The road-going racing car - Sam McKee's BMW E36 328i
Discussion
McSam said:
h, nice one, I'll have to come and have a look at your car.. A 328i getting on for 250bhp/ton is always of interest! Have you run in Roadsports before?
We raced a lovely Porsche 924 with 968 running gear in class B in Trackday Trophy most of last year and also did a one off with 750 at Rockingham in Roadsports in class B as well. Couple of mates raced in (with good results) and are racing again with 750 in Roadsports this year, one in a supercharged Peugeot 106 and the other in an older Honda Civic with a newer type R engine, both in class B.
My 328 is new to me and just on the cusp of class B and C I reckon.
Apologies for the lack of updates, every spare minute has been spent on research, prep and parts/kit sourcing to get ready for the start of the season! We're now just under one month from the first race, and here's how the car currently sits...
The keen-eyed among you will note that that's pretty much the bloody same as last time
and you'd be mostly right. The cage is being delivered to the fitter this coming week, and at the same time the seat, harnesses, fire extinguisher and electrical cutoff are going to go in. I do at least have the harnesses and the extinguisher, both are very pretty and quite exciting to have ready 
A few bits of progress have been made. I spent the princely sum of £178.50 on these..
I wanted some tyres to use on the road, both to get the car to events safely in all conditions and to avoid damaging or wearing the race tyres. Uniroyal Rainsport 3s seemed the ideal solution, and they can also double as extreme wets should we get a race in proper monsoon conditions. To say they're a more comforting prospect to use on the road in February than the old set of NS-2Rs is an understatement!
To be fair to those Nankangs, they did two full seasons and covered over 1200 merciless track miles, and the set cost me £240. That's pretty good value! Two of them (the fronts, oddly enough..) are in good enough nick to serve as spares if I'm unlucky enough to get a puncture on a race tyre.
On realising that the front door cards intrude enough that you wouldn't be able to shut the doors once the rollcage was in, they had to go as well. I was hopeful that the inner door skin would be quite comprehensive, and most of the window regulator and other nasty sharp bits would be nice and enclosed like they are on the rear doors.
Erm.. no.
How vicious is that lot?! So the hunt began for an alternative door covering. I could cut the standard door cards, but they aren't light and they're in pretty good nick so I want to sell them to one of you fine people instead. Naturally loads of GRP or carbon fibre custom parts exist for E36, but most are for coupés and all are bloody expensive, so instead I did some carpentry.
6mm MDF, some self-tappers and the strap from an old rucksack. Pretty? No. Effective, rigid, well-fitted and shatter/splinter-proof? Yes. I'll get a can of satin black for it and probably cover the inside face with some sort of plastic scrim to prevent it picking up any moisture that might end up in there, and then it'll do the job quite nicely.
Part of the prep for the rollcage going in was removing the bitumen-like meltsheet that's stuck the body to act as a mass damper. This has to go from any area that's going to be welded to, and it chips away reasonably easily with a screwdriver and a rubber mallet. Nobody seems to have found a way to remove the residue without serious elbow grease, mind.
This was going quite well until, horror of horrors, in the right rear footwell I found the colour I was really hoping not to see. Brown.
This was actually still wet, visibly corroding before my eyes.. Makes some sense as it's the lowest part of the cabin as the car sits on my uphill driveway, and in truth I was really glad to have found it now rather than it festering for another year or so and most likely eating its way through the floor. It looked pretty dire, but I couldn't hammer a screwdriver through any part of it, and after sanding the worst back and giving it some anti-corrosion treatment it turned out semi-OK. This area will want a lick of paint after the cage goes in anyway, so I'll prime it properly and paint over it then. If that's the worst this shell has to throw at me I'll count my blessings.
I wanted to find a way to measure oil and coolant temperatures without shelling out a load of cash on gauges, sensors and mounting hardware. That can come later, I'd really like to do it, but for now if it can be done cheaper then it will be! Enter the £19 eBay four-channel thermocouple readout. This baby will let me see live readouts up to pretty much any reasonable temperature while I'm in the car, so I'm going to run thermocouples down the dipstick tube, to the radiator top hose, and ideally one to the back of the inner pads at front and rear.
Seems to be quite well calibrated
I think that's about it for the car! In other news, I passed my ARDS at Donington at the end of last month, and my race licence has now arrived. Great to have that again and since Autosport, I now have all my personal kit as well. If you've ever wondered was £1250 of racewear looks like, it's a bit like this:
Now to start using it. 27 days to go.
The keen-eyed among you will note that that's pretty much the bloody same as last time
and you'd be mostly right. The cage is being delivered to the fitter this coming week, and at the same time the seat, harnesses, fire extinguisher and electrical cutoff are going to go in. I do at least have the harnesses and the extinguisher, both are very pretty and quite exciting to have ready A few bits of progress have been made. I spent the princely sum of £178.50 on these..
I wanted some tyres to use on the road, both to get the car to events safely in all conditions and to avoid damaging or wearing the race tyres. Uniroyal Rainsport 3s seemed the ideal solution, and they can also double as extreme wets should we get a race in proper monsoon conditions. To say they're a more comforting prospect to use on the road in February than the old set of NS-2Rs is an understatement!
To be fair to those Nankangs, they did two full seasons and covered over 1200 merciless track miles, and the set cost me £240. That's pretty good value! Two of them (the fronts, oddly enough..) are in good enough nick to serve as spares if I'm unlucky enough to get a puncture on a race tyre.
On realising that the front door cards intrude enough that you wouldn't be able to shut the doors once the rollcage was in, they had to go as well. I was hopeful that the inner door skin would be quite comprehensive, and most of the window regulator and other nasty sharp bits would be nice and enclosed like they are on the rear doors.
Erm.. no.
How vicious is that lot?! So the hunt began for an alternative door covering. I could cut the standard door cards, but they aren't light and they're in pretty good nick so I want to sell them to one of you fine people instead. Naturally loads of GRP or carbon fibre custom parts exist for E36, but most are for coupés and all are bloody expensive, so instead I did some carpentry.
