After and early start to Test on the Friday afternoon (we’d changed spring rates just before the weekend) the Monster Griff was out after lunch. On completing two laps to warm up the tyres, I felt a slight wiggle from the back and decided to take it easy for one more lap. The next corner was Charlies, a fast 90 degree right hander and on the apex – BANG – the car lost all steering and brakes and shot off towards the tyre wall. Memories of Graham Walden’s massive damage last year were before my eyes as a lucky kiss form a grass bump gave me partial steering/brakes. I coasted up next to the wall.

Investigation showed the front nearside hub sheared and the wheel was held on, sort of, by the disc. TVRcarparts found me another and after working all night and qualifying over lunch we started at the back of the Grid. A good thing it turned out as there was a huge incident at the front and my usual slot was heavily involved.

Anyway, with help from many others, including the competition, we were out and made Group 2nd from nothing with no brakes and poor handling, so thanks to everyone. The Spirit of TVR Racing obviously lives on.

Graham takes up the story on the Official TVR site.
VR European Challenge Rounds 1 & 2 Cadwell Park
Date posted: 29/04/2009

TVR European Challenge Rounds 1 & 2 Cadwell Park

I really like racing at Cadwell so it was a bit of a wrench to be a spectator for the opening round of the 2009 season. Cadwell is a fast, tight and technical circuit, which gives both huge rewards when you get it right and huge problems when you get it wrong; they don’t call it the mini Nurburgring for nothing.

For me, Cadwell started on Friday with a phone call from Andy Race asking if I could help with a new front stub axle for his Griff. He’d broken one in his first test session, and had managed to get one as far as TVR Power. A quick phone call to Jamie (Castle Race Engines) had him jumping on his bike to pick it up and meet me further up the M42 towards Nottingham, where I picked it up and delivered it to Andy at 10pm leaving him with a cold night’s work under the stars.

The entry list was looking encouraging for the first round of the year with 19 cars. Sadly Leigh Jones had an engine problem on the Wednesday so would miss out in the now V8 powered ex Kevan Gore Tasmin. This left 18 cars, 6 in class A, 4 in class B and 7 in class C

Qualifying as the second session out in the morning was still quite cold, and 17 cars headed out on track, Andy Race missing out as he was still struggling to get the front suspension back together. The session would see a titanic battle for pole between newcomer Danny Winstanley in an ex Dutch GT Tuscan and Mike Saunders in the ever more developed Cerbera. Mike managed to put in a blinding lap to take the pole but admitted it would be difficult to repeat it in the race. Tom Stewart took the class B pole in his Red Griffith with Christina Totty taking Class C in her immaculate 3000M. Sadly Nick Record would connect with the barrier in his ex Geoff Parkinson 3000m, damaging a suspension mount and would take no further part in the day. Tim Broughton also blew the Turbo in his 2ltr Cosworth powered class B Tasmin.

The BRSCC arranged for Andy Race to do his 3 qualifying laps behind the pace car in the lunch hour. This required the Marshals to give up some of their lunch break and stay on post so thanks go to them all for that. With Andy Race qualified that took the grid back up to 16 cars.

Race 1.
Cadwell is quite a narrow circuit, and as the flag dropped both Danny and Mike were slow away, with cars having to take avoiding action, The Tuscans of Tony Abrams and Dean Cook were spun out and with nowhere to go a fast starting Christina Totty collected one of them. Marc Hockin took the opportunity to pull out a commanding lead halfway round the first lap, only for the Red Flag to come out due to the cars and debris on the start line.

After a lengthy delay to remove the three cars of Dean, Tony and Christina and make sure the drivers were ok, the race was restarted with 13 cars. Again the front runners were slow away, struggling with lots of power and cold slicks, although this time everyone managed the first corner safely. Slight contact between Tom Stewart and Danny Winstanley though would see them both pull off the circuit with punctures.

Just as the race started to settle down, Dave Chant had a moment at Barn and ended up in the barrier bringing the red flag out again, and the cancellation of the race. Due to time constraints and a tight timetable 2 red flags means the race is re-run at the end of the day if there is time, a very rare occurrence In TVR racing and I can only recall it happening once since I started with the Tasmin challenge in 2001.

Race 2
Lots of work in the paddock would see Danny, Tom and Dave Chant fixing their cars and on the grid for the second race.

As the flag dropped on race 2 the start was thankfully less eventful and everyone got away cleanly, with Marc Hockin getting the early lead. The race soon settled down to 3 main fights. Marc Hockin and Danny fighting over 1st and second, Sam Head and Mike Saunders fighting for 3rd and 4th with a 4 way battle for class C between the Tasmins of Dave Chant, Keith Vaughan-Williams and Tim Davis and the 3000M of John Simpson. Class B was more widely spaced with Tom Stewart out front trailing the Class A battle, Andy Race working his way from the very back of the grid and the others in between.

Marc and Sam both managed to keep the two faster cars behind them or the first 6 laps, before Danny made his way into first place and Mike moved up into third. Danny soon pulled out a lead, and Mike was quickly all over the back of Marc.

With Marc and Mike battling hard but fairly at every corner this allowed Danny to extend his lead to a comfortable six seconds, which he wound maintain all the way to the flag taking a fine overall win in his first race finish.

Sam also closed back in on the fight in front making it a 3 way battle for second place, although the positions would stay the same to the chequered flag.

The class C battle would see no less than 4 changes of leader, with John Simpson in the 3000M coming out on top in the end. Dave Chant’s race would finish early again when a rear hub carrier collapsed, a legacy of his race one contact with the barriers.

Andy Race looked set for a comfortable 2nd in class and 6th on the road, until the front disk, which was bent when the front hub broke on Friday, caused the pads to break up and he started to slow. Thankfully for Andy he managed to finish the race maintaining second in class behind Tom Stewart and only dropped a place on the road.

So in summary a very eventful weekend, possibly too eventful for some, with the midnight oil being burnt by many to get cars back out for Rockingham. There also seemed to be almost as many drivers at Cadwell without cars as there were with, so the grid is looking very strong for the rest of the year. We hope to be at Rockingham with the Tuscan and quite a few old faces are also aiming to be back on track by then with some very interesting new cars.

Graham Walden

www.tvrchampionship.co.uk

My “Man of the Meeting” for the season opener is Danny Winstanley. Putting a beautifully prepared FIA GT Tuscan on the grid would have been enough for me, but Danny pedalled really well, taking the lead from Marc Hockin (NOT easy to do) and winning one of the hardest races of the year. Anyone who’s been to Cadwell knows what I mean and all that in a new car to him. Oh yes…and he’s only 17! Well Done Danny and welcome aboard from all of us.