After a long day at Oulton for TimeAttack, we had to pack up and drive across to Cadwell. Straight there is around 3 hours, but we had to drop the Ibiza and RS3 off at HQ, so that added another 30 minutes or so. Paul, Tomas and Tye had taken the Truck in the afternoon, ready for Round 4 of the RoadSports race on Sunday.

Below is the layout of the Cadwell Park Circuit:

The TT TDIs have a declared weight of 1177kg, and being in Class A can only have ~285bhp/ton, which works out around 325bhp on the Championship Dyno. Weight is without the driver, Diesels have a 1.05 power multiplier, and Petrol powered Forced Induction cars are required to run at 5bhp/ton lower than the class maximum (i.e. 295bhp/tonne for Class A), so we are ~10bhp/ton down on Forced Induction and 15bhp/ton on NA Cars.
The 750MC now uses TSL for timing.

Full Race Day Vlog

We have a full Vlog from the weekend, with snippets of the races:

Testing

There was no time for testing on Friday, with the team being split, so Ryan entered the Allcomers race to give him a 15 minute session before Qualifying, then a 20 minute session before the race. If the car survives, we then have another 20 minute race at the end of the day!

Allcomers Qualifying

Ryan just wanted to get his eye in so spent a few laps in some traffic, when really he should have just took a breather to get a clear lap. Still, he was as high up as we'd expect, 0.017s behind an Alfa TCR on Slicks. Not bad to say he's never driven the TT here and not driven the track in 2 years.
It was still a fair way off where we expected, I was thinking high 1:34s would be pole in Roadsports.

It took Ryan a few laps to get into it, but when he did it was a decent lap.

Roadsports Qualifying

With Ryan's excuse of not being here for years out of the way (I'd been here for the Time Attack in the TT a few months ago), we were into Roadsports Quali.
I got onto the pace pretty soon, with a 1:34.482 on my first proper lap, and Ryan less than 0.2s off on his, so it was a Darkside 1-2 early on.
I improved on my next lap, managing a 1:34.049, dangerously close to the 1:33s! It was looking comfortable against the Civic of Bailey and Jonny in the Elise.
I decided to come in for pressures and have another go. I'd been able to hear the turbo a lot more than usual, so whilst I was in the guys checked and could see the Turbo Inlet Pipe was starting to pull off. The fixed that and sent me on my way, immediately I could smell diesel then it sprayed on my windscreen. I knew it was the return line, as the same thing had happened at Snett. I limped back to the pits and the guys fixed it quickly, then the car wouldn't start. I was still in P1 so didn't worry too much, and was just going to call it a day.
Since the pits at Cadwell are in the middle of the track, the guys could only bring what they could carry, and a big battery was not high on the priority list! Luckily the guys found someone with a little jump battery with the wrong sized Anderson connector, so Paul quickly took it apart and managed to jump the car. I exited the pits and got another windscreen full of diesel! The pipe had split further down. Game over. I pulled at the side of the track and waited for recovery, not knowing that Ryan had pipped me by 0.010s! At least it was a Darkside 1-2 for the first time in Roadsports!

It is impossible to say how much I could have improved, but I was sure I could have found another 0.5s. The VBOX says 0.2s, but that is just in the sectors not each corner. Ah well, I just needed to brave it around the outside of Turn 1!

After Lap 2 it was a TT on top!

Qualifying Laps

Our fastest Quali laps are shown below:

Allcomers Race

We were just seeing the Allcomers Race as a tester for the revisions we'd made to the timing belt setup on the TT, with the Balance Shaft being removed on Ryan's. Had the RS3 survived at Oulton, we were going to run that as well.
Ryan was starting P4 but jumped the Alfa at the start and managed to hold him off until lap 9, both of them struggling with traffic and yellow flags. P4 and 3rd in the Allcomers class was about as good as we expected considering the competition!

The Flags and traffic seriously slowed them down towards the end, by over a second in most cases.

The post race inspection of Ryan's car was not good. The modifications we had made clearly didn't work, but at least this time we caught it before the engine was smashed to pieces!

Roadsports Race

The race was not Live Streamed by the guys at AlphaLive.

I was back on Pole, but not how I wanted to be. To be honest I think at Cadwell, P2 is better on a rolling start as the outside of Turn 1 is then the inside for turn 2, so all I could see is Bailey doing what I had planned to with Ryan!

I got what I thought was a decent start, but the sequential Civic had the legs on me towards the end of the straight, and did exactly as predicted, round the outside and cut me off for Turn 2. We headed down the back straight and as I braked into Park, I noticed diesel all over my screen again. Thinking the pipe had split for a 3rd time, I backed off, looking in my mirrors to make sure no one was going to slam into the back of me. The last thing I wanted to do was create an oil slick for 30 cars to slide off and into the barrier, especially as there is no run off at Cadwell. I just pulled into the paddock at the bottom of the Mountain and went back to the truck. What a shame.

Upon closer inspection, it was most likely some residue caught in the Intercooler or rain tray and the pipe was fine, but I didn't want to take the risk. I was gutted for the guys as we'd had such a terrible weekend. There were quite a few DNFs, including the Civic with a gearbox failure.

Mine and Ryan's ​fastest laps in qualifying were in the 1:34s, so the 1:37.03 lap record from 2017 was more than possible, shame we never got to try! I will have to have a go at Jonny's 1:34.913 he set during the race instead next year!

A pretty bad end to a rubbish weekend for us and the team. Hopefully we can learn and improve on things for next time, since we will be at Silverstone for the ClubEnduro championship race, and I can't have another DNF!

Photos courtesy of Jonathan Elsey Motorsport Photography, Mick Walker and 750MC

All the details and dates for future races we are entering can be found on the Darkside Motorsport Page.