My last competitive outing with SDMC was in about June of last year at North Weald, using my dad’s Fisher Fury. After that I marshalled at an Autotest on the 1st of August, intending to join in at the next one with a borrowed car. 5 days later I was admitted to the Lister Hospital in Stevenage with a collapsed lung. This saga began on Sunday 5th August whilst I was working at Silverstone. It was a beautiful morning and I was in a great mood, despite the demise of my relationship. As I made my way to the toilet in between sessions, I felt a small twinge in my chest. It didn’t go away like it should, it got bigger and more uncomfortable by the minute. A few minutes later I was back in the Stowe circuit pit lane, struggling to get out of the pace car. I reported to my senior instructor and made my way towards the drive centre, with the intention of sitting down. By the time I reached the other side of the car park I was in agony and very scared. I stopped by the paramedic ambulance and explained the situation. They took me in, laid me down and diagnosed the problem in next to no time at all. Another ambulance was called to take me to Northampton General Hospital where I was given some very basic treatment and a few x-rays, then sent home with instructions to go to my local hospital if it felt worse in the morning. It did, so I did… 3 drains and 10 days later I was transferred to the Harefield hospital (specialists in heart, lung and other thoracic surgery) for key-hole surgery. During one weekend, and the next few weeks, my life changed dramatically. I then quit my job at Ford and just got on with recovering.
Earlier in the year I’d taken part in 2 MGOC races and 1 open race in the Maestro. The first MGOC race was at Silverstone, in the snow! The meeting was almost called off but after a lot of deliberation following un-timed
practice
sessions, the organisers decided to run the races with scratch grids, based
on the previous seasons championship positions. This left me near the back
but from the start I was flying, overtaking 2 MGF’s before even crossing
the start line! The race was great fun and I managed a healthy finish before
packing up all my cold and wet gear for the drive home. As I arrived home
the engine was sounding a bit uneven. Investigation later found that one
cylinder was low on compression. Some sand or carbon had found it’s way
into a piston ring grove, sitting on top of a piston ring and causing it
to crack. This was most likely to have happened at Snetterton at the last
round of the 2000 championship when I removed the plugs several times trying
to diagnose what turned out to be a wiring fault – it was a windy day and
the sandy soil at Snetterton gets blown around an awful lot. Only a complete
strip, clean and rebuild would have found that. The resultant blow by melted
a neat hole through the piston. Fortunately it was found before any other
damage occurred. The challenge was then to find a new set of pistons. I
had built the engine as a +60 thou engine to take full advantage of the
regulations, but pistons were now almost impossible to obtain. Luckily
one of my local engine re-manufacturers was able to source a set and I
was in business again.
The next day’s racing was at Lydden, with the usual open races giving me a chance to catch up on some track time. Unfortunately an engine set-up issue prevented me from really flying but I had a great time, defending in the MGOC race and simply driving the doors off in the open race. Then the summer came, and you already know what happened next.
In November 2001 the decision was made to buy an Alfa Romeo Sprint, in partnership with a Uni friend of mine, Darren, to race in the Alfa Romeo championship and the AutoItalia championship. The car was a production spec. car which had some success even with a 1500cc engine. It was bought, converted to 1700cc, and stripped of a lot of excess weight to run in a double mini-enduro at Brands Hatch. Unfortunately, due to my continuing recovery, I couldn’t drive in that race, so one of Darren’s colleagues and friends stepped in. I joined in from the pit-lane, it was a fun race, with some frantic service work required between races to change some very worn brake pads. We only just got Darren out of the collecting area in time to join the back of the grid and he drove well to recover to a great position, taking 2nd in class. Soon, the car was returned to my garage in preparation for a winter of hard graft. We started work very late, in February, and set about stripping as much
weight
out of the car as possible and converting it to a fully modified car. During
the off-season we also secured some support by way of the supply of parts
and a nice bright yellow paint job.
Race one came and we were pretty embarrassed. Although the car’s diet was entirely successful and the new adjustable suspension gave us the ability to fine tune the chassis, the engine ran miserably all day. We retired from both races to prevent any possible damage and went home a bit dejected. A few phone calls and a rolling road session later saw us in real action. We went testing at Mallory Park with some new tyres and it was absolutely fantastic… apart from the brakes and my stomach bug. Darren drove home and we hoped I’d recover by the weekend. I didn’t, and I missed the next round at Brands Hatch, where Darren managed a fine 2nd in class. I was gutted. (No pun intended!)
