ON
TRACK WITH RICK PEARSON No. 35
By Rick Pearson
After a dynamic amount of work to scrape the ActiveShop Clio back into one piece following the enormous impact with the barriers at Jarama (big respect to Tony, my mechanic from the Mark Fish crew for this element of the European tour who managed to fix the car and drive halfway up Europe,) I was sat in a repaired car on the track at Magny Cours on the following Thursday afternoon. So two non-finishes in a row and a completely different circuit to try and set the car up for. It had the makings of another tough weekend.
Magny Cours was smooth where Jarama was bumpy, narrow where it was wide and had oceans of gravel and tyres where Jarama had barriers. Luckily this time, we knew the engine was up to full steam and we had the benefit of an extra two hours track time (gratefully received, thank you Renault) to try and find a set-up and learn the circuit. This was all wasted however. For after 5 sessions of the 6 tests, we still had dire handling problems that were killing our times and we were going nowhere fast.
A very dejected Rick and Tony bumped into a little man from Renault who coincidentally turned out to be the chassis engineer for the V6. Having explained the problem, he turned round and pointed out that the car would do exactly that if we hadn't put the special new part in the front suspension. This part appears to have been a secret.
It cured the problem, but now we were back to square one in trying to find a set-up and had only 30 minutes to do so. It was the usual story for qualifying day with one session first thing in the morning and the second at lunchtime in the heat of the day.
The V6 engine is pretty susceptible to the heat and the first session proved to be over 1.5 seconds quicker than the second is. Sadly I wasn't really awake for the first session and after some minor adjustments went 0.5 seconds quicker in the second. But once again we were down the dangerous end of the grid, with my Italian nemesis, Tibaldo lined up directly behind me.
No qualifying race, so as soon as they had swept up the six destroyed cars from the two litre Clio race (this time they all walked away, but one was very lucky.) the massed Clio ranks headed off. Having qualified 29th of 38 I was hoping for a bit of natural attrition in front like in Spa. However, with just a few fallers, I had to do all the hard work myself and a quality race ensued which saw me finish 20th. This is however, still at least ten places behind where we should be and we still seem to have a significant lack of pace in the car/driver/both that needs to be addressed.
The highlight of the race for me was undoubtedly a return clash between our favourite Italian and myself: He carelessly attempted to pass me around the outside at the Adelaide hairpin on the opening lap, in a dramatic reply of the Schuey Vs Coulthard incident at the same place last year. I swept to the outside of the track and introduced him to the grass. He took offence and slammed into the side of my car, attempting to knock me off and bending the steering. Quite what he did to his own car was less obvious, but he slowed gradually towards the back of the field and I felt pretty vindicated.
So a mixed weekend in France and just three rounds (Assen, Nurburgring and Estoril) left to run this year (although this represents a third of the season).
Thoughts now tend to turn to next year and rumours abound as to what I might be doing. As ever it is all subject to funding, but I have been offered a drive in the ETCC! Alternatively, I am still hopeful of securing a deal to return to the BTC package and there are some interesting rumours as to whom the V6 Trophy will support next year: Currently the rumours in the Italian camp are that we will support the ETCC on the Eurosport Super racing weekend (which would mean live TV coverage for qualifying and race) whilst the Germans believe we will be supporting the European rounds of the Formula 1 Championship. Now that would be fun. The French are, as ever, telling us Brits nothing.
Have a good week one and all!