The very thought of sliding a locost round the trees at Cadwell in the rain is enough to drive a man to drink. It was to imposing, grey and threatening skies that I arrived at Cadwell on the Thursday night to be up and about for testing Friday. The whole crew were in attendance, including ?LA? Rob Palin and the Birmingham Three. Testing was a fairly perfunctory affair with a reasonable progression of falling laptimes, most of which fell short of being actually fast but were at least heading in the right direction. The most entertaining affair of the day was trying to fit LA Rob?s erection (a very SanFran gayzebo thingy) in the space between the trucks and as for its ultimate usage I personally found it very difficult to swallow.
All looking good for race day and on the way to noise testing there was distinct lack of thrust and being pushed out of noise testing was not the most glorious of starts for the weekend. Tony had the problem narrowed down to the diff in seconds but after hauling the offending piece out of the car we discovered that we had found another new way to break a supposedly unbreakable thing. Thankfully the TMC truck yielded a spare, however it was not the preferred 3:9 but a distinctly un-preferred 4:1 differential which was going to make climbing the Mountain, feel like climbing a mountain.
Qualifying and race 1 were sequential but oddly parallel disasters, a couple of laps in and the carbs started making a noise like a Dyson attached to an industrial sherry trifle, with the occasional bits of raspberry spluttering out