ON
TRACK WITH RICK PEARSON #41
By Rick Pearson
"3 DAYS WITH YOUR OWN PRIVATE RACE-TRACK"
Hello once again! Welcome to an update on our preparations for this season's assault on the Clio V6 trophy on the Grand Prix circuits of Europe. As regular readers will know, we've been testing in the UK and abroad over the last few weeks and the season will shortly be upon us.
First outing of the New Year for me, in my freshly built 3 litre Clio V6 was at sunny Snetterton in Norfolk. With a solid day's chassis testing and a further day setting up the new telemetry systems in conjunction with my trusty team-mate, Paul Lomax we got 2 great days of trouble-free running, albeit reasonably gently paced to ensure we would have both cars in one piece for our warm weather test in Spain just a week later.
I still managed to take a respectable chunk off my previous best lap time and felt we were pretty good shape for this early in the season. So, one week later we jetted into Valencia for 3 days warm weather testing. Due to the exorbitant cost of track time in the UK it was cheaper for us to trot all the way to Spain than keep going back to Donington or Silverstone. The track was shared with no more than 5 other cars at any time, and despite spending large chunks of time making changes to the settings on the car, and limiting the time spent in the cars to avoid exhaustion, I still managed to run over 400 laps of the Grand Prix quality facility over the 3 days. Consider also that the Clio V6 uses around 1 litre of fuel per lap and that we used 800 litres between the 2 cars over 3 days and you can understand it was worth going to Spain where it's around 30 pence per litre against over 70 pence in the UK!
The Valencia facility is spectacular, located just outside the city on a gently sloping hillside. This makes it excellent for both the teams, who can stand on the pitwall and observe most of the corners ahead of them, and also any spectators who can gather on the hillside above the back straight and see the entire track laid out beneath them. Combine this with a challenging and varied track layout which includes nearly every type of corner from fast sweep (turn 1), through hairpin (turn 2) uphill 60 mph chicane to adverse camber corners and a long straight. It is not hard to see why it is the F1 circus' favourite test venue.
With 3 days great, and once again reliable running (unheard of in a Clio V6, the Mark Fish team had obviously done a magnificent job over the winter!) I have never felt more comfortable at the wheel of the car. This familiarity has enabled me to lift my cornering speeds and shorten my braking distances, although after being spat at the barriers a number of times last year I still have room to improve both myself and the car in this second area.We will be working closely with sponsors, Mintex, to improve this over the next couple of weeks before we head out to Magny Cours for round 1 in a fortnight.
We were also fortunate enough to be allowed to join GoldTrack for their day on the British Grand Prix circuit at Silverstone. Although we couldn't run anywhere near the limit in the V6 with members of the public exercising their pride and joys at the same time, we did however get some very valuable track day on a rare opening of the Grand Prix loop. We were also fortunate to be joined for the day by British Touring Car star, Phil Bennett who is also supported by our title sponsors, Freeparking.co.uk. Phil was on hand to provide driver coaching, track knowledge and even took the time to scare himself (and the track-day organisers) with a few laps in the Clio V6 which, let's just say, he found considerably less predictable than his Proton Touring Car!
It is worth recalling why the first two events of this years Championship (at Magny Cours and Silverstone Grand Prix circuits) are so critical to the team; only the drivers in the top 30 in the Championship are allowed to race in the third round at Monaco, supporting the Formula 1 cars in May. Whilst this is obviously any drivers dream, it is also a sponsors dream and we hope to raise sufficient sponsorship on the car(s) that go to Monaco to complete the season. So, if anyone knows of any companies organising client trips to Monaco who might like to have a company race-car and driver for the weekend, please let Rebecca know on the email below.
Next time I'll talk of the outlook for Magny Cours and the result of our final shakedown testing.