I raced in the inaugural Powernights event last week at Silverstone. Essentially Powernights is a new initiative to bring racing to a mid-week evening slot and hopefully open it up to a few more people who might not normally spend all day at a track at the weekend.
It's very much entertainment, there is music and entertainment on all evening, with great food (barbecue), free radios (to properly hear the commentary) and some short, sharp races (12mins) with fast turnaround to keep folks entertained.
The Silverstone event was last Thursday evening (2nd Aug), the next (which I am also doing) is at Donington this Thursday (9th) and there is another at Silverstone on Thu 30th Aug.
I only signed up for it last Tuesday. I was keen to try and support the event but hadn't done much more than thought about it. I found out that the MR2 Challenge drivers were looking for a few more drivers to get their own grid, with rental cars available I thought .. what the hell, lets go racing.
So, very hastilly arranged but we got our grid and both races were fantastic, as was the entire day. The package (for the racer) is that you get 3 x 20 min test sessions in the day, quali is late afternoon and you get 2 x 12 min (approx) races between 18:00 and 20:30. The 2nd race is a reverse grid of the first.
It appealed as I'd not driven these cars before and I usually take a good few laps to get comfortable with a car (rarely get that luxury though).
The cars are MR2 Challenge cars based on the Mk2 MR2, 2.0ltr NA engines kicking out about 150bhp. They have to be pretty much stock and MOTd, they run on road tyres. So, not hard core race machine but RWD and great fun.
My car was OK apart from the tyres were pretty new and had loads of tread which definitely was hurting me in the corners but I gave it my best shot.
I qualified 5th (out of 14) which was reasonable about the best I could do, I did have quite a lot of fuel on owing to a communication problem which saw me fully fueled for the races.
Finished 4th in Race 1 (bugger, just missed the podium, pot and prize money) .. and the TV, these events are being shown on Motors laster this month.
Race 2 started 11th, got a blinding start but must have gone in to Copse a bit hot as it got all squiffy (technical racing drivers term meaning a bit of understeer, bit of oversteer and a bit of oops, wayup, whew).
Struggled to keep the other quick drivers at bay and again finished 4th
... which I spent the last few days saying "well thats OK in the circumstances" but really was a bit ordinary.The Youtube vid is onboard in race 2 showing the demon start and the rather ordinary rest of the race. A couple of pointers, I was struggling to decide between 3rd and 2nd for Beckets and Luffield, it just fell oddly between the 2 on my car. A few lockups caused by me never getting to grips with the brakes that well. I was the only car without ABS and whilst I generally don't like ABS thats only if there is also no power assistance, I just found these quite hard to modulate correctly. A few dodgy h&t's where I missed the pedal (will try and get it setup next time) plus the last few laps was getting fuel surge, particularly at Brooklands so was dropping to 2nd even more which seemed to clear it.
I'm sure Walshy will laugh at my whirling dervish impressions collecting it all up at Copse on the opening lap but it didn't look so bad from the outside (clip from another car).
So, here the vid.
Clicky
Info on Powernight can be found here : http://www.powernights.com/index.htm
Or, if you have any questions just ask.
Maxx
