dbRacing - Silverstone Race Report May 11th 2003

Silverstone Race Report May 11th 2003

Practice

It was an early start as Darren Collier from Redline Racing was bringing some different springs for me to try on the car. The changeover was fairly easy but the paddock announcements were not very loud and I arrived in the collecting area late and had to join practice from the pit lane. I managed to get about 5 laps in and was just starting to push a little harder when the oil warning light flashed on as I rounded the fast right hander that is Maggots on the National circuit. A second later at the sound of a big end knock was clearly audible in the car and I dipped the clutch and limped back to the pits.

A quick chat with Neil & Martin Harvey who run a few standard 924's confirmed that it would likely be just a single big end, usually No. 2 that had failed, and with just over two hours to the race and armed with some used bearings from Neil I set about dropping the crossmember and removing the sump.

Yet again the design of the 924 turbo proved to be a challenge with a couple of bolts being almost impossible to get access to while the engine was still in the car. Covered in oil (thankfully only warm) I got the sump off and identified that No. 3 bearing had failed. By now I was running out of time and 12 months after he last helped me at Silverstone, Barrie Maskells mechanic Bruce came to the rescue and completed the reassembly procedure as I got changed, filled the sump with fresh oil donated from ABG Motorsport and Gill fuelled the car.

Race

I went to the collecting area just before the green flag lap was waved and vigorously urged to join the track. The engine was reasonably quiet, but as soon as I put any load on the engine it started to knock again. It was obvious that all I would be able to do was start the race and collect my starting points, though according to Stephen Mummery I had one of the best green flag laps he had ever seen as I caught up with the rest of the grid !

My plans, along with some others went awry at Becketts / Maggots. Contact was made between Richard Harrison and Dave Bennett which resulted in the cars of Richard Harrison, Chris Eggington and Richard Baister, the latter two taking part for the first time in the championship this year. If you want to frighten yourself lake a look at the video on the TeamGVR website, fortunately no-one was injured.

After the carnage had been cleared the race was restarted, which meant I had to do an additional green flag and race lap. The additional strain on the engine meant that the damage became much more severe which would result in the need to buy another short engine to be sure of being out at the next round on the championship at Castle Combe on May 26th.

I drove home that evening quite happy at having to repair my engine, the damage incurred being minor in comparison to having your car written off, and feeling fortunate that had I done a good qualifying time I would have been at about the same point on the track as the cars which were damaged.