NEW REASONING FOR “LIGHTS” IDEA AND STUDENT BODIES

I now have a valid excuse for working on the Club Lights idea. Part of my Automotive engineering degree involves a management module, my potential new co-driver Scott and I decided to develop the Club Lights idea. This will involve drawing up a viable set of regulations. Part of the brief is that the project should have a foundation in reality. We've come up with a first draft for some regulations but there is still a lot of room for improvement (I'll sort out some sort of way of getting the various versions out to anybody who wants a copy of them to see what we do when not down the pub!) If you are interested email me at 00051916@brookes.ac.uk.
To remind all of you who don't know, the idea is for a low cost multidiscipline series with simple regulations designed for “hottish” hatches. The project has to be quite large so we've expanded the idea to encompass a broader field of cars, with three main classes Club Lights (bog standard up to 1650cc), GTis - (road saloons type) and Ultras (Fully competition only).
Now the “Lights” idea is the main one, the GTis and Ultras are just for the project really unless anyone thinks different then whatever. The big aim of this is to get more young people involved in motorsport that isn't racing and is cheap, and also to provide real low cost competition for anyone who wants it. But I'll say more about that once I've done Club Lights regs v1.1.
I'm in the process of building a Mk2 Golf 1.6 into some sort of comp car with stage rallies being priority. My target is to have the car compete on the Kent forestry stages. There is no way we can win, as I have never driven a rally before and Scott has never competed before. But we are champing at the bit to have a go. Our aim is to finish a stage rally in the car this season. The car itself will not be a great contender anyway due to the way it is being built (shoestrings are expensive) with few tools it will just be to the absolute minimum we need to compete. Sprints are also on the menu with the car but we must finish it first.
Being a student I have no money so I'm getting into quite a lot of debt by building the thing. Also I never get the chance to work on it living in Oxford 90% of the time (the cars in Beckenham!).  Right now I've had to quit drinking so I can save the money to buy a rollcage!!. Still there is a long summer to get it done. By the way does anybody know where I can get a sump guard for a 1986 VW Golf CL 1.6? I don't have the tools or the time to make one.
The Karting is about to start again in a few days after the Easter break.  It'll be good to tackle the serious drivers again. This is the last of the winter enduros before we go over to our Grand Prix format. Check out the official Formula Brookes website at http://www.geocities.com/skeet_tong, it’s actually a banger racing site (sorry Scott, stock cars) but the Formula Brookes site is within it. The site is actually pretty good and if you are one of those who like to mangle cars it’s for you!  Personally I just look out of curiosity to see how the other half of the UK's motorsport population does it. There are some pretty hairy smashes to be seen on there. Tell you what though, doesn't half make me pleased that I do safe motorsport like ours. Still it’s worth a look.

Anyway I'm hungry.

Sam Collins

The Acorn : June Edition