Easter at Brands Hatch

The second round of the BRSCC Open Sports Car Championship was held at Brands on Easter Monday. The meeting was also to include Colway Porsche 924, Rain-X Road Going Saloon, Formula Ford and European Boss Formula, championship races.

There was a test session on Easter Sunday and the Loxwoods LM3000 was duly present to set the car up on Allan Rennie's favourite track. On arrival the team made their way straight to their garage in the pits, passing on their way the Boss cars set up of European Aviation. This consisted of two transporters, hospitality coach, marquee, dining area, barbecue complete with chefs. Also in the pits was Tony Worswick with his Jordan 194 , Nigel James (Reynard F3000), Dave Shelton with his Benneton F1 and Geoff Farmer (Pacific 195).

Despite the fact that Mike Gacoigne of Jordan F1 (and a friend of Allan Rennie's) was driving one of the European Aviation cars, the team didn't get invited to breakfast, so they set about unloading the LM3000 and performing the pre-test checks.

The first session started at 9.30 and was to last 25 minutes. Allan set about checking out the brakes and fuel pressure which had caused problems previously. Returning to the garage after some 20 minutes of pounding round the Indy circuit, Allan reported that the brakes were fine, the fuel pressure seemed to be holding up but the car was handling like a demented pig! The fuel pump was changed as a precaution, as was the brake fluid. The front springs were changed and the dampers set to slightly softer whilst the rear ride height was increased to try and stop the car over-steering. Data logging confirmed that 3rd & 4th gears were slightly too low and a change of ratios was planned to take place after the second session. The lap times were interesting – the majority were in the 47 second region but Allan had got down into the 46s, his lowest being 46.02 seconds. Remember that figure.

At 12.30 Allan pulled out of the pit garage for the second session. As he came past the pit wall the he was holding a tighter line, the adjustments to the set up had cured the over-steer coming out of Clearways and Clark.

As he rounded Clearways again Allan dived for the pit entrance with smoke bellowing from under the rear bodywork. With fire extinguishers at the ready the rear bodywork was removed by the team to reveal a broken oil pump belt and oil pouring out of a hole in the sump. A broken con-rod was suspected at least. To say Allan was upset would be an understatement.

The Cosworth V6 in the LM3000 is a unit specifically designed for the series and is not readily available, Allan did not have a spare and neither did any of the other teams in the series. However all the other teams came over to the garage with contact numbers and suggestions as to where one might be sourced in time. They were definitely out of the race on Easter Monday.

With the car back in its transporter and on its way back to Sussex, Chris and Allan took up residence in the pit garage being used by Nigel James and his F3000 Reynard and Tony Worswick with his Jordan 194, to watch the teams preparing their cars for practice. Tony Worswick's garage set up was particularly impressive with air jacks which could raise the car up to a comfortable working height – to save his mechanics bending over!

As the cars left the pits the noise was wonderful, partcularly the X–wing Tyrrell driven by Paul Stoddart.

There was a good crowd at the meeting which featured 3 races before the BRSCC Open Sportscar Championship contenders took to the track. These featured the Formula Colway Porsche 924s, Rain-X Road Saloons (inexpensive to contest and good fun) and Formula Ford Zetecs.

The sports car race had LM3000s and two Radicals entered, the Prosport 1200 (Kawasaki powered) Radical driven by the very quick Michael Vergers. Pole position was held by Philip Armour with Michael Millard alongside, who led the field away on the warm up lap for the rolling start. The green light went on very late and Armour's LM got to paddock first followed by the similar car of Millard. Vergers sneaked his car from 5th to 3rd place. The cars held station until the 8 minute mark when Dave Brunsden tried to force his LM past the similar car of Chris Lord at Paddock, spinning in the process and dropping from 5th to 8th. Armour had built up a 10 second lead over Millard, Vergers and Lord. At 16 minutes Millard went off the circuit at McLaren hitting the tyre wall very heavily. The car was badly damaged, eventually returned to the paddock by truck in several bits. Such had been the impact that the shattered screen had entered the driver's compartment slicing into Michael's helmet!

Vergers Radical now moved into 2nd place but could not hold off a charging Chris Lord. Lord cut the deficit to Armour from 13 to 4 seconds but began to slow with the engine beginning to lose power. With 10 minutes to go Verger was poised to retake 2nd place but as he rounded Paddock the engine expired and he pulled off the track handing 3rd place to Dave Brunsden's LM who had worked his way back up the field after his spin.