The following round was to be our triumphant return, we thought we had fixed everything… but it was not to be. We had to withdraw the car on safety grounds because the scrutineers were of the opinion that the roll-cage was sub-standard. We had no grounds to disagree, so we had to embark on a rather tricky reengineering adventure, and whilst we were at it we made some trick changes to the rear suspension.
In the end it went ok, it just took a little longer than expected. We returned to Donnington and, despite a lack of stopping power, we made a real impact on both championships. My practice session was cut short by me chucking the car off into the gravel – taken by surprise at the extra rear-end grip and the resultant hopping rear end. Mostly my fault but it happens, luckily I had the presence of mind to shut down the engine and go in straight. Thankfully there was no damage, with the exception of a stone in one inlet, but that caused Darren to miss his session. Thankfully he was permitted to practice out of session and was able to start at the back of the grid, so we were in very similar positions, although in my 2 flying laps I managed to set a reasonable time. We both battled our way through the field as best we could, Darren finishing 2nd in class in the Alfa Race and me finishing 3rd in class in the AutoItalia race. Not a bad result considering what could have been if I’d not had my wits about me as I left the track.
After Donnington we installed our development engine and had it set up on the rollers on the eve of the next round. It was a disappointing session with peak power lower and in the wrong place in the rev-range, the guy doing the set-up gave us little confidence from the start because he didn’t like our Dellorto carbs. We had no choice but to run with it like that at Silverstone. When I got going at Silverstone I quickly found that there was even less power than I had expected thanks to the air filters choking things up. That was not all, we’d changed the transmission oil and managed to overfill it, the extra all came out of the breather and sprayed the underside and the hot exhaust, filling the car with that sickly-sweet smell. We had no time to fix that in between sessions so I was left right near the back whilst we removed the filters and got Darren on his way. He set some excellent times given our poor power output and came back moaning about understeer, which I didn’t find, but since I was gentle with the car in practice I had to wait until the race to evaluate it for myself. After a warm discussion between races I made a few changes to the set-up to try to make Darren more comfortable. It transpired later that he was simply overdriving the car – something he took 24 hours to admit to, but at least we agreed in the end. My race was fun but ultimately very frustrating, I got caught at no. 3 in a train of 4 cars, all of which I could have outrun on pure pace, but I had to attack and defend all at once. I enjoyed the challenge right to the chequered flag, finishing in that same position. Darren’s race was more exciting; he managed to force some mistakes and overdriving from a fellow competitor and had a couple of goes at overtaking him, staying ahead after the second go. We were both very disappointed and returned home with determination to make it work as we intended. The carbs just weren’t set up well, or so we thought.
A swift change to Webers and another rolling road session saw us solve some of the power issues but not all of them. We suspected air leaks and maybe some misplaced cam timing. The cam timing was almost certainly correct but the air leaks we found and fixed. Unfortunately a check of the piggy bank showed that there was no money left for another rolling road session, so would we go to the season finale at Snetterton? Some time spent running the engine and a quick blast up my road (just turning around guv’nor!) showed that it was now running too rich, so we decided to stop there. If we went back to the rollers, we couldn’t afford to race, if we raced, we risked disappointment and damage, so we stopped. That’s effectively where the story ends. The car has received some more TLC and is now for sale. The development engine is ready to produce some real power and the original engine is still around as a reliable spare. It has new filters and carb trumpets, everything has been cleaned and overhauled and it’s basically ready to go.
For 2003 we hope to move to the modified class for bigger engined cars – we will take the same approach, strip all unnecessary weight and develop from there. All our cars are for sale, a Fiat 127, with spares, which Darren has developed over the last few years, my Black Maestro EFi with a new +30 thou engine with loads of spares, the Alfa Sprint with a spare engine, gearbox and a load of boxes of stuff. Also my original +60 thou Maestro engine, rebuilt with new pistons and bearings, is awaiting a new home. So please, spread the word, help me move on to next season. Keep an eye on The Acorn for more reports during 2003. I also hope to make a return to Sprints in 2003.
For more information on the cars, and to keep up to date with what we get up to, check out my website at: www.marquis-motorsport.com.