Silverstone International - ClubEnduro - 21st August 2022

Round 4 of the 750MC Club Enduro Championship at Snetterton did not go exactly to plan for us.
You can read about the woes by clicking the link below.

For round 5 we only had a few weeks to get the cars ready, and were heading to Silverstone to race for 125 minutes on the International Circuit, a new one for us!
Adam was not able to make this round as well, so to help Ryan out, DannyDC2 was back again to share the duties. Check out his YouTube channel:

Below is the layout of the Silverstone International Circuit. It is basically the GP Circuit with the National Circuit cut off. This means they can run 2 separate events at the same time:

For the ClubEnduro, the Golf would be running in Class B, which is 240bhp/tonne without the driver which means we are at similar power to Class A for Turismo-X (and the SuperCup last year), ~270bhp at the flywheel as Diesels have a 1.05 power multiplier, so theoretically we can only have ~228bhp/tonne. The TT was going into Class A, which is 300bhp/tonne.
The 750MC uses TSL for timing at some rounds, but also TheResultsLive.co.uk for others, so the results can be found using TRL link for this round.

Full Race Day Vlog

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

Qualifying

Just like the previous round, we went from looking like we would need full wets, to no chance of rain at all, with everything in between. We played it safe as always and brought the wets, but didn't think we would need them as the Yokohama A052s are excellent even in pretty wet conditions.
Qualifying was scheduled to start at 09:40, but the scrutineers were taking their time and by 09:00, it was clear that everyone would not be checked before we would need to be in the assembly area. The guys at the 750MC quickly rearranged a race to push our session back to 10:25 instead.
We were called early so by the time we got to the assembly area, there were already a decent number of vehicles waiting. With such a short lap traffic was going to be an issue, and getting some clean laps in early would be critical. As soon as we headed out to the track, this was ruined by the RS3 blowing it's turbocharger on the first pull down the straight! It was pretty dramatic, covering the Hangar Straight in white smoke!
With no chance of a flying lap while the safety car was out, I scrubbed the tyres in and headed to the pits to swap to a fresh set. We figured we would need at least a front left tyre during the race, so best off taking the top layer off beforehand! Danny did a couple more laps to get him three minimum and they did the same.
We both were back out but struggling to get a clear lap without traffic at the pinch points. I eventually got a 1:15.05 in with my first clear lap, which Mathisse told me on the radio was 1st in class by 0.5s. With more cars dead at the side of the road, another safety car was deployed. I was secretly hoping the safety car would not go back in, but it was good to see where we were against the other guys.
Eventually Luke Handley, Steve Hewson and Chris Freeman all managed to get another flying lap in, pipping me by 0.4s, 0.38s and 0.31s respectively. I was confident with a second clear lap, I would have been close to Luke, maybe not beat it but close enough.
Danny had handed over to Ryan during the second safety car period, but had posted a good time of 1:13.34 with plenty left on the table. However, Ryan never got into a good bit of clean air, so was knocking chunks out of Danny's time in areas, then losing it to traffic, so had to settle for a 1:13.73. Danny's lap put them P8 overall. If they had got into the 12s, maybe a top 5 would have been possible!

The swing between the laptimes was massive, even if you discount the safety car laps. If you got caught in traffic at the wrong point on this layout, you lost seconds, not tenths. Realistically Danny and Ryan got 1 flying lap each, so they did well to get where they did., considering all the changes made to the car since the last time they drove it.

The story was the same for me, however the 3 guys above me managed to find space for a final flying lap and I didn't. I just needed to make up for it with a good start!

Qualifying Laps

Our 'fastest' laps are shown below, Ryan's lap was full of traffic!

Race

The whole race was Live Streamed by the guys at AlphaLive which you can see below:

Ryan & Danny's Race

My race was short and sweet for reasons explained below. This was no-ones fault directly but frustrating as we had made a ton of setup changes that from the first lap proved to be worthwhile!
I had a reasonable start, not really gaining or loosing anything but sometimes diving for the inside is a bad move so at the 3rd corner I left room on the inside and the E46 slotted in front then pinched me a little on the next corner which hurt me all the way down the straight. Bravery on the brakes allowed me to take the place back, the car felt so good compared to qualifying even though I had an extra 80 Litres of fuel to carry. By the end of lap 1 the leaders had pulled a reasonable gap. At the end of the straight for the 2nd time I had to be a bit defensive against the white M3, but when the orange M3 made a mistake I had to try to attack at the same time into the vale chicane, one place gained there!
Lap 3 was a good one, pretty much clean air, I was knocking chunks out of Danny's quali lap time so I knew we could keep pushing. The ideal time on that lap was 1:13.14, so much improved.
On Lap 4, the first half of the lap was good but after the straight the car felt like the tyres were not biting like they should and I was struggling with the bad downshifts that we never managed to fix before getting to the track. Then coming out of the last corner the car felt like the clutch was engaged, jumped into 6th gear and at the same time violently pulled on the steering. I had no idea what was going on at the time but blamed the gearbox right away. I lost count of how many times it happened, an early trip to the pits didn't really give us any information but we tried to isolate a few potential issues and out I went again but it was the same.

