The original plan for the day was to fly over to Leicester to collect
some oil, additive and the new diffs, then get back and start on the car. This was now changed I would go to Leicester to collect the oil, additive and diffs whilst Alan would drive to Toyo Tires in Northants to collect the T1R's. We met back at mine at about 11.30, Alan was going to make a start on the car strengthening the under tray, changing the oil, changing the front brakes and put the battery on charge. I was going to get the new tyres fitted, get the anti-fog gel and buy a gazebo.
Saturday and a not too early start, we set of for Cheshire at 06.00 both cars packed and full of fuel. On the drive up to the circuit I was going to bed the brakes in and take the shine off the new tyres. We arrived at about 07.30 to be followed in by Dunc and Phil. On the drive up there was no sign of the forecasted rain and would have to say that it felt more like a Sunday than a Saturday.
Shortly after pulling up in the paddock the rain came so the first job was to erect the gazebo then get the kettle on.
As we were preparing for the warm up session, raining, Alan met Duncan who had just come in, Alan asked Duncan what were the conditions like out on track to which Duncan. Simply replied 'I've just binned it'.I was absolutely gutted to hear that.
Queued up in the pit lane to be sound tested only then for the session to be stopped, red flagged. So Alan returned to the paddock. They finally reopened the track after about 10 minutes, this meant that we were only to get 3 laps in.. The report back from Al. on the T1R;s were that they felt 'bloody brilliant'. Even though he was still being caucious out there
Practice Session and it was still wet so we left the T1R's on. When Al came back in he reported to me that the car wouldn't rev. past around 4700 rpm so he was having to short shift. We decided to check the plugs and re-gap them. Took the first plug out and it was a weird brown colour so I decided to ask the 'oracle of knowledge' some of you will know him by his other name Gary from APT. He took one look at the plug and said that we were using a fuel additive and that it was fine. Cheers Gary.
At the end of practice we were stone dead last and a full 3 sec. off the next competitor, not good.
Qualifying.... The plugs had been re-gapped and the weather was looking to be dry for this session. We were having a chat with Duncan and Gary who both said that we would should switch to the 888's. We went back to our gazebo and started looking at the sky. We had decided to switch to the 888's and had changed one side of the car when the heavens opened, we took shelter in the gazebo and waited for 10mins before making a final decision. 888's it would be.
The car was going better the tyres coming up to temperature and Alan steadily getting quicker, until coming out of island bend and under acceleration there was loud bang which as Alan put it sounded like gunfire and every time he tried to accelerate it did it again. Time to limp the car into the pits. As Alan drove past me in the pits he signalled that all was not well so I ran back to the gazebo to meet Alan and to be greeted with smoke coming out from under the bonnet. Not sure what's happened but the car drove back home with no mishaps. The more pressing point was where did we finish so we made our way over to wait for the time slips..................We weren't last and only 0.5 sec. behind the next place.
We are at the bottom of the table but competition is still fierce even down here as no-one wants to finish last. We are very happy with how the day went and achieved our current goal, which is not to finish last.
R5 BRANDS HATCH
While attending a Ford event at Silverstone in September the car developed an over fuelling problem this was diagnosed at the event but unfortunately on the journey home this problem cut the fuelling to the engine. The problem was intensively investigated, checking and changing every aspect of the fuelling system. Again noted and documented but unfortunately due to running out of time to get the car fuelling set up and checked again this put us out of this round.
R6 SNETTERTON
After a visit to top boss performance for an inspection of the whole fuelling system to make sure all was fine and safe we made our journey back home, however just a few miles from home the car over heated in a big way. After a conversation with top boss performance it was said that the engine had expired and a new engine had to be fitted. At this point he offered to build us a 2.9 24v engine. The engine would be built free of charge with us only having to pay for fabrication work, an ECU and a few other bits. But as the way with our agreement with top boss performance he left us high and dry. After we had laid out some money.
We as a team we made a decision to part company with top boss but with the last event so close were unable to compete but did attend to support friends that were competing.
Moving Forward
In preparation for the 2009 season we had been discussimg the development of the car , we knew that we needed to be 4-5 sec. a lap quicker. After several months of research and prior to top boss offering to build us an engine, we had put together a layout and engine specification based on a developed version of our current engine.
Following on from our split with top boss we have decided to revert back to our own plans
We are fully aware of the fact that this engine will not produce the same level of power as the competition but we are fully confident of being able to achieve our target. We have looked into all aspects of performance and not just engine power, We recently fitted new differentials and in an unofficial test carried out in 5th gear from 50