Santa Pod September

[coppice]

Saturday was heroically wet and I spent most of the day sitting in my car reading a book. Sunday was sublime - I was in by 7am , leisurely and excellent breakfast and great coffee(trivial things but trying getting those at some race tracks) and the action as spectacular as I had hoped. Watched a couple of hours from £10 grandstand - good apart from the idiots who had to stand up - and rest of day wandering paddock and then on the bank.Curious how nearly everyone has to get as close to the start as possible- sure , it's great for wheelies and burn outs but standing almost alone near the finish is pretty dramatic too.Seeing and hearing some insane machine pulling north of 200mph is one of the great spectacles in motor sport. Amazing how few wear ear protection - does it look a bit girly or something? I never used to and I ended up losing most of my hearing in one ear - and that was from race cars , not dragsters...

[damianmkv]

Yesterday was bonkers busy - we arrived at 9.20 courtesy of the m1 being shut and had to queue to get into airfield road, something that I haven't done for years. Lovely weather, great racing - couldn't ask for more

Filippos Papafilippou by damianmkv, on Flickr

Apache from Friday - not yesterday's brown trouser run

apache by damianmkv, on Flickr

[Tet]

Sadly not the weekend I was looking for. A combination of my rustiness from not being in the car for a while and some niggling problems with the car itself meant I didn't get down the track properly. In Q1 I didn't launch because of fuel problems. In Q2 we dropped cylinders at the hit so it was a bit sluggish away from the line and then the reverser exploded which ended the run. Q3 and Q4 were rained out, and then in eliminations I was asleep on the tree (but would still have won had the automatic shutoff not triggered early and shut off my fuel and ignition before the finish line). Sometimes it's just not meant to be. Still, it was good to be back in the car again.

[Benni]

Tet : thanks for the update, I guess Lady Luck was busy in the finnish pits so passed you by.

Reverser exploded ?

I thought the reverser was just another planetary drive sitting on the driveshaft,

or is it permanently disengaged and power " just passin´thru " until the lever is pulled ?

Did a bearing seize ?

Early trigger of shutdown ? How can that happen ?

Hope to see you back in the seat soon, have some pics and will post when sorted.

If there only was an FIA & SFI approved safety cowboy hat....

[Tet]

Benni said:

Reverser exploded ?

I thought the reverser was just another planetary drive sitting on the driveshaft

Yep. But it very much exploded nonetheless. That's why we have to have a ballistic jacket around the reverser these days. In this instance, the casing held all the bits inside, so the jacket wasn't needed. Here's what was left of it when we got it back to the pits:

Benni said:

Early trigger of shutdown ? How can that happen ?

The shutdown is normally triggered if you've gone 400' beyond the finish line and haven't yet deployed the 'chutes. However, it is also triggered in other circumstances, such as if the burst panel blows on the inlet manifold. I don't know what caused it to go on that particular run. It could have been something as simple as vibration shaking the trigger wire loose.