The refurbed shale car!
MILDENHALL 9TH APRIL 2022
Starting Thursday evening 7th April when we went to Bruno’s to pick the car up after he had completed a winter refurb including putting the engine in which had been refreshed and dynoed. The new radiator that was put on kept the engine a nice and cool 180F so happy with that (cheers Bruno)
Sue and Jordan helped Saturday morning to get everything ready on the car and fill the van with the race stuff. In the meantime, my brother Martin (pinky to those who know him from racing circles) was busy putting vinyl on the front wing with the names of our year long sponsors on it (thank you everyone who has sponsored the 415 team this year, it really helps with the tyres through the year) and thank you bro for doing the front wings again for me this year.
Got to Mildenhall and we were all ready for a great meeting! My first heat was going well until an incident coming out of bend 2 made the track blocked right in front of me so I took in hindsight the wrong decision to go left, got spun round and got hit (tractor towed me off!) Consolation started bad got worse as the driver overtried and finally slapped the fence with the outside rear to get a puncture and put me out of my misery (tractor towed me off!) Grand national had a great start and was going very well, car handling superb and was a pleasure to drive (thanks Dean and Paul for your tyre selection) a couple of reds got past and was in a good 3rd spot with 6 laps to go then FIRE!! Pulled off onto the centre and tried to get help with putting the fire out, got out of the car!! But sadly, no red flag!! So the fire Marshalls had to let my car burn!! (Tractor towed me off!)
Back at the trailer and Neil Scriven pops over and says “I can fix that” about an hour or so later the car starts up and is put on the trailer to go home. Massive thank you to Neil Scriven and his team for their help.
Russ 415
NORTHAMPTON 10TH APRIL 2022
After a few hours sleep it was up again and off to Northampton (Brafield), got to Brafield and changed gears for a larger track from the tight Mildenhall track the night before. Had a good look round the car and got it ready to race.
Heat. Got a good start and went reasonably well to get a 6th place to qualify for the final and most importantly get some WCQR points. Quick check over the car and re fuel and we are ready for the final so went to watch a bit of the racing.
Final. Started car in the pits and couldn’t find gears, the clutch wasn’t clearing and it seemed it must have been from the damage caused the night before with the fire so a quick bleed of the clutch was needed, the team around me got it sorted (thank you everyone involved) What a great family this racing family is. Got out on track and still finding difficulties with selecting gears but thought I would persevere with it. After a few laps the yellows came out and we slowed down, the clutch at this time was beginning not to clear at all and as we started rolling under the yellow flags it was apparent that I was only going to damage the clutch material so I decided to pull off and that was end of meeting for us.
After 4 days in my possession, it was a trip from brafield to Bruno’s Sunday evening to drop the car off again for more work to be done on it.
Not the best weekend but we tried and we will be back stronger.
Thank you Sue and Jordan for your help all weekend and to all the others who helped in the pits and there were loads of people from race teams coming up to help this poor old bloke!!!!
Russ 415
