Endurance (8 hr) race prep
Discussion
Gents, do many of you take part in endurance events?
I'm racing in the Mission Motorsport Race of Remembrance in November at Anglesey (thread in the general motorsport forum for anyone interested) and have never done one of these long races.
Can anyone give any helpful pointers?! Working on the assumption that the car (a BMW Compact Cup car) will be set up correctly by a dude who knows about these kinds of things, what else should we be doing?!
The bottom line is this:
8 hour race
1 car with 4 drivers
Pitstops must be minimum of 3 minutes
I'm starting to wonder how we best plan driver times etc. We'll have a full day of testing on Anglesey the day before but we really want to get as much squared away before then as possible.
Cheers,
Ben
I'm racing in the Mission Motorsport Race of Remembrance in November at Anglesey (thread in the general motorsport forum for anyone interested) and have never done one of these long races.
Can anyone give any helpful pointers?! Working on the assumption that the car (a BMW Compact Cup car) will be set up correctly by a dude who knows about these kinds of things, what else should we be doing?!
The bottom line is this:
8 hour race
1 car with 4 drivers
Pitstops must be minimum of 3 minutes
I'm starting to wonder how we best plan driver times etc. We'll have a full day of testing on Anglesey the day before but we really want to get as much squared away before then as possible.
Cheers,
Ben
Superb stuff, thanks Graham 
I'd not thought about lots of those, especially going easy on the car on the test day - excellent point.
Also a good call is giving drivers a job to do during pitstops etc.
We're running with full support crew but, as always, the more (experienced) hands the better.
As it's Anglesey there aren't too many places for us drivers to wander off too but we'll make sure we have people close to hand.
Fitness: good question! We're a motley crew and all of us are big (and I mean properly big!) - this has had some impact on the type of car we can use and we're all too tall for a lot of mid engine stuff due to firewalls/bulkheads etc. I rally historic cars so am used to doing 18 hours driving as fast as I can. One of the others has just ridden his motorbike from Kabul to Goodwood so I've no worries about him. Another is a bit of a track fiend and the last one likes smoking cigars and eating steak - I'll have a word with him
Looking through the regs the stuff that stands out is as follows:
1) Each driver must do a minimum of 3 test laps.
2) A driver may not drive for more than 3 hours out of a 5 hour window.
3) Fuelling only allowed after 30 mins from start and before 30 mins from end.
As you point out we'll want to do a fair bit of work on the practicalities of getting straight in the driver seat and driver change overs etc. 3 drivers are 6'2'' - 6'4'' and the other 6' so we'll need to give that some thought and practice no doubt.
Hadn't thought about drinks etc.
Also need to come up with a very simple pit board plan - obviously we're not running with car to pit comms and I expect it'll be inches deep in rain during the race so that needs some thought.
Thanks again, really useful stuff.
Ben
I'd not thought about lots of those, especially going easy on the car on the test day - excellent point.
Also a good call is giving drivers a job to do during pitstops etc.
We're running with full support crew but, as always, the more (experienced) hands the better.
As it's Anglesey there aren't too many places for us drivers to wander off too but we'll make sure we have people close to hand.
Fitness: good question! We're a motley crew and all of us are big (and I mean properly big!) - this has had some impact on the type of car we can use and we're all too tall for a lot of mid engine stuff due to firewalls/bulkheads etc. I rally historic cars so am used to doing 18 hours driving as fast as I can. One of the others has just ridden his motorbike from Kabul to Goodwood so I've no worries about him. Another is a bit of a track fiend and the last one likes smoking cigars and eating steak - I'll have a word with him
Looking through the regs the stuff that stands out is as follows:
1) Each driver must do a minimum of 3 test laps.
2) A driver may not drive for more than 3 hours out of a 5 hour window.
3) Fuelling only allowed after 30 mins from start and before 30 mins from end.
As you point out we'll want to do a fair bit of work on the practicalities of getting straight in the driver seat and driver change overs etc. 3 drivers are 6'2'' - 6'4'' and the other 6' so we'll need to give that some thought and practice no doubt.
Hadn't thought about drinks etc.
Also need to come up with a very simple pit board plan - obviously we're not running with car to pit comms and I expect it'll be inches deep in rain during the race so that needs some thought.
Thanks again, really useful stuff.
Ben
The pitstops have to be a minimum of 3 minutes so yes, that needs some thinking on.
Re tyres, we've got to run a specific set but have a choice of soft or medium compound (they're a Nankang product) - early tests on an MX5 show they go on for ever! We're banking on having 12 in total - probably use half a set on practice day leaving us 2 new sets and a half for the race.
We'll need to do some benchmarking of who is quickest, we've never driven together before or even seen the car yet!
Re tyres, we've got to run a specific set but have a choice of soft or medium compound (they're a Nankang product) - early tests on an MX5 show they go on for ever! We're banking on having 12 in total - probably use half a set on practice day leaving us 2 new sets and a half for the race.
We'll need to do some benchmarking of who is quickest, we've never driven together before or even seen the car yet!
Gents,
Thanks very much for the posts on this thread. Sorry not to reply until now, we've been a tad busy getting stuff together. Only 10 days to go now.
We've covered a fair bit of the suggestions. Stores for the garage are coming on a treat and we've recruited a superb race manager (and ex Para RSM) to run us like a bunch of know-nothing children
We took the Compact for a bit of a shakedown at Abingdon last week. It goes very well and is a superb little car. Plenty of room inside too now we've fitted the fat boy seat!
We've been advised from the previous owner that at Anglesey they plan on it drinking a litre of juice per minute on the longer GP circuit layout and it has a 53 litre tank. That gives us something to go on now to start planning the stops.
We have a full day testing on the Friday, quali on Sat morning (4 x 30 minute sessions - 1 per driver), then the race from 0800-1600 on the Sunday.
Does anyone have any advice about how best to order the drivers by ability?
It will be a rolling start, 30-35 cars, then all hell let loose!
Cheers,
Ben
Thanks very much for the posts on this thread. Sorry not to reply until now, we've been a tad busy getting stuff together. Only 10 days to go now.
We've covered a fair bit of the suggestions. Stores for the garage are coming on a treat and we've recruited a superb race manager (and ex Para RSM) to run us like a bunch of know-nothing children
We took the Compact for a bit of a shakedown at Abingdon last week. It goes very well and is a superb little car. Plenty of room inside too now we've fitted the fat boy seat!
We've been advised from the previous owner that at Anglesey they plan on it drinking a litre of juice per minute on the longer GP circuit layout and it has a 53 litre tank. That gives us something to go on now to start planning the stops.
We have a full day testing on the Friday, quali on Sat morning (4 x 30 minute sessions - 1 per driver), then the race from 0800-1600 on the Sunday.
Does anyone have any advice about how best to order the drivers by ability?
It will be a rolling start, 30-35 cars, then all hell let loose!
Cheers,
Ben
Edited by benjj on Monday 27th October 11:48
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