SEAT Cupra - Races 3 and 4 at Silverstone - Wet and wild
May 9, 2004
The weekend rounds at Silverstone were difficult ones, with another problem in testing and two slippery qualifying sessions, which meant having to start the two races well down the order in 13th and 17th, my worst qualifying positions ever!
Although my plans had gone belly up at Brands Hatch two weeks earlier, I went into Thursday knowing that I would have to make the most of our limited testing time, as I had never even seen the "international" configuration of the Silverstone circuit. The drama of the day began before even arriving at the circuit this time around, though, when myself and four other drivers ended up getting caught in the worst traffic jam I've ever seen on the M1, on the way to Silverstone. Just thirty minutes before, two trucks collided, resulting in the tragic death of one passenger. To make the situation even worse, one of the trucks was carrying dangerous chemicals, which meant that specialists would have to be called in in order to properly clean up the mess.
And so Gordon Shedden, James Pickford, Lorcan Johnson, Spencer Marsh and I found ourselves parked on the side of the M1 (technically, a police runoff area as a matter of fact). With only one hour to get to the circuit, and that time fast approaching, we all got on our phones trying to sort out some alternative way to get there. In the end we had three plans in the works: Andy Neate happened to have a helicopter on hand at Silverstone, and we phoned him with our exact location (thanks to my portable GPS system.. it's good to be a geek!) and he jumped in his chopper and was planning to land on the side of the M1 and take each driver back one by one in his small Robinson. The second plan was to have everyone pile into my Ibiza, drive along the emergency lane of the motorway until the next exit, and if we were stopped by the police, we would just split the fine five ways ヨ having an American driverメs license has its advantages, as there wasnメt anything else theyメd be able to do to me! The third plan was to have Scott Dennis meet us atop a bridge just half a mile from where we were parked along with a crew of people, and swap places with them ヨ the crew would get into the Ibiza's and sit in the traffic for the rest of the day, and we would drive down small backroads to get to the circuit in time for testing. This last plan proved to be the most reasonable, and shortly thereafter, we left our Ibiza's, handed the keys over to the crew which had come to take our place, and we climbed up the side of the M1 to Scott's car! The look on people's faces when we all just left our Ibiza's was priceless.
We finally made it to the circuit about one and a half hours late, but as we later found out, the crew that took our place on the motorway didn't get back to the circuit until just after the end of the last test session! So a whole-hearted thank you to them as well as Scott for helping us in those desperate timesナ
Things seemed to be going well in testing, as I used the first session to get as many laps around the circuit as I could to get it firmly in my head. I spent the second session working on the car setup with Pierce, one of the lead SEAT engineers, and after improving the car a bit, we were hitting a brick wall towards the end of the session, and just couldnメt dial out the understeer. We started making extreme changes during the third session to try to improve things, but we just werenメt getting anywhere. Disappointed at not being able to sort the car out throughout the two sessions, I was hopeful that we were just chasing a tire problem, and that the new set of tires for qualifying the next day would alleviate the problem.
After taking the car back to the SEAT village, I decided to double-check the car setup to be certain that no mistakes were made in the pits, as had happened at Brands Hatch two weeks before. To my shock and surprise, a different mechanic had made the exact same mistake with the front dampers, turning the adjustment knob the wrong way on two occasions. The reason that we were chasing a car problem throughout most of the two sessions was not a tire problem, but because the front end of the car was nearly rock hard! We were going to have to do a bit of setup work during qualifying on Saturday, but I was confident that we would not be too far off in order to still set a competitive time. I also spoke with the lead technician of the team to tell him about the problem, and he promptly released updated instructions on the dampers to all of the mechanics to minimize the chances of the same problem happening again in the future.
When Saturday rolled around, it was quite obvious from the get-go that the first session was going to be a very wet one! Not having raced a front-wheel drive car in the wet in over five years, and with no experience whatsoever with the SEAT Leon Cupra Rメs setup in the wet, it was anyoneメs guess how to approach the short 20-minute session. Fortunately the car setup was not too far off, but I took too long building up speed on the wet track, and ultimately qualified a dismal 13th. The rain stopped shortly after the end of our session, and just before going out for the second qualifying session in the afternoon, I had a drive around with Andy Mulholland, who runs bash.sh and won the most recent auction from www.racing4cancer.com for a huge area of my hood, and I decided that it looked like the track would be dry enough by the time we went out to qualify to take the gamble on slick tires. Four other drivers took the same gamble, and once out on the track, we all realized that we had made a terrible mistake. The quickest of the slick-shod drivers was over two seconds off the pole time for the second session, and we all started the race outside the top 10. Both qualifying sessions were utter disasters, and I knew it was going to be tough to climb through the pack to get some good points in the next dayメs races.
When I awoke on Sunday morning and saw the rain outside, I knew right then it was going to be another tough call on the tires. Armed with more experience of slicks vs. wet tires on a still-damp track, I took the safe bet for the first race to start on wet tires. Several other drivers who qualified in front of me though slicks was the right choice, and I knew I would be able to pick up a few spots in the opening laps from them, as they would have a terrible time at the start. My guess was spot on, and after the first lap, I had already climbed up 5 positions and was running 8th overall. As the race went on, the drivers on slicks were getting quicker and quicker, and I was having a terrible time finding wet patches to try to keep my tires under me. Two drivers managed to make it past, and I would ultimately finish 10th, with championship leader Gavin Smith hot on my tail, and my wet tires utterly destroyed. Upon inspection in parc fermé, my tires had literally fallen apart from being driven hard in the drying conditions, and there were chunks missing from most of the tread blocks!
The rain stayed away throughout the rest of the day, and although I didnメt have a fully sorted dry setup due to the problems in testing, I was hopeful that it would be close enough to be on the pace. A good start saw me pick up four places by the end of the first lap, and I inherited three more when Rob Austin, Ben Winrow and Emmet OメBrien collided at Copse. Unfortunately the setup was far enough off that I couldnメt do much during the race but follow close behind the drivers in front of me -- staying with them was no problem at all, but overtaking them was another matter as the speed simply wasnムt there.
I went away from the weekend knowing that the pace is definitely there, but I need to finish sorting the car out to suit my driving style (which I am planning to do right from the get-go at Oulton Park), and I need to concentrate all of my efforts in qualifying the car at least in the top 6 in order to get a strong finish. Hopefully Iメll be able to meet both of these goals next weekend at the third meeting of the championship ヨ check back at SeatCupra.net to keep up to date!
Special thanks to Andy Mulholland from bash.sh for his support throughout the weekend, and I certainly encourage anyone looking to have a server co-located or a new website hosted to look into his services ヨ heメs brought low American pricing to the UK and is absolutely unmatched anywhere. Thanks to Fred van Helden and Natasja from BOOq.com for making it out to Silverstone as well, and please be sure to visit their website for all your travel needs, including special discounted hotel rates, awesome flight prices, and the cheapest car rentals.
Finally, if you would like to become involved yourself during the race weekend and help to make a difference in the fight against cancer, please also have a look at www.racing4cancer.com, as I am again auctioning off the hood of the racecar to support two charities for testicular cancer research: Friends 4 Cures and Orchid Cancer Appeal. The auction ends on Tuesday, and is an absolute awesome value for the money -- including two VIP passes for the entire weekend, paddock parking, catered meals throughout all of Sunday's races, a unique advertising opportunity, and itメs all for a noble cause. Rather than paying for two tickets like everyone else and the mediocre track-side food, why not make a special weekend out of it as an official SEAT guest and make it one to remember!
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