Blackcat racing news

Although We’ve not been racing yet this season its still been a busy year for the Black Cat Racing Team.

Expanding our role as Freelance Race engineer, we started the season in Spain with the moore Racing Radical at the Ascari Circuit, we then went on to team manage the car for the team at Rockingham. The main team were at Zolder, so I headed to Rockingham with three mechanics a driver and the car. An interesting weekend resulted in a win and a podium.

I’ve Just returned from Working at Croft with the GTF Race team running a pair of Corvette powered Sagaris racers int he 2.5 hour Britcar race.

Our own Sagaris is on its wheels and should soon have its roll cage in place.

The Tuscan is waiting for its dampers to be rebuilt and will be on track at the end of may at snetterton, our first race of the season.

The Tasmin is also in build with a new much more powerful 24v engine.

With a successful trial Outing in 2009 The Famous Topless Tasmin will be available to hire on an arrive and drive basis in 2010. It’s being fitted with a more powerful Cosworth 24v V6 engine taking the power over 200 bhp, and some other subtle tweeks to get the suspension geometry dialed in with the slicks. We will then have a car easily able to compete at the front of Class C and reproduce its Tasmin Challenge Class winning form.

Once our new Sagaris GT -V8 hits the track in 2010 our existing Series Winning Tuscan Will also be available for hire if you prefer running in class B
If you would like to discuss opportunities Please dont hesitate to drop me an e-mail at wal@blackcatracing.net

Oulton Park is the final race for 2009, and we’ll be there in the Tuscan, aiming to put on a good fight with the A cars, showing them what a class B car can do. It will also be a chance to have a good tussle with Kevan Gore our old sparing partner in his imaculate AJP v8 Powered Tuscan Speed Six

With a limited program in the Tuscan Whilst we Build the New Sagaris Bodied Car, we took the opportunity to Prepare the Tasmin for its First Race in almost 5 Years.

Nick Simpson would be Driving the car in his first race.

A problem with the cooling system Saw nick cover only 3 laps in qualifying but that was enough to get him on the grid.

Race 1 was Dry and Nick put in a good performance to get the car to the finish with no dramas. We knew that the car was giving away a lot of power to the rest of the class C cars, as its still running the 04 Spec engine which has very limited Mods. Despite that and the old tyres the lap times were excellent for a first race.

Race 2 was very very wet, and a nervous Nick took the start, falling back a bit off the line but then holding station  with the other cars, matching lap times against cars on full wet tyres. As the Flag Fell Nick Crossed the lone for his second race finish from two starts, no spins or off’s and a good day in the office

With a limited program this year we dragged the Tuscan out for rockingham. It took a couple of days prep to get the car ready as It hadnt been run since it blew another gearbox in July 08 at Angelsey.

With britcar taking all the testing on the friday there was no time for us to try the car before qualifying late on the sat.

a couple of laps to bed the car in, which included running down the pit lane a couple of times to find some space, and just as I was about to push for a lap a spinner at turn 1 laid down lots of oil.

Needing to get a decent lap time in I still had to push through turn 1 which was very hairy as the car moved across the oil. Kevan in his brand new Tuscan Speed Six  found out just how much and wiped the back end off on the concrete wall.

I was fairly pleased with 1st in class and 6th on the road.

Race 1

a good start would see me upto 3rd on the road ahead of the next class B car Tom Stewart in 4th. My race would be short lived though the throttle cable snapping at the end of the first lap, leaving me to coast back to the paddock on tickover.

Race 2

It looked like a good result was going to be hard work. starting last on the grid and 25th due to the dnf in race 1. When the lights went out I just nailed it, going fro zero to 90 in just under 7 seconds to launch  my self up the order. the end of the lap would see me 5th overall and second in class.

a race long battle with Tom would see plenty of overtaking resulting in me taking the win and 4th on the road.

Not a bad day in the office

After the Crash(s) at Cadwell Park we had 2 weeks until the biggest TVR Event for 60 years. The 60th Birthday celebrations at Rockingham.

The car was pulled apart, bits were sent off to be fixed or replaced, and the car was ready ( just) for the qualifying  session, although we missed practice.

Qualifying saw us 5th on the Grid 1st in class by almost 1 second, on a 30 car grid.

A great start has us running 3rd overall for the first two laps until the gearbox exploded and we coasted to a halt.

That was the end of our Rockingham weekend, and we also then missed the final two rounds of the season at Oulton Park  and Rockingham. Instead concentrating on  the 2008 season.

The engine was completely rebuilt by  castle race engines and i picked the car up from them on the friday, to take to cadwell for friday night testing ahead of the race on sunday.

Cadwell was a little damp, but I headed out and the car felt fantastic with lots of grip and a very tractable engine.

