Tuesday 16th September 2014

Harris at Revival: PH Blog

Two races for Chris at Goodwood this year; read every detail here!

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Two races in this this year's Revival - and a couple of months ago I assumed I wouldn't ever race there again! That's partly down to the entry system, which isn't an 'entry' system at all, instead vehicle owners are sent an invite for their car or motorcycle, and this happens quite late in the year.

Sussex Trophy for '55-'60 sports racers

It's the most fantastic quirk of the Revival that you really can't just buy your way into the event - well, you can buy a car that already has an entry I suppose. But really the Goodwood team invite the cars and the drivers they want. And when the missive arrives, it's a Hogwarts-style letter requesting your attendance. It's all perfectly Goodwood.

The Sussex Trophy was a new race for me this year. It carries with it a delicious explanation: "For world championship sports and production sports-racing cars of a type that raced between 1955 and 1960". I was in a 1959 Lister Costin, the last chassis built, and therefore probably the car built just before the coupe I raced last year. It was prepared by Pearson's Engineering and driven by Richard Kent, a very handy young chap who has done everything from go-karts to Carrera Cup.

We ran an extensive pre-race test programme which involved a rather tasty lunchtime burger somewhere in London with the two of us and Richard's father John. Oh, and we bought some bungee cord to see if we might just be able make the belts helpful come the driver change. The Sussex trophy this year was a two-driver, one-hour race.

The Harris/Kent Lister. Quite fast

I'm probably way too blasé about just hopping into rare, expensive, potentially spiteful machinery having never even clasped eyes on it before, but there's no other way. You get offered something; you take your chance. And this car is massively exciting: the classic Lister chassis, the long, low, slippery Frank Costin body, 350hp and under 900kg. Oh, on 5 inch rear rims. It's power-to-rear-tyre-footprint-ratio is quite extreme.

If the recipe looks fruity on paper; in reality it's bordering on outrageous. Anything below fourth gear offering any kind of radius is an oversteer-management situation, the car just links Goodwood's open curves in one great slide. Actually, scratch that, it would oversteer in Fordwater, in fourth gear, so technically would slide anywhere on the track.

Qualifying was on the Friday morning at bleary-eye o'clock and we didn't do a bad job, but starting P12 left us plenty to do in a race of 30 cars. The pace at the front was stunning with a beautiful Ferrari 246S Dino setting pole on a 1 min 24.5 sec lap. We were four seconds slower than that, but the driver pairing wasn't bad and I reckoned we could strike upwards from the start. The omens looked very good when Richard had a storming start and was into ninth place at the end of lap one.

Looks a nice way to spend a summer evening

We cheered further when ninth became eighth and then he grabbed sixth, which he then held until the pit-stop window - which bumped us up to fourth. I headed off to put the champagne on ice, but had to leg-it back to jump in the car. Lady luck didn't help us though - on my first full lap there was an almighty shunt at Woodcote leaving a Lister Knobbly a few feet shorter than intended, so we dropped back to eighth.

The car was loose as hell, but dragging it back up to sixth was superb fun. The skinny rears can handle about half the power in third gear through the first apex at Madgwick (my confused brain always imagines Ray Winstone saying "Piiiiiip" when I scoot through there) and you just try to add as much grunt as you can for the second apex and ensure the slide isn't too gratuitous on the exit, because grass is always slippery. And at Goodwood it mostly leads to an accident.

The results show that I then lost a position, but I can't for the life of me remember who got by! No matter - I was in a fantastic dice with John Pearson in his brother's Lister Knobbly by then and didn't really care. I eventually squeezed by, with John giving me a most Goodwood-like point of the index finger to direct me when and where he wanted me to pass.

P12 from qualifying left plenty to do

And as if to prove that good deeds are sometimes rewarded, on the last lap I was baulked by a slower Maserati, allowing John to nip by and keep his sixth place!

The TT is, perhaps unfairly, billed as the main event at the Revival, which is saying something when you can muster a D-Type grid nearly twice the size of a Carrera Cup race.

It's the race with the GTOs in it, only this year there wasn't a normal 250GTO on the entry. The stunning '64 GTO, which is pokier and less beautiful and J. Alesi used as a battering ram in the 2013 race was there again, as was a stunning 330 GTO, and several 250 SWB/Cs. So the grid was a dribblesome collection of unobtanium, all of which would be driven in a way that suggests no one actually cares about their values.

I was in what is called a semi-lightweight E-Type, owned and driven by Gary Pearson. It's the car that led Jaguar to make the all-aluminium lightweight E-Type that the company is now re-creating using actual chassis numbers. The first few E-Type Roadsters built were sold to selected customers, many of whom were chosen because they would promote the new sports car by going racing, hence the cars were developed and used lightweight aluminium panels.

Well at least this was in qualifying...

This E-Type is one of two that were entered into the TT in 1961, but were withdrawn before the actual race -supposedly because they weren't competitive enough. Luckily, in the hands of Gary Pearson, and with a 2014 version of the wide-angle 3.8-litre straight six, the same isn't true today.