6mm MDF, some self-tappers and the strap from an old rucksack. Pretty? No. Effective, rigid, well-fitted and shatter/splinter-proof? Yes. I'll get a can of satin black for it and probably cover the inside face with some sort of plastic scrim to prevent it picking up any moisture that might end up in there, and then it'll do the job quite nicely.
Part of the prep for the rollcage going in was removing the bitumen-like meltsheet that's stuck the body to act as a mass damper. This has to go from any area that's going to be welded to, and it chips away reasonably easily with a screwdriver and a rubber mallet. Nobody seems to have found a way to remove the residue without serious elbow grease, mind.
This was going quite well until, horror of horrors, in the right rear footwell I found the colour I was really hoping not to see. Brown.
This was actually still wet, visibly corroding before my eyes.. Makes some sense as it's the lowest part of the cabin as the car sits on my uphill driveway, and in truth I was really glad to have found it now rather than it festering for another year or so and most likely eating its way through the floor. It looked pretty dire, but I couldn't hammer a screwdriver through any part of it, and after sanding the worst back and giving it some anti-corrosion treatment it turned out semi-OK. This area will want a lick of paint after the cage goes in anyway, so I'll prime it properly and paint over it then. If that's the worst this shell has to throw at me I'll count my blessings.
I wanted to find a way to measure oil and coolant temperatures without shelling out a load of cash on gauges, sensors and mounting hardware. That can come later, I'd really like to do it, but for now if it can be done cheaper then it will be! Enter the £19 eBay four-channel thermocouple readout. This baby will let me see live readouts up to pretty much any reasonable temperature while I'm in the car, so I'm going to run thermocouples down the dipstick tube, to the radiator top hose, and ideally one to the back of the inner pads at front and rear.
Seems to be quite well calibrated
I think that's about it for the car! In other news, I passed my ARDS at Donington at the end of last month, and my race licence has now arrived. Great to have that again
and since Autosport, I now have all my personal kit as well. If you've ever wondered was £1250 of racewear looks like, it's a bit like this:Now to start using it. 27 days to go.
Sorry I've completely neglected this thread, I've been absolutely flat out trying to get the car ready - our first race is on Saturday!
Here, more or less, is how she sits now.
That passenger seat came out this evening, but I left the photo in because I think it looks really cool there, like an E36 GT3 RS type of setup let me know if there are any other areas you want to see photos of, I have loads from each cage mounting to where the extinguisher nozzles are, but I didn't want to clog up the forum too much straight away..
So the keen-eyed among you will notice that that top photo is in the pit lane at Donington - ahead of the first race there on 18th March I wanted to do a track day, so I went along on 10th March and found a paddock that looked a bit like this...
A lot a lot of race teams. And then there's me, having driven the car there full of tools and tyres
Apart from learning the circuit and getting myself happy with the car's setup, I also wanted to do some durability testing. I have some faith in this car after three seasons of sprints and track days, but the reality is that a 45-minute race is an entirely different league to a few 15min sessions nicely spaced out when you aren't even pushing all the time. So after a morning of tweaking, I went out to do a race simulation, doing 45min with a 1min stop in the middle. I'm relieved to report that not only did the car survive, it felt pretty consistent throughout, with the only complaint being that the brake pedal started getting a little long towards the end of the run - fluid change happening tomorrow evening, and I've removed the front disc backing plates to aid cooling. Oil temperature stabilised around 127°C in the sump, which is hot but not unacceptable, and at least it stopped rising!
For tyres, I've gone for Nankang's NS-2Rs again, but this time in the 100 "competition" compound. These are still a List 1B tyre, but they are really very sticky compared to the 180 compound I've used previously, and actually share a lot more with Nankang's new AR-1 (which is List 1C, the fastest permitted before slicks). I was really happy with the tyres, they've rubbered in nicely but weren't overheating through that stint, and they feel nicely predictable.
Brakes are still standard calipers, standard rear discs and 300mm front discs from an E46 328i. Pads are Performance Friction Z-rated front and rear. I think I'm pretty much at the limit of what these pads can do, to the point where a circuit that's either warmer/grippier or just a bit harder on brakes would be enough to overheat them, so I need to think about whether I go for true race pads or some proper four-pot calipers.
Laptimes over that race stint all fell in the range of 1:56 - 2:02, which considering it's a track day with the traffic that entails I'm quite pleased with. The vast majority of the laps are 1:56 - 1:58, and the fastest I recorded all day was 1:55.35 in a mock qualifying run later in the day. Here's that lap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTppNrsTweE
Given that the car's about 40kg above race weight, I'm content with this pace and feel I've got a chance of being competitive. The car weighed 1282kg that day, and will be 1240kg in race trim - that gives 153bhp/ton against a class limit of 160, so I do need to focus on getting some more weight out before the next round. Baby steps.. let's get her out there and try to finish!
If you're at Donington on Saturday, come and say hello.. You should find the car somewhere in garages 2-16, wearing the race number 36 - of course
Oh, and here's how you look after 45mins in the car at full pace.. Bring me water and a chair!
Sammo - sorry I didn't get back to you about the door cards. The entire interior of the car is now available, including literally everything that's inside an E36 except for the carpet which I had to butcher a bit to get out, though you could have it anyway. If anyone's interested in any of it, drop me an email, I'm as keen to free up garage space as I am to get some money back from the car! Everything was removed sympathetically, nothing's broken or damaged and can all be refitted as is.
Here, more or less, is how she sits now.
That passenger seat came out this evening, but I left the photo in because I think it looks really cool there, like an E36 GT3 RS type of setup
let me know if there are any other areas you want to see photos of, I have loads from each cage mounting to where the extinguisher nozzles are, but I didn't want to clog up the forum too much straight away..So the keen-eyed among you will notice that that top photo is in the pit lane at Donington - ahead of the first race there on 18th March I wanted to do a track day, so I went along on 10th March and found a paddock that looked a bit like this...
