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Its already November, time seems to be flying past and I am rushing around trying to get things organised for the first outing of the car at the end of the month. After a lot of searching of the classifieds I’ve finally tracked down a suitable trailer, the only downside was the 300 mile round trip to collect it, things we do for motorsport! The long list of jobs just seems to get bigger with each day I spend working on the car, a few of the items are essential and others are on the "nice to have" part of the list. One of these items is to replace the aging AVO shocks with something a bit more modern, lightweight and of course better. I have been running Nitron shocks on the Elise and have been very happy with these so I drop them a mail asking if they do anything for the Radical. As it turns out they don’t but being a very flexible company they offered to make a set of shocks to my specification. Now I might know how to set up camber and toe but the in’s and out’s of suspension shock absorbers is a black art to me. With this in mind I make sure that Nitron do the design based on their extensive knowledge. So one miserable November day I load the Radical up on the trailer and cart it over to Whitney in Oxfordshire for Nitron to have a look at. The meeting goes well, I get to see an example finished product which is fantastically made and about a 1/3 of the weight of the current dampers. I leave Nitron with yet another list! but this time its to take measurements of the current suspension, another job for the weekend. With the trackday looming I am also going through the "what tyres to run" quandary. As standard the Clubsport runs Avon cross-ply tyres, these were a control tyres for the Radical championship or at least they were before Radical moved to Matador back in 2003. The Matador’s are radial tyres but this would mean having to change a lot of the current suspension to allow for the large amounts of camber that radial tyres need to work. While talking to Radical about the options I also fired off a email to Avon to ask if there was anything they could do for me. The following morning I had a phone call from Avon and a very helpful chap called Brian Davies who took me through all the options available. Just from this phone call I knew that sticking with Avon and their cross-ply’s was going to be the right move. Brian recommends a different size and compound to the standard Radical tyres which he believes will give better grip and balance over a race distance. I arrange to collect 2 sets of tyres from their Melksham factory, the advantage of collecting them was they would fit them FOC and I get a little tour of the factory. Next job before the trackday was to change the gearing on the rear differential. On the Radical the differential is driven by a chain, much like a motorcycle, so to change the gearing you basically change the number of teeth on the rear sprocket. I was told this takes about 20mins to do….so an hour and a half later I’ve finally changed the gearing ready for the Brands Indy circuit. I am sure some peoples minutes are longer than mine! It’s the weekend before the trackday and one final job is left, oil change…sounds simple eh! yeah ok it wasn’t to bad but the access to the drain plugs (yes there are two!) isn’t the easiest and lock wiring them afterwards ended up with some pierced fingers!. With all the immediate jobs done I am ready for Brands. I don’t know if I was very excited or very nervous or maybe a bit of both but I was already awake when the alarm went off at 5am and on the road by 5.30am, arriving at Brands just after 8am. The weather gods were obviously on our side today as the sky was blue and the track dry…ok it was only just above freezing but you can’t have it all! With the briefing out of the way and it was time to finally drive the Radical. After trying to master the very short throw clutch, lost count how many times I stalled it) I’m finally off down the pit lane. On the first session I took it very easy, so easy in fact I was overtaken by almost everybody on track. I was expecting this car to feel different to the Elise but not this different, everything is so direct. The throttle is light and very responsive the car turns in very quickly and the brakes stop you quicker than a unlit skip! In all a complete culture shock for me but I was slowly getting the hang of it. After about 12 laps I pitted to check the car. Everything is look good, the tyres are upto working temperature and the driver isn’t far behind. Second session and I am getting a bit braver with the throttle, good god this thing accelerates! I don’t know if was the nerves or the cold but I kept chuckling to myself every time I pressed the loud pedal. My confidence in the car was increasing and I was getting to grips with the controls quite nicely now, I was still making the odd mistake with the gear selection but it was improving. Best of all I was starting to overtake all the cars that had overtaken me in the last session. On returning to the pits feeling a lot better about the car and myself. It was approaching lunchtime so I decide to get a quick ten minutes in before the circuit closes for lunch. This session I am feeling a lot more confident with the car and this confidence kept increasing with every lap, The new Avon tyres are awesome allowing me to apply the power where if I was in the Elise would have cause big oversteer moments. By the end of the ten minutes I was one of the quickest cars out there…..and also one of the loudest, 112Db drive by .. oops! (another job for the list otherwise I am going to have problems at Combe). After lunch I get back out on track but something doesn’t feel right with the car, the steer wheel has gone off center so I return to the pits to check it out. On closer inspection we find that one of the track rod ends has developed some play and there is also some detectable play in the front wheel bearings. More things to add to the list but this was the mission of today, to find any weaknesses in the car and sort them out before the season starts. So with these broken bits we decide to call it a day and pack up. I am very happy with the car so far and happy with myself as well. My hunch about Avon was confirmed the day after the trackday when Brain gave me a call to see how I got on, a nice touch I thought. I still need a lot more time in the car but I’m improving which is the important thing. So now the list is 3 times the size it was before the day started but that’s all part of this thing they call motorsport I guess. Until next month ……
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