Looking at the lap times of the cars that finished 1, 2, 3, there was no way for our TT to match the speed of the #1 Area Motorsport TCR Leon but I think a top 5 finish could have been on the cards had the issues not occurred, but we cant say anything for sure!

Once back to the workshop we found that a wiring pin for the CAN-BUS gateway had pushed out of the plug, leading to a bad connection. This meant the car was actually turning off, killing the Power assisted steering then starting back up and confusing the gearbox. Very odd and very dangerous! The wiring pins are now held in with Epoxy!!

Danny jumped in to see how he got on, and the issue occurred immediately so he came back in the pits from what was probably the shortest race stint he has ever done!
A video of what little they did of the race is below:

Scott Race

The start was going to be interesting, four Class B cars together, with Class A cars in front and some more behind! I was sure with a good reaction, I could jump a couple of places.
That is exactly what happened, but I didn't account for the Holden taking a massive run up from behind, then chopping in front of me. I'd jumped ahead of Freeman, Handley and Hewson but then had to take to the escape road when Luke was pushed wide to my right. I stayed on the tarmac all the way around then rejoined at Turn 3. I made sure I slotted in behind a Class B car, which ended up being Freeman, with the Cayman just to my right. I was able to stay in front down the Hangar Straight and then had to defend for a few laps to keep them behind. The Cayman was stupidly fast on the straights, so I had to hang it around the outside at Turn 1 to stay in front.
The Holden was back again, monstrously quick on the straights but holding me up in the twisty stuff. I could see Freeman getting away and the gap to those behind closing down. I had to get round and a few laps later I made my move. I then caught up with a Class A Cupra driven by Andy Rath. He was struggling around Abbey so I would catch him there and then stay with him until the next straight, then catch back up at Stowe. Eventually I sent it around the outside there to get the position and then tried to pull a gap on the guys behind. By this point Freeman was 10s ahead so I would have to beat him in the pits, where he had a 30s penalty for winning at Snetterton.

With just over 30 minutes of the race complete, I started to have very strange surging issues. We've been battling them since the CUAA engine was fitted, but it was getting worse and worse. Eventually it still surged even if I hit the limiter in 3rd before changing to 4th, so I was sure something was wrong. I radioed to Mathisse to see if the window was open, and he said it was. That last lap was almost impossible, the turbo was surging it's nuts off!
I made it back to the pits, the guys had a good look around the car, nothing was obvious and the fault code scan just showed an Inlet Air Temp Sensor issue. Paul unplugged it, we refuelled and I went back out, hoping it was a dodgy sensor. It wasn't, and the surge was just as bad and I only just made it back to the pits. This time as I pulled up, some coolant dripped from underneath the radiator. On closer inspection, the Charge Cooler circuit was empty, and a nice hole was found in the front of the radiator. When we stripped the car down we found a stone that fitted perfectly in the rad. What a nightmare! A video of the race is below:

A double DNF. Not exactly how we planned it the day before!
The TT had the pace for a top 5 finish and I think the Golf would have been a solid 2nd, maybe even a 1st if I had kept to similar pace to Freeman.

The TT was still no match for Carl Swift and Rob Baker in the Area TCR. It was consistently in the low 12s. Ryan thinks he would have been in the high 12s once in the groove, but we never got to see the full potential!

The traffic really hurt me. While Freeman was doing high 14s and low 15s, I was doing mid 15s and 16s. When I had some clear air, I was much closer to his pace and I think I could have matched him for most of the race. I guess we will never know!

Fastest Laps

Our fastest race laps are below:

Another weekend to forget. This year has been terrible for us so far, especially in the ClubEnduro. So many potentially good results ending with little to no points. Let's hope we have all our bad luck this year! We have little chance of a decent result in the championship now, but we can use the next few races as a test for next season.