A lot a lot of race teams. And then there's me, having driven the car there full of tools and tyres
Apart from learning the circuit and getting myself happy with the car's setup, I also wanted to do some durability testing. I have some faith in this car after three seasons of sprints and track days, but the reality is that a 45-minute race is an entirely different league to a few 15min sessions nicely spaced out when you aren't even pushing all the time. So after a morning of tweaking, I went out to do a race simulation, doing 45min with a 1min stop in the middle. I'm relieved to report that not only did the car survive, it felt pretty consistent throughout, with the only complaint being that the brake pedal started getting a little long towards the end of the run - fluid change happening tomorrow evening, and I've removed the front disc backing plates to aid cooling. Oil temperature stabilised around 127°C in the sump, which is hot but not unacceptable, and at least it stopped rising!
For tyres, I've gone for Nankang's NS-2Rs again, but this time in the 100 "competition" compound. These are still a List 1B tyre, but they are really very sticky compared to the 180 compound I've used previously, and actually share a lot more with Nankang's new AR-1 (which is List 1C, the fastest permitted before slicks). I was really happy with the tyres, they've rubbered in nicely but weren't overheating through that stint, and they feel nicely predictable.
Brakes are still standard calipers, standard rear discs and 300mm front discs from an E46 328i. Pads are Performance Friction Z-rated front and rear. I think I'm pretty much at the limit of what these pads can do, to the point where a circuit that's either warmer/grippier or just a bit harder on brakes would be enough to overheat them, so I need to think about whether I go for true race pads or some proper four-pot calipers.
Laptimes over that race stint all fell in the range of 1:56 - 2:02, which considering it's a track day with the traffic that entails I'm quite pleased with. The vast majority of the laps are 1:56 - 1:58, and the fastest I recorded all day was 1:55.35 in a mock qualifying run later in the day. Here's that lap:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTppNrsTweE
Given that the car's about 40kg above race weight, I'm content with this pace and feel I've got a chance of being competitive. The car weighed 1282kg that day, and will be 1240kg in race trim - that gives 153bhp/ton against a class limit of 160, so I do need to focus on getting some more weight out before the next round. Baby steps.. let's get her out there and try to finish!
If you're at Donington on Saturday, come and say hello.. You should find the car somewhere in garages 2-16, wearing the race number 36 - of course
Oh, and here's how you look after 45mins in the car at full pace.. Bring me water and a chair!
Sammo - sorry I didn't get back to you about the door cards. The entire interior of the car is now available, including literally everything that's inside an E36 except for the carpet which I had to butcher a bit to get out, though you could have it anyway. If anyone's interested in any of it, drop me an email, I'm as keen to free up garage space as I am to get some money back from the car! Everything was removed sympathetically, nothing's broken or damaged and can all be refitted as is.
Well, that didn't go too badly
Qualifying lap: https://youtu.be/IhSq5h0JHtU
Race in full (notes in description): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0KdEJSnH_w
Qualifying lap: https://youtu.be/IhSq5h0JHtU
Race in full (notes in description): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0KdEJSnH_w
Nice workHello all,
I'm very sorry that I never did get back to this thread to keep it updated through the year. As you can imagine, when you try and get through your first season of racing and get married in the same year, you end up rather busy! We had a fantastic season and some really encouraging results. I've recently created a website to track the racing activities and changes to the car, and brought it up to date. Almost all of the older content is already in here, but there's also race reports for everything since that first run out at Donington.
And by the way, thank you very much for the kind words above I thoroughly enjoyed that drive at Donington. I should point out that the Britcar and LM24 notes in my profile were as a spectator, not a driver - what you see above is my very first race.
So for completeness, let's rattle through 2017's season. One month after that mind-boggling success at Donington came the Snetterton round.
April 2017
The second race of 2017 came just five weeks later, at Snetterton in Norfolk. After the success of the first outing, it was time to put another driver in the car. Enter James Lewis-Barned for his racing debut. As neither of us were familiar with the circuit, we went for a track day two weeks before the race to get comfortable and find the quickest way around. We got plenty of miles racked up, and performed a simulated race run once again – complete with rapid driver change to get the car back out within sixty seconds. It was great, if a little strange, standing on the pit wall and seeing my car howl past without me in it!
James drove very well, and put in fast and consistent lap times throughout his run. We came away feeling pretty confident, if well aware that the long straights meant there was no hope of finishing so high up the overall order this time – any more powerful car was going to walk away from us.
I ran the race weekend in the same way as Donington – arrive on Friday night, get through scrutineering and get set up in the garage ready for Saturday morning. This time, I had the company of Adam Mealand, selflessly driving himself the 140 miles across the country to support and wield the spanners as required. I was momentarily confused as to why the car registered nearly 1600kg on the weighbridge in the scrutineering bay, until I realised it had four spare wheels, all my tools and race kit, and my support crew still inside it!
Qualifying required more thought than last time – we both had to put in three timed laps to be allowed to race, which with your outlap and pit-in lap is five each. On a circuit that’s almost 2min30 long, really is all you can fit into a 25-minute session! We decided that I’d go out first, put in my minimum laps, and let James go to the flag in the hope that he’d get more time to get used to the car.
The circuit felt a bit busy despite only 26 cars out, and we each only got one really good lap in, but the pace was encouraging – we clocked 2:21.53 and 2:21.97, with both being easily enough to claim fastest in class, the nearest competitor only managing a 2:23.96. But as we predicted, we sat 21st overall, with all the more powerful cars further up the grid. Hopefully this would at least lead to a less dramatic start than Donington!
We’d decided in advance that we’d alternate who started the race and who got in at the halfway point to drive to the finish, and as it was his first event, James was happy to let me take the start and get the highest risks out of the way. So it was that I lined up on the grid next to the pit wall, waiting for the lights to go out once again…
Full race onboard
In what felt like barely a heartbeat, the lights were out and we were racing. My reaction time was quick but I laid down too much power and lost some drive to wheelspin. No matter, as my next concerns rapidly became an M3 Cup car that had fluffed his start in front, then Ivor Mair’s E36 Compact going for the same gap as me. Barely a few seconds later, I was into the first corner and trying to go around the outside of Jeff Williams’ Ginetta G20. There followed twenty minutes of constant battles, though sadly most of it defending from cars behind me, which means the footage doesn’t show a lot of it! I resolved to get a rear-view camera for the next outing. I came into the pits from first in class to hand the car over.
