Altherm 1000 Enduro 4/5th June 2010 - Hampton Downs
At short notice Motorsport Services offered me an enduro drive in a Mini Challenge car. Minis are BMW purpose race built and run the John Cooper works supercharged engine. I had no opportunity to test before official practice. Four other Minis were racing with championship drivers. Ryan Bailey who claimed 2nd overall last season, my partner Gavin Dawson, a top 3 driver - Kirkpatrick and Melhop.
Jamie McNee, a Formula Toyota driver drove with Melhop.
Friday
Car seat adjusted, radio gear fitted, drink dispensing equipment installed and my cool suit ready. Gavin my driving partner was meant to show me the ropes but didn't arrive until mid day so I went out anyway.
Found it a very comfortable drive, great brakes with ABS, sticky tyres, No limited slip diff which meant that you had to be very careful feeding in the power on corner exits.
Much to my surprise I set the quickest lap times of the day for all Minis in that first session, they didn't bother with the showing me the ropes stuff after that.
Qualifying
Two sessions, one for each driver. I was expected to take pole and start and finish the race. I did pole just 1/100 sec ahead of the next car.
Race
Fine weather. I followed Gavin's instructions and got a great launch opening up a good lead in the first lap. Then a safety car closed us all up again! After 1 hour I had a three quarter lap lead and went for our driver change, refuel etc. Car had run faultlessly, already one Mini had retired.
Gavin drove consistently for 2 hours but handed over to me with the Bailey / Kirkpatrick car hard on his bumper. He had suffered massive brake overheating.
I went out and put in 20 hot laps to catch our competition, then they had an unexpected pit stop, after that we were 3 laps ahead. All ran well until the gremlins struck 10 minutes from the end. Firstly it looked like I'd run out of fuel and have to pit which in a Mini takes ages, so I was instructed to short shift and slow down. Worse still a clanging noise was coming from the front suspension and my steering had become very vague. The other Mini overtook me twice, but I managed to limp to a win by half a lap.
Just 2 and a bit litres of fuel was left. My left front wheel was held together by 18 6 mm cap screws and was slowly falling apart. By the finish only 4 screws were left holding the middle section to the rim and massive flexing was taking place.
Conclusion
A nail biting finish! Only 2 Minis made it over the finish line. I went home with The Mini Challenge Enduro trophy and some bubbly. A very enjoyable day, made some useful friendships, got very hot and sweaty.
I may be invited to do another enduro at Taupo soon.
Regards Andre
|
|
