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A DAY AT BRIGHTON RACES
I have always enjoyed competing at Brighton - the seafront location at Madeira Drive is superb with a wide and varied entry of cars and bikes. Having competed at the Speed Trials in my Montego Turbo in the early 90's I entered my newly acquired Nissan Pulsar (Sunny) GTiR in last years event. I was delighted when I won 2nd in class with a run of 13.90 seconds for the standing start quarter mile with a terminal speed of 101mph. In March this year with the same set up I managed to run a time of 13.34 seconds at 103mph at Santa Pod. During the year I had continued to develop the car. Boost pressure had been increased from 13.5psi to 15psi. I had uprated the ignition system with some fat Magnacor ignition leads and some iridium spark plug (£13.50 each to you sir!) In addition I had fitted a new set of Yokohama A501 tyres with the correct size for the car - 195/55/14 - rather than the different makes of 195/60/14 size tyres that were on the car when I bought it. The new tyres have a smaller rolling diameter giving lower gearing for improved acceleration and feel "stickier" to the touch. In addition to all the "go" stuff I had also installed some drilled front brake discs and new bake pads for extra "whoa". So with all this done I entered the Brighton Speed Trials again in Class 3 - Modified Production and Road Going cars 2000cc-3500cc. I was slightly nervous about the state of the clutch which takes a huge amount of abuse with hard launches particularly since the car is 4WD - the initial shock has got to go somewhere as either wheelspin, clutch slip or - worst of all - something breaks! However I made a couple of test starts down a quiet country lane (honest officer!) and all seemed to be well. The day of the event dawned cloudy with steady rain but as I drove over the South Downs into Brighton the rain stopped and we were in for a dry but humid day. I found my space in the paddock and having been scrutineered I joined the queue early for my Practise run. When my turn came I went to the start line brought the revs up to 5000rpm, dumped the clutch and the car launched cleanly with a small amount of wheel spin from the front wheels. The car pulled cleanly through all gears and I was delighted to get a time of 13.36 seconds at 105mph - virtually equalling my quickest time in the car and 2 mph faster. As the practise session progressed during the morning my time turned out to be quickest in the class with some of the other quick cars in the class (the Plant brothers 500bhp Cosworth powered MkII Escort, a Cosworth Sapphire and a couple of Impreza's) running 13.4's and 13.5's. I did not make any changes to the car but I allowed it to cool down particularly the intercooler which is conveniently located over the engine to absorb all the heat from the engine! After lunch I had my 1st timed run. Using the same start procedure as before I got a great launch recording 2.05 seconds over the first 64ft and going on to record my best time ever of 13.04 seconds at 106 mph. As the 1st timed runs for the class progressed this was the fastest time by over 3/10's of a second and my family was getting excited about the prospect of a class win. 2nd timed runs came round and again I decided to make no further changes to the car. I made a good run - although the 0-64ft time was slower at 2.15 seconds which resulted in a time of 13.40 seconds at 105mph. I did not know what time I had run because I was down at the other end of the course. When I got back to the paddock I learnt (from a slightly disappointed family) that none of the other cars in the class had bettered my 1st run time - until Mike Plant came to the line in the Cosworth powered Escort and managed a 12.79 second run. So that put me second in class. We then had a tense wait for Dave Plant to have his second run in the Escort but he could only manage a 13.82 second run - so I was confirmed 2nd in class. This meant I won a very nice trophy with the satisfaction of having run my best time ever. In addition I was 3rd quickest out of around 100 genuine Roadgoing cars that competed in the event in various classes including exotic machinery such as a Ferrari F40, an AC Cobra, various Subaru Impreza's, TVR's, etc. Overall this was a superb event to take part in. The fastest time of the day by a car was run by Wayne Saunders in a Datsun 240Z with 5.7 litre Chevy V8 engine with a time of 10.2 seconds. The fastest time of the day was by a bike which recorded a 9.01 second run which is only 11/100 ths of a second outside the track record set in 1993 by a 4 litre Judd engined single seater. I will definitely be back next year. Paul Simon |