The pitstop went like clockwork and we sent James out to bring the car home. A bizarre feeling, having fought hard for half a race, to then simply get out of the car and watch it drive away! James was thrown straight into the deep end, with Adam Chafer’s 206 to contend with in his first lap out. Having won at Donington meant we had a 15-second time penalty added to our pitstop, intended to stop any one car dominating. This meant James came out with the 206 straight on his bumper, and coming fresh out of the pits made him vulnerable – Adam went through.
The 206’s awesome brakes and sticky tyres gave it a major advantage in the corners, but it lacked the punch of our car’s big straight-six, and James was able to set up a good run out of Williams corner, re-take the class lead down the Bentley straight and start building a gap. In the end we were deprived of a battle to the flag when the 206 developed mechanical issues, and we won by a convincing 87 seconds.
A shame not to have cars to race against all the way through, particularly as all the action seemed to have been in my stint and left James essentially driving a practice session for most of his run – but we couldn’t forget that this 180,000-mile ex-repmobile had once again come up with the goods and performed faultlessly over a race weekend. The drive back home up the A14 felt a lot sweeter with a trophy in the passenger footwell beside me!
There weren’t likely to be any concerns about a quiet race at the next event – Brands Hatch, all 1.2 miles of it...
I'm very sorry that I never did get back to this thread to keep it updated through the year. As you can imagine, when you try and get through your first season of racing and get married in the same year, you end up rather busy! We had a fantastic season and some really encouraging results. I've recently created a website to track the racing activities and changes to the car, and brought it up to date. Almost all of the older content is already in here, but there's also race reports for everything since that first run out at Donington.
And by the way, thank you very much for the kind words above
I thoroughly enjoyed that drive at Donington. I should point out that the Britcar and LM24 notes in my profile were as a spectator, not a driver - what you see above is my very first race.f1ten said:
a great read and Im really keen to go racing myself and want to dip my toe in at an affordable level in case I stuff it!
If this is still the case, get in touch! Everything from honest experiences and advice, to actually driving the car... sam@mckeemotorsport.comSo for completeness, let's rattle through 2017's season. One month after that mind-boggling success at Donington came the Snetterton round.
April 2017
The second race of 2017 came just five weeks later, at Snetterton in Norfolk. After the success of the first outing, it was time to put another driver in the car. Enter James Lewis-Barned for his racing debut. As neither of us were familiar with the circuit, we went for a track day two weeks before the race to get comfortable and find the quickest way around. We got plenty of miles racked up, and performed a simulated race run once again – complete with rapid driver change to get the car back out within sixty seconds. It was great, if a little strange, standing on the pit wall and seeing my car howl past without me in it!
James drove very well, and put in fast and consistent lap times throughout his run. We came away feeling pretty confident, if well aware that the long straights meant there was no hope of finishing so high up the overall order this time – any more powerful car was going to walk away from us.
I ran the race weekend in the same way as Donington – arrive on Friday night, get through scrutineering and get set up in the garage ready for Saturday morning. This time, I had the company of Adam Mealand, selflessly driving himself the 140 miles across the country to support and wield the spanners as required. I was momentarily confused as to why the car registered nearly 1600kg on the weighbridge in the scrutineering bay, until I realised it had four spare wheels, all my tools and race kit, and my support crew still inside it!
Qualifying required more thought than last time – we both had to put in three timed laps to be allowed to race, which with your outlap and pit-in lap is five each. On a circuit that’s almost 2min30 long, really is all you can fit into a 25-minute session! We decided that I’d go out first, put in my minimum laps, and let James go to the flag in the hope that he’d get more time to get used to the car.
The circuit felt a bit busy despite only 26 cars out, and we each only got one really good lap in, but the pace was encouraging – we clocked 2:21.53 and 2:21.97, with both being easily enough to claim fastest in class, the nearest competitor only managing a 2:23.96. But as we predicted, we sat 21st overall, with all the more powerful cars further up the grid. Hopefully this would at least lead to a less dramatic start than Donington!
We’d decided in advance that we’d alternate who started the race and who got in at the halfway point to drive to the finish, and as it was his first event, James was happy to let me take the start and get the highest risks out of the way. So it was that I lined up on the grid next to the pit wall, waiting for the lights to go out once again…
Full race onboard
In what felt like barely a heartbeat, the lights were out and we were racing. My reaction time was quick but I laid down too much power and lost some drive to wheelspin. No matter, as my next concerns rapidly became an M3 Cup car that had fluffed his start in front, then Ivor Mair’s E36 Compact going for the same gap as me. Barely a few seconds later, I was into the first corner and trying to go around the outside of Jeff Williams’ Ginetta G20. There followed twenty minutes of constant battles, though sadly most of it defending from cars behind me, which means the footage doesn’t show a lot of it! I resolved to get a rear-view camera for the next outing. I came into the pits from first in class to hand the car over.
The pitstop went like clockwork and we sent James out to bring the car home. A bizarre feeling, having fought hard for half a race, to then simply get out of the car and watch it drive away! James was thrown straight into the deep end, with Adam Chafer’s 206 to contend with in his first lap out. Having won at Donington meant we had a 15-second time penalty added to our pitstop, intended to stop any one car dominating. This meant James came out with the 206 straight on his bumper, and coming fresh out of the pits made him vulnerable – Adam went through.
The 206’s awesome brakes and sticky tyres gave it a major advantage in the corners, but it lacked the punch of our car’s big straight-six, and James was able to set up a good run out of Williams corner, re-take the class lead down the Bentley straight and start building a gap. In the end we were deprived of a battle to the flag when the 206 developed mechanical issues, and we won by a convincing 87 seconds.
A shame not to have cars to race against all the way through, particularly as all the action seemed to have been in my stint and left James essentially driving a practice session for most of his run – but we couldn’t forget that this 180,000-mile ex-repmobile had once again come up with the goods and performed faultlessly over a race weekend. The drive back home up the A14 felt a lot sweeter with a trophy in the passenger footwell beside me!