In the third session pushing on hard, the Throttle pedal jammed open at 135 mph into a 50 mph corner. Despite my best efforts ater killing the engine there was no way i could make the corner.

I hit the tyre wall and went straight through it, ripping the bonnet off and setting fire to the front of the car. The fire was quickly put out using the on board extinguisher, and the car dragged back to the paddock.

The car was a mess but the chassis looked ok and the wheels pointing roughly in the right direction.

We took the car to carzone in louth who lent us their workshop and with the help of Andrew Varrall and parts from many of the other competitiors after about 60 man hours we got the car in good enough shape to race it on Sunday.

We missed qualifying as we were still putting the car back together so started the race from the back of the grid.

As the race started I over took 4 cars off the line and then Andy Race up the inside on the 2nd corner. Another lap saw another car dispatched and we were now on the tail of the class leader!

We were all over the back of the car in front and much quicker. I came out of the hair pin and lined him up for a move out of Barn corner.

Then suddenly the front of the car disappeared in a cloud of oil smoke which quickly turned to flames. Before I had time to think the car spun on its own oil and headed into the barriers again, this time on fire before the impact.

Once again swift action by the marshals put the fire out, but covered the engine bay in dry powder. Dry Powder is good for putting fires out but is also very corrosive, as we would ind out later.

So once again this year another DNF, after what should have been another win.

It took a good few weeks to track the Pembrey problems down. It was an intermittent wiring problem on the crank sensor and a missing lock nut from part of the  throttle linkage between the throttle bodies, very small problems but very difficult to find.

With the car fixed and running like a dream on the Saturday, it was straight down to Snetterton that night.

In qualifying the car felt unablanced and was difficult to drive, putting me across the grass a couple of times, and a spin after the hairpin.

After one reasonably good lap the oil pressure light came on and I coasted to a halt. The handling problem had been oil on the tyres, the Valley gasket had failed dumping engine oil everywhere. We could have risked the engine after replacing the gasket but not wanting to damage the engine we pulled  the car and didnt race.

Very disappointing as I’d made pole position by over 1 seconds on the chasing class B pack.

Disaster After the car ran perfectly at Mallory park, we got to Pembery to discovery the race battery was flat. Then we discovered a leak on the fuel rail. That was quickly fixed with a new ‘O’ Ring. But the car still wouldn’t run on all 8 cylinders.

We put the car out for Qualifying, and did just the 3 laps required to qualify. With the car running on 3 cylinders, I actually managed to out qualify 2 other cars much to my surprise.

With much work before the races We managed to get the car to start up on 8 cylinders but drop down to 5 after about 20 seconds. as there was no way we could risk running the engine like that we had to pull out so 2* DNS was the result for Pembrey.

Any Chance of retaining the Overall Title is long gone now, but with other teams in Class B also having problems, there is a slim chance of retaining the class B title.

Qualified on Class Pole 3rd on the Grid

Race 1 :- 1st in class 5th overall

Race 2 :- 1st in class 5th Overall fastest lap in class

Job done…

Qualified on Class pole 3rd on the grid

Race 1 :- DNF after battery teminal broke.

Race 2:- Started 16th on grid finished 3rd in class 4th overall

For 2007 we are proud to announce the following sponsors

Castle Race Engines : www.castle-race-engines.com : Engine Partner

RK Rose + Krieger : www.rk-online.co.uk : Sponsor

Newlun Performance : www.newlunperformance.com : Body work

ACT Products : www.actproducts.co.uk : Induction systems and Carbon Products

March 31 Oulton Park
April 9 Mallory Park
May 20 Silverstone
June 17 Snetterton
July 15 Cadwell Park
August 5 Rockingham
September 8/9 Pembrey

Well after a long hard seasonwith plenty of ups and downs, we finally clinched the overall and class titles for 2006.

At the last round at oulton park we needed a 3rd in class to take the title. Any thing less and especially a DNF  would hand it to Marc if he won the race.

Dispite only needing third I tried 110%  for the win, taking the lead in the 3rd lap and pulling away for another 4 laps, before missing a braking point into cascades, unsighted for a moment by a car beached in the gravel. A big spin, allowed Marc back through. Again I could have backed off then, but no the racer in me still wanted to fight for the win on the road. i closed right up to the back of Marc after a few more laps, and possibly with another couple of laps i could have got through. In the end though I came second on the road by 0.2 seconds on the line, but that was plenty to take the title.

The whole team have worked fantasticly hard all season, after problems at the start of the year, and a broken wishbone giving us problems at Mallory and Brands. The Involvment of Castle Race Engines was pivotal to our sucess this year and we wouldnt have made it to the title without them

Graham

For snetterton we finally had to buy some new  slicks, a wallet numbing 850 quid, but the original donated set were no longer usable.. I took the opportunity to put larger wheels and tyres on the rear, going from 18*9inch rims to 18*10 allowing a 280 wide rear tyre.

