Oulton Park Results 7th October

[griff2be]

To be fair mate, no-one has used that compound since 2004. Actually, correction, no-one has bought that compound since 2004... some of us have been forced to use 2 year old tyres of that compound when Dunlop haven't been at meetings.

Out of interest, how many new tyres do you reckon I used this year - bearing in mind the speed differential in our cars? I missed a couple of TC races, but I did 2 x 30 minute V8 races.... I reckon you'll be surprised...

[chassis 33]

Not having a go Andy, not in the slightest, and I wouldn't want to hazzard a guess!

Regards
Iain

[GlynnsportRacing]

chassis 33 said:

This is one of the reasons I love the Tuscan series at present, here we have the great and the good debating the merits of different compound tyres that give maybe 30mins track time, while the mere mortals of the grid make one set of (second hand) tyres last a whole season.

The eclectic mix of cars, budgets and abilities is something we need to build on!

Regards
Iain

I tend to agree, to have a series where complete rookies (as I was last year, and a number are/were this)can come out and race is a good thing and I'm sure will help to build the success of the TVR Challenge as it is now.

It's nevertheless interesting to see what happens elsewhere. Andy alluded to the V8 Supercars, which really does put the "super" in some of the cars and their budgets! At Snetterton this year when I did the first one, I had to pull in during the race to change my melting wets to slicks. Despite the best efforts of the Team and their manual spannering to get them changed, we lost 3 laps in time. Most of the other cars we were up against were in and out in 30 seconds and seemed to have brand new tyres for every race! That's how the other half lives but great to be out there with them and in Tim Hoods case, beating them too.
Steve

[griff2be]

chassis 33 said:

Not having a go Andy, not in the slightest, and I wouldn't want to hazzard a guess!

Regards
Iain

I didn't think you were Iain, far from it. I think you might be surprised to hear that we only used 7 tyres throughout this year. Two of those were due to damage: a flat spot down to the canvas and the other because of blistering.

That said had we had more close competition then we would have had to buy significantly more tyres. We needed new rubber for Oulton, the set we were on were mullered, but without Dunlop there couldn't organise it. To give you an example of the potential effect on competitiveness, in race 1 at Rocingham Tim and I were both using used tyres and finished 5 seconds or so apart. Tim's front tyres were fit for the bin and when he put new ones on for Race 2 we were left for dead. That's motorsport :shrugs:!

By the way Steve, if I recall correctly Tim did use the softer compound for the V8 race at Snett

Edited by griff2be on Saturday 14th October 20:07

[GlynnsportRacing]

Griff2be said...
By the way Steve, if I recall correctly Tim did use the softer compound for the V8 race at Snett


I think you may well be right about that Andy. If my memory serves me well, I think Tim's engine completely blew during qualifying or the warm up session and he managed to borrow someone elses for race 2 on the promise that he kept the revs down. Even then he won the race from the back of the grid with a best time of 1 min 10.5secs.I'd be happy with that!

P.S. - I hope to be able to give you a bit more competition soon. I'm trying hard and feel it's beginning to come together a bit now.
Steve

[Graham]

griff2be said:

I think you might be surprised to hear that we only used 7 tyres throughout this year. Two of those were due to damage: a flat spot down to the canvas and the other because of blistering.

We havent been througha huge amount of tyres either. I did last season on 1 set of dunlop D01J's including quite a bit of testing.

We started this season on a set of used slicks we scrounged off Tim Hood and since then I've bought 5 more. I had to buy the extra front when the bent wishbone scrubbed it in about 30 miles

Surprisingly the disks and pads have held up well. I'll start next season on the disks the car came with at the end of 04. the rear pads were changed after pembrey and the front for oulton. Again they were the ones that came with the car and are still usable for testing, they're just starting to get thin so will transfer more heat to the calipers.