There weren’t likely to be any concerns about a quiet race at the next event – Brands Hatch, all 1.2 miles of it...
June 2017
Brands Hatch is a fabled stretch of tarmac, and with good reason – it’s set the scene of many an iconic race, from Grands Prix to Group C. The full GP circuit is fast and flowing, but rarely used for club racing, which tends to keep to the Indy loop. This is only 1.2 miles long, around the pits and back, but far from tame – the elevation changes are dramatic and there is plenty to upset even the best set-up cars. Paddock Hill bend sees you commit to an apex you can’t see, blind over the crest like the start of a rollercoaster. Anticipation was high!
This was another circuit that I’d never driven, so two weeks prior found us testing in the pouring rain. So wet was it, in fact, that it wasn’t worth swapping off the Uniroyal Rainsports tyres I use to get the car safely to events in all conditions – they were ideal for the job! Conditions like this demand confidence from the off, and are great to learn the car, allowing you to overstep the limit with minimal risk…
Fortunately, it dried up over lunch and we were able to get some good dry running done to figure out the quickest way around the circuit. In what felt like no time at all, I was sitting in Friday afternoon traffic on the M25 in 32°C heat getting the car down to scrutineering.
Qualifying two drivers at Brands is a little easier, since the circuit is only a 58-second lap, so we got 18 racked up in the session. James went out first to do eight timed laps, then I jumped in for a turn. Annoyingly, we started to suffer from fuel starvation going over Paddock Hill, so ultimate pace wasn’t to be found, but we still did enough to beat the only other car in our class and put ourselves 30th of 37 overall.
We’d planned for James to start the race, which meant my very first time standing on the pit wall to watch my car leave the grid in the middle of the pack. It felt like quite a momentous occasion, enough to move me to actually face the camera for once…
Pitwall video
James got through the busy start without incident, and set about doing some good racing, putting in some laps even quicker than his qualifying run. The car managed to produce some extra drama of its own five minutes in – in making a particularly hurried third-to-fourth gearchange to complete a pass on our Class D competitors Ollie Steek and Matthew Ellis, James pulled the gearknob off, not realising this until he next needed it.. braking late and off-line into Paddock Hill!
Showing impressive presence of mind and keeping his cool, James realised what had happened, got the gear with his palm and not only kept the car on the black stuff, but held his position. Long after the circuit got busy with Class A cars carving through the field, he handed the car over to me from the class lead.
Sadly, the rules in Roadsports include “success penalties”, whereby cars that have won or finished on the podium in previous races must serve a time penalty in their pitstop. I was held for an additional 25 seconds for having won the previous two races, more than enough for the #24 BMW Compact to retake the lead. After just six short laps of reeling in our opposition, an incident brought out the safety car and ate up valuable race time. We were only live again for another three laps before a heavy crash at Druids stopped the race six minutes early.
The final tally shows we finished 25th of 34 starters, but thirteen seconds behind our class competition of Steek/Ellis. Mixed emotions – we’d been the faster car, we’d passed them on the circuit and set the class fastest lap, but the race was cut short and our success penalty had robbed us of another win. It seemed a shame to realise that Ollie and Matthew also felt a hollow victory, knowing that it was only the “balancing” rules that had handed it to them – a strong argument against such artificial influence in race results, we thought. Here’s the footage from onboard the car:
Full race onboard
The report of this race wouldn’t be complete without talking about the heat. The temperature never dropped below the high twenties all day, and in the car – with no insulation at all between us and the engine and exhaust heat – the conditions were punishing. I take my hat off to endurance drivers who can stand hours-long stints in cars that run even hotter than ours – twenty minutes was more than enough to leave us gasping! The need for driver fitness and taking proper care of oneself was underlined by seeing Petteri Jokinen, whose turbocharged Mini would certainly have been harder work than our car, collapse from heat exhaustion after the finish.
Still, we left the circuit feeling we’d had another successful day. We’d got through scrutineering, qualified the car, shown good pace and finished a hectic race without incident. That can never be a bad result when competing in a road-going car with such limited budget.
Brands Hatch is a fabled stretch of tarmac, and with good reason – it’s set the scene of many an iconic race, from Grands Prix to Group C. The full GP circuit is fast and flowing, but rarely used for club racing, which tends to keep to the Indy loop. This is only 1.2 miles long, around the pits and back, but far from tame – the elevation changes are dramatic and there is plenty to upset even the best set-up cars. Paddock Hill bend sees you commit to an apex you can’t see, blind over the crest like the start of a rollercoaster. Anticipation was high!
This was another circuit that I’d never driven, so two weeks prior found us testing in the pouring rain. So wet was it, in fact, that it wasn’t worth swapping off the Uniroyal Rainsports tyres I use to get the car safely to events in all conditions – they were ideal for the job! Conditions like this demand confidence from the off, and are great to learn the car, allowing you to overstep the limit with minimal risk…
Fortunately, it dried up over lunch and we were able to get some good dry running done to figure out the quickest way around the circuit. In what felt like no time at all, I was sitting in Friday afternoon traffic on the M25 in 32°C heat getting the car down to scrutineering.
Qualifying two drivers at Brands is a little easier, since the circuit is only a 58-second lap, so we got 18 racked up in the session. James went out first to do eight timed laps, then I jumped in for a turn. Annoyingly, we started to suffer from fuel starvation going over Paddock Hill, so ultimate pace wasn’t to be found, but we still did enough to beat the only other car in our class and put ourselves 30th of 37 overall.
We’d planned for James to start the race, which meant my very first time standing on the pit wall to watch my car leave the grid in the middle of the pack. It felt like quite a momentous occasion, enough to move me to actually face the camera for once…
Pitwall video
James got through the busy start without incident, and set about doing some good racing, putting in some laps even quicker than his qualifying run. The car managed to produce some extra drama of its own five minutes in – in making a particularly hurried third-to-fourth gearchange to complete a pass on our Class D competitors Ollie Steek and Matthew Ellis, James pulled the gearknob off, not realising this until he next needed it.. braking late and off-line into Paddock Hill!