We had also had the engine mapped on the rollin road to eliminate some of the flat spots.

Quallifying was mixed with a reasonable time but a few moments and a spin at russell chicane. but I still managed to put the car on class Pole.

The race saw a good start maintaining the class lead. The class battle quickly evaporated when Marc’s throttle cable snapped and I settled into trying to take the class A tuscan in front of me. With his extra straight line speed it proved futile, although I could maintain the gap by pusing hard through the rest of the circuit he would pull away again on the straight, so I backed off and settled for 3rd overall and 1st in class.

With Marc’s DNF, we are now leading the class and the series overall.

The next round is Rockingham on 9th July.

A deal has been done that will see new driver Mark Freeman race the Tasmin from Rockingham onwards. Dulford automotive and TVR Car Parts will be looking after the car, and we hope for some good results.

The two weeks before Pembrey were very hectic. Castle Race Engines Decided that developing the 4ltr  engine, whilst a viable idea, was going to take too long and hinder us this season. To remedy this it was decided to buid a 5ltr engine. This was completed at 9pm on the friday before the raceing on saturday and sunday, sono time for setup and fine tunng.

First Qualifying went reasonable well, although not as quick as hoped, putting us second on the grid. Investigation in the paddock showed a damaged plug lead had had us running on only 7 cylinders. so with that changed and the fuel mapping increased we set off for the race.

Lap 2 saw us take the lead at the hairpin and a couple of spirited laps before the tyres started to die saw a nice 6 second gap that we maintained to the flag.

The first win of 2006, and about time..

Sunday qualifying saw us on pole, The engine stuttered with our guessed mapping off the line and i dropped back a couple of places, before spining at the second corner into last place. Another spirited drive saw us carve through the pack back into second and closing in on marc before the red flags came out cutting short the race.

2006 so far ( 3 rounds in) has been a bit challenging, the first round at Oulton park saw a gearbox jammed in 4th and a limp round to3rd place.

Silverstone was worse still with an ecu problem leaving me to limp around to claim poins for a finish.

After much work by the guys at castle race engines, Castle combe saw the car back on song to a 2nd place finish, a slightly rusty driver keeping us of the lead pace.

Still Pembrey in a couple of weeks should see normal business resumed

2005 was the first year we ran old faithfull Topless Taz for George Carter an Iain Jones.

George Drove at Croft and quite enjoyed it in the wet. For the mallory round Iain was to race her. We did some upgrades namley changing to a quaiff Diferential, and in testing the car was flying. unfortunetly some of the flying was across the gravel trap and into the tyre wall.

The car was quite heavily damaged, and Iain didnt get to race.

With some fantastic work though the car was back and ready for George to run It at Snetterton. A repaired chassis, new nose, new suspension and radiator and fans etc were all put together in record time.

By the end of the race though the engine was showing signs of being past its best. This was known all season, and there was no budget to refresh, so it was run with that engine.

what lies ahead for Topless, well the teams main push for 2006 is the development of the Tuscan, so the Tasmin will probably be rested for this season, and when we have the time, we’ll put in a new engine ( possibly the 24v 2.9 cosworth) and prepare her to a high standard for shows and special race apperences.

Whilst not directly running a second car this season the team are involved with assisting the running and management of a few other cars in the series.

Well the 2005 Season was an interesting, lots of up and downs, a couple of small mechanical problems that lost a couple of wins ( fuel pressure regulator failure and a distributor problem). But a fantastic year. A good fight with Marc Hockin in the Griff 500 all season culminating in a last race fight for the class win.

Everything seemed to be going to plan for that last race, and having lead the class all season we were in a good position, however we still needed to finish ahead of Marc.

Qualifying went well getting class pole with only the Thorpedo in front of us, and marc behind.
As the light swent out i got a good start and boxed Marc in behind the Thorpedo. Going round Gerrards for the first time i gambled on the grip on the outside and powered around to outright lead. Comming into the hairpin for the first time was a bit hairy as the brake bias adjuster had moved somehow, putting all the brakes on the rear.. I held Steve off only to see the red flags onthe start finish straight.

Cliff Jobson had rolled comming out of Gerrards and they needed to sweep the bits up. Cliff was ok though.

At the Restart I got another great start, straight into the lead. I held Steve of for about 4 laps untill he came thundering past on the straight with the help of a couple of extra 100 bhp .

The hairpin was still difficult but I was nicley holding Marc behind me. Untill 3 laps from the end I started getting a huge miss-fire and had to let marc past and limp home in second. 2 tiny screws in the distributor had come loose letting the ingition timing advance at will.

So we lost the win and the class win and came home second in both.

We did make amends though at an extra round at snetterton, where we managed to beat Marc and get our own back, even after helping him rebuild his suspension after a start line crash in the aborted first race.

On to 2006