But the opposition looked very stiff from the start - the Cobras are so powerful and actually stop very well, and the Maserati Tipo 151 looked like it was going 175mph standing still in the paddock. What a sensational looking machine.

Once again the pre-event test schedule was extensive - inasmuch as I rode my motorcycle to Gary's workshop so I could have a nose around and see a few cars. The first time I'd properly tightened the belts was for qualifying and, with some level of predictability, about three minutes later I was facing the wrong way on the grass, on the exit of Madgwick, thankfully the inside.

The spin actually began an hour earlier in the paddock. I needed the wheel adjusted to come a little closer to me and, post alteration, it wasn't straight. When the car moved into a slide, something in my head told me I already had lock in place, when I didn't. It was a bizarre feeling, and I just let the car spin to the inside. It took a while to get the motor started again, and I just sat there cranking it thinking 'I bet I look a colossal knob'.

And this one too!

Up and running again, I managed one fast flyer and on the following lap I was at the point of maximum braking into Woodcote when the rear just let go and spun me towards the barriers. The car stopped short of them and my underpants bore the brunt of the incident. Again it took some time to get the old girl started and I just rolled it straight into the pits for Gary to try for a fast lap on new rubber, and then give a scrubbed set for the race. Ten minutes, five laps, two spins. What a difference a year makes!

The car felt fast but with big amounts of oversteer. I couldn't get on the power early enough on the exit of Madgwick or Lavant, and in the quick stuff you just held on for dear life! It was massively exciting and enjoyable, but probably not quite as quick as the package could be. The motor was just immense though and the gearchange very quick - both are built by Gary himself - find me another TT regular who builds their own cars and then drives them as fast as he does!

He managed a 1:27.4 sec lap to give us P11, but the pace was much hotter this year with seven cars under 26.9. Last year a 26.9 gave us P4 in the Lister Coupe. But we felt we had a good chance of making places on race day, and a few set-up tweaks might calm the rear axle a little.

See why people get excited about the Revival?

For the second time that weekend a team-mate of mine made a stunning start - Gary was up to eighth at the end of lap 1, then seventh after the following lap, and then it all went a bit wrong - he spun on some fluid coming out of the chicane at the end of lap 3 and somehow wasn't collected by the pack immediately behind him. It looked like complete mayhem. Getting the motor cranked was slow again and it left us down in 13th place.

The next 15 minutes were pure class from Gary. He set about catching a gaggle of cars stuck behind the Davis/Plato Corvette (which Jason said was an animal, even with power backed down to around 570hp!) and went to work. It took him five laps to catch them, two laps later we were in seventh! It was mega to watch - all the cars sliding around the place. The 'Vette was laying black lines through the kink on the main straight!

If the pit-stop window didn't work in the Sussex Trophy, it couldn't have been better here. The safety car came out for Ludovic Caron's nasty looking crash at Madgwick in a Cobra and we ended up fourth on track. The restart was a bit messy, but I managed to nip past the slower cars and then simply waited for the faster tackle to arrive on my tail pipes. I knew there were several cars I couldn't match on lap time now behind me, the first of which was a Bizzarrini driven by Bobby Verdon-Roe, which fills your mirrors with more menace than you really want.

Not bad for a first race in the car!

He drew up behind me and then I simply had to go defensive for several laps. It was great, clean fun - I had the advantage out of Madgwick and Lavant and could cover him through Woodcote, he had some serious grunt, but there was no way around the outside, and he had to keep one eye on the Nicoll-Jones/Lidell E-Type behind him. I was beginning to wonder how long I could stay ahead when I saw a load of tyre smoke at Lavant and nothing car shaped in my mirrors! Yes! They'd tangled and released me! A quiet ride to finish in fourth?

Sadly not. That red E-Type recovered, reeled me in and passed me. I just couldn't live with its pace, it ran a 25.8 in the race (compared to my 26.9, which was still quicker than we went in qualifying) but well beyond what we're capable of, and with the Bryant Cobra's motor going south in the closing stages, they nipped onto the bottom of the podium, and we had fourth.

Yes, it would have been great to get a pot, but we climbed seven places and did the best we could. Even without the spin earlier, I think we'd have struggled to keep that red E-Type behind us.

The Le Mans dream team reunited!

Once again it was simply the best race weekend imaginable. Yes, we all like winning, but the sense of honour you feel just being able to drive cars like this, in this manner, in front of so many people does dampen more reckless, competitive urges.

Gary's E-Type is the most beautiful, satisfying car to drive fast around Goodwood. It slides with complete predictability, the motor is immense all the way to 6,500rpm and only at the very end was the middle pedal getting long.

Those customers taking delivery of the six continuation full lightweights have as much envy from me as I can muster.

And if you still haven't been to the Revival, make sure you do next year. It really is the most enjoyable motorsport event of the year.

 

[Images: LAT and John Kent]

[HeMightBeBanned]

Sadly I couldn't get to The Revival this year, but I watched much of the racing on the excellent live stream. The TT on Sunday was pure brilliant to watch. Well done Monkey.