Showing impressive presence of mind and keeping his cool, James realised what had happened, got the gear with his palm and not only kept the car on the black stuff, but held his position. Long after the circuit got busy with Class A cars carving through the field, he handed the car over to me from the class lead.
Sadly, the rules in Roadsports include “success penalties”, whereby cars that have won or finished on the podium in previous races must serve a time penalty in their pitstop. I was held for an additional 25 seconds for having won the previous two races, more than enough for the #24 BMW Compact to retake the lead. After just six short laps of reeling in our opposition, an incident brought out the safety car and ate up valuable race time. We were only live again for another three laps before a heavy crash at Druids stopped the race six minutes early.
The final tally shows we finished 25th of 34 starters, but thirteen seconds behind our class competition of Steek/Ellis. Mixed emotions – we’d been the faster car, we’d passed them on the circuit and set the class fastest lap, but the race was cut short and our success penalty had robbed us of another win. It seemed a shame to realise that Ollie and Matthew also felt a hollow victory, knowing that it was only the “balancing” rules that had handed it to them – a strong argument against such artificial influence in race results, we thought. Here’s the footage from onboard the car:
Full race onboard
The report of this race wouldn’t be complete without talking about the heat. The temperature never dropped below the high twenties all day, and in the car – with no insulation at all between us and the engine and exhaust heat – the conditions were punishing. I take my hat off to endurance drivers who can stand hours-long stints in cars that run even hotter than ours – twenty minutes was more than enough to leave us gasping! The need for driver fitness and taking proper care of oneself was underlined by seeing Petteri Jokinen, whose turbocharged Mini would certainly have been harder work than our car, collapse from heat exhaustion after the finish.
Still, we left the circuit feeling we’d had another successful day. We’d got through scrutineering, qualified the car, shown good pace and finished a hectic race without incident. That can never be a bad result when competing in a road-going car with such limited budget.
June 2017
You’d think that after a day spent sharing a tiny circuit with 35 other cars at racing speeds, the drive home would be the easy bit. But heading back from a successful race at Brands Hatch, I got 130 of the 136 miles home before a rather daft lady pulled out straight in front of me on a roundabout. It’s funny how the mind works – in the tenth of a second before the obviously impending impact, I was able to process how utterly heartbreaking the concept of crashing this car was, how angry I was that I saw her and knew damn well she didn’t even look before coming out, how ironic it was that I’d spent all day in fireproofs, race suit, helmet and HANS only to now crash in shorts and a T-shirt, and at the very last moment a vague wonder of whether it might hurt.
This is how the car looked when it came out. The engine was still running after the impact, which didn’t feel too bad, but I was shocked – and bloody worried – to find the gear lever not where I left it. After much fumbling to find where reverse had moved to, I managed to extract the car from the side of the Yeti and take stock. It looked bad but fundamentally driveable, though I could only get second and fourth gears. This was enough to crawl it home after getting insurance details and having a very helpful attending officer summarise the situation rather succinctly, without passing any comment at all on it clearly being a race car: “Well she’s just pulled out on you, hasn’t she?”.
The mood was sombre that evening – with no opportunity to inspect the damage before nightfall, we really didn’t know whether the car might have turned its last wheel. It meant a lot to me, and the thought of reshelling the parts – or worse – was awful. With any racing car you accept a level of risk, but to have it potentially destroyed by something as stupid and unnecessary as a low-speed road collision really hurt. And of course, we had a test day at Cadwell just four weeks hence…
My insurers, Equity Red Star, had little work to do. The offending Yeti driver’s underwriters called me first thing Monday morning to apologise profusely on behalf of their policyholder and ask how they could make things right. They sent an assessor to inspect the damage, who understood well what the car was and even humoured me by looking at comparable cars on racecarsdirect.com to value it properly! We arrived at a sum for “cash in lieu of repairs”, allowing me to sort the damage out myself with no impact to the car’s status. This is a real opportunity to point out the value of declaring everything to your insurers – they knew it was a racing car, knew every modification I’d made, and had agreed a value with me at the start of the policy. The peace of mind that gave me when I actually needed to use the cover was priceless, and made the £330 premium seem like small change.
In the following days, a proper assessment could be made. I’d feared the worst on thinking the body was damaged badly enough to push the engine back, but in fact quite the opposite – the engine and gearbox simply sheared all their twenty-year-old rubber mounts and kept going forward as the body stopped around them, leaving the thermostat housing jammed up against the fan shroud and the whole lot about three inches forward of where it should be.
The fact that the car had driven OK, albeit gingerly, after this was nothing short of astonishing. The sump was resting on the front subframe and the steering column, and that was pretty much all that kept it in the car. The bonnet, front wing, slam panel and grille carrier all came off rather badly but other than that, it wasn’t terrible. I’d only get the true picture once I got the powertrain remounted and tried to drive it – before then, who knew what damage had been done to the driveline, subframes or even the body itself. So I got a new headlamp and some polyurethane engine and gearbox mounts ordered, and set about getting everything back where it should be.
Mercifully, there is a happy ending. After a lot of pain getting the powertrain remounted and the panels back to nearly-straight, I went for the most tentative shakedown I’ve ever done, gradually building up pace and watching temperatures over an hour until I was comfortable enough to start pushing the car. She drove perfectly. I could not fault it in any way. Stunned, and just in time for the test at Cadwell before the next race, I stopped to get a photo marking the reincarnation. One of the very last Avro Vulcans being in the background is a nice bonus… There’s no stopping this car.
You’d think that after a day spent sharing a tiny circuit with 35 other cars at racing speeds, the drive home would be the easy bit. But heading back from a successful race at Brands Hatch, I got 130 of the 136 miles home before a rather daft lady pulled out straight in front of me on a roundabout. It’s funny how the mind works – in the tenth of a second before the obviously impending impact, I was able to process how utterly heartbreaking the concept of crashing this car was, how angry I was that I saw her and knew damn well she didn’t even look before coming out, how ironic it was that I’d spent all day in fireproofs, race suit, helmet and HANS only to now crash in shorts and a T-shirt, and at the very last moment a vague wonder of whether it might hurt.
This is how the car looked when it came out. The engine was still running after the impact, which didn’t feel too bad, but I was shocked – and bloody worried – to find the gear lever not where I left it. After much fumbling to find where reverse had moved to, I managed to extract the car from the side of the Yeti and take stock. It looked bad but fundamentally driveable, though I could only get second and fourth gears. This was enough to crawl it home after getting insurance details and having a very helpful attending officer summarise the situation rather succinctly, without passing any comment at all on it clearly being a race car: “Well she’s just pulled out on you, hasn’t she?”.
The mood was sombre that evening – with no opportunity to inspect the damage before nightfall, we really didn’t know whether the car might have turned its last wheel. It meant a lot to me, and the thought of reshelling the parts – or worse – was awful. With any racing car you accept a level of risk, but to have it potentially destroyed by something as stupid and unnecessary as a low-speed road collision really hurt. And of course, we had a test day at Cadwell just four weeks hence…
My insurers, Equity Red Star, had little work to do. The offending Yeti driver’s underwriters called me first thing Monday morning to apologise profusely on behalf of their policyholder and ask how they could make things right. They sent an assessor to inspect the damage, who understood well what the car was and even humoured me by looking at comparable cars on racecarsdirect.com to value it properly! We arrived at a sum for “cash in lieu of repairs”, allowing me to sort the damage out myself with no impact to the car’s status. This is a real opportunity to point out the value of declaring everything to your insurers – they knew it was a racing car, knew every modification I’d made, and had agreed a value with me at the start of the policy. The peace of mind that gave me when I actually needed to use the cover was priceless, and made the £330 premium seem like small change.
In the following days, a proper assessment could be made. I’d feared the worst on thinking the body was damaged badly enough to push the engine back, but in fact quite the opposite – the engine and gearbox simply sheared all their twenty-year-old rubber mounts and kept going forward as the body stopped around them, leaving the thermostat housing jammed up against the fan shroud and the whole lot about three inches forward of where it should be.
The fact that the car had driven OK, albeit gingerly, after this was nothing short of astonishing. The sump was resting on the front subframe and the steering column, and that was pretty much all that kept it in the car. The bonnet, front wing, slam panel and grille carrier all came off rather badly but other than that, it wasn’t terrible. I’d only get the true picture once I got the powertrain remounted and tried to drive it – before then, who knew what damage had been done to the driveline, subframes or even the body itself. So I got a new headlamp and some polyurethane engine and gearbox mounts ordered, and set about getting everything back where it should be.
Mercifully, there is a happy ending. After a lot of pain getting the powertrain remounted and the panels back to nearly-straight, I went for the most tentative shakedown I’ve ever done, gradually building up pace and watching temperatures over an hour until I was comfortable enough to start pushing the car. She drove perfectly. I could not fault it in any way. Stunned, and just in time for the test at Cadwell before the next race, I stopped to get a photo marking the reincarnation. One of the very last Avro Vulcans being in the background is a nice bonus… There’s no stopping this car.
MJ85 said:
Bad luck, Sam. Looks like you've managed to sort it though, good stuff.
Thanks! I was majorly unimpressed - and it still makes me a little sad seeing photos of the car before, everything is so neat and straight, and even today it's not right and probably never will look so good again. But it could have been much worse, and for that to be the biggest incident in four years of track use, we're doing OK.Shortly afterwards it was on to the next one...
July 2017
With the car freshly rebuilt, we headed to Lincolnshire and the notorious Cadwell Park circuit. Billed as a mini-Nürburgring of our very own, this is a narrow ribbon of tarmac that winds its sinuous way through huge elevation changes, surprise cambers and challenging complexes. It’s thoroughly enjoyable when it starts to flow, but needs approaching with care and respect. Not the simplest of places to prove out the car after its shunt!
As usual, we did a track day two weeks before to check the car over and learn the circuit. I was relieved – and mightily impressed – to find the car seemed no worse off for its ordeal. Is there no limit to the punishment a leggy 90s German saloon can take?!
Race day came swiftly after, and served up the most dramatic qualifying session we’d had so far. All was going well for the first two laps of my run, until suddenly a loud, boomy vibration and occasional scraping noise could be heard in right-handers. It wasn’t until I heard a loud scrape climbing The Mountain that I realised the back half of the exhaust had come free, and was so loose it was moving around to foul the body and even the track surface! I managed to finish one more timed lap before I was shown the black-and-orange flag to bring me into the pits. The marshals made it clear that unless we could fashion a means of securing it, we couldn’t go back out, and James wouldn’t be able to qualify to enter the race.
With the last few precious minutes of the session ticking away, the true spirit of club motorsport came through. Our chief competition, Adam Chafer in his Peugeot 206 with his family team ISLA Motorsport, jumped into action to help us get the pipe secured enough to get James out and do some very gentle laps to qualify for the race. We’d have been deep in it without our rivals helping us, quite possibly not making the start – they came to our rescue because they wanted the chance to race against us, which is what it’s all about. Hats off to them.
It turns out that it’s still possible to set the class pole position lap while your exhaust is flailing around in a mad bid for freedom..! That was more than enough excitement for one day, yet when the start rolled round I found myself sitting 18th overall on an incredibly cramped grid of 27 cars on a circuit that felt big enough for maybe six. I hadn’t felt nerves as bad since my very first race, but I got away cleanly and managed to survive the first few laps and give some good battle to the cars around me.
After around ten minutes there followed a long safety car period to extract a BMW from the barriers after Charlies corner, after which I was able to do some really great racing. The car felt good and the circuit was making sense, and I had cars around me at competitive pace – it was a brilliant feeling being able to race the car hard for lap after lap. I came into the pits from the class lead with twenty minutes left on the clock.
We were hobbled once again by a success penalty adding 25 seconds to our one-minute pitstop, and rejoined several places down. James was left with a relatively quiet stint to bring the car home, mostly focusing on traffic management as faster cars from the classes above came through, trying to lose minimal time in the process and pull back to Adam Chafer’s now class-leading 206. Sadly it wasn’t enough, and we crossed the line 2nd in class and 19th overall, 28 seconds behind Adam – a scant three seconds more than the success penalty had cost us, robbing us of the opportunity for a close fight to the flag.
Here’s the race video
As much as it felt a shame to “only” finish second, I came away feeling quite satisfied. We’d managed to get the car to the next race after suffering a crash on the road, and it still had shown class-leading pace in qualifying and in the race. Bearing in mind that I’d started the season with the idea that finishing races would be a huge personal success, we were still flying high!
TroubledSoul said:
Good read, and what a shame about the smash! At least it was fairly light.
What's your car weighing in at now Sam?
Cheers! It was surprising how much damage it did, for saying the impact must have been at all of 10mph. The sides of modern cars are very stiff indeed, particularly in comparison to a shell that was designed in the late 80s!What's your car weighing in at now Sam?
The car's around 1240kg with no driver or fuel, which is about 95kg lighter than standard. 198kg has been removed from the standard car, then 104kg added back in the shape of the cage, extinguisher and fittings, seat and harnesses, rear wing and a few other odds and sods required for racing. Going to 17" wheels for 2018 also added a quite amazing 18.8kg, included in that figure. So it's still heavy for an E36 race car, due to still having all-steel dual-skin panels, electric front windows, full HVAC system, complete dashboard upper, no hole saw assaults made.. A really serious one is more like 1100kg, but since this races in a power-to-weight class, I can afford to keep plenty of nice-to-haves in there.
MB140 said:
Commented so I can follow.
Really enjoying reading this.
Thanks, that's always really good to hear! I'll keep it coming Really enjoying reading this.
Should we keep going for huge full-size photos, or do little inline ones to make it easier to read the posts? Like this..
September 2017
Our final race of the 2017 season would take us to Rockingham, a technical infield circuit inside an oval. James and I both knew the track quite well, but I’d made some changes that warranted testing – one was finally moving to full-specification racing brake pads, fitting Performance Friction 08 endurance-compound pads in place of the Z-Rated that had been in before. The other was far more invasive to achieve, and dramatic in performance enhancement…
One man’s misfortune is another’s gain, and Brian Love’s E36 race car being broken for parts gave some very interesting options. I picked up oil coolers for both engine and differential (neither fitted for 2017), but most importantly a freshly rebuilt 3.91 ratio medium-case diff with four friction plates. This would give an enormous gearing reduction from the 3.15 I’d been using up to now, and far better locking performance too. A two-man job to install, made possible only by the selfless and knowledgeable James Butt! I also failed to mention the new seat in the Cadwell race report – among the best money I’ve ever spent on this car was a Cobra Evolution Pro. The support and control this offered was truly priceless.
When testing the car before I race, I generally find myself worrying or hunting for issues or obsessing over the onboard footage to find the best line around the circuit. Rockingham was the first time for a long while that I just got out of the car smiling. At long last, it felt like a racing car. The directness, the feel, the aggression the diff allowed you to use, the sheer power and impact of those brake pads.. Incredible. All through the development of a car, you only get a few moments like that where it all comes together and makes sense, and it’s a brilliant feeling. I couldn’t wait to get out there and race it.
Race day started out dry, and the car felt great through qualifying. We were both able to get some good space and put in good laptimes, with both drivers clocking best laps within a second of each other and putting the car on class pole for the fourth time that year. I was particularly pleased with my quickest lap, a 1:46.42, putting us 20th of 27 cars on the grid overall. Here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itxhLe5D4Rs
We’d been gifted a dry morning to really feel the performance of the car, but the weather quickly turned threatening, with downpours through the earlier races of the afternoon. We weren’t too fussed, as we knew the car suited the wet quite well and we were both very familiar with it, so we were happy with our abilities in challenging conditions. Challenging, however, quickly became absurd – it’s hard to convey just how black the skies became before our race start, but I hope these two images go some of the way!
Almost every race before us was red-flagged at least once due to incidents, and when our time finally came, James was to lead. The circuit had mostly dried out since the last downpour, but the intent in the skies was clear as James made his way to the grid:
A slightly slow getaway at the start left some work to do, but after only a few minutes’ racing the heavens opened. I was on the pit wall at the time, and the rain came down so hard it actually hurt – you can hear it hitting the car in the onboard video, even over the noise of the engine at wide-open throttle. The race was brought under safety car after just seven minutes, a decision warranted by a Ginetta in our class spinning directly in front of James even with the race neutralised. The safety car stayed out until the 24-minute mark, long through the pitstop window opening. This left me a difficult decision to take – all of our key competition was pitting to take advantage of the slower pace under the safety car, but James had barely had any race time. I left him out in the hope he’d get some chance to drive the car properly, and after the race went live again, I called the car in at the last possible moment before the pit window closed.
There followed one of the best driving experiences of my life. I joined a drenched circuit, so wet that even pulling second gear in the pitlane led to wheelspin, with small rivers crossing the track in half a dozen places. Being the only ones pitting outside the safety car period, we were at the back of our class and, briefly, dead last overall. I had fifteen minutes to fight back.
The circuit was treacherous, faster traffic was coming through, but I felt completely in touch with the car and was comfortable taking it well beyond the grip limit for lap after lap. Racetracks are generally extremely slippery in the wet, and among them Rockingham is famously lethal, giving the impression of driving a colossally powerful car with nowhere near enough tyre to control it. In short, exactly my idea of a good time! The conditions made all sorts of new and interesting passing manouvres possible, including going around the outside of competition, and in the end I was able to fight all the way back to second in class and twelfth overall. Here’s the race video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlE_zStrHa4
I got out of the car feeling absolutely elated. Not only was it a truly wonderful drive to finish on, but we’d made it through the season. This leggy old 90s repmobile had been reborn as a racing car, and two novices had not only got it to the chequered flag in every race, but it had finished on the podium every time as well. The final tally from five races was two class wins, three second places, four poles and four fastest laps. In short – beyond my wildest dreams.
All that was left to do was load the car up, drive it home after the most successful year I could have imagined, and start planning for the next one…
Edited by McSam on Wednesday 4th July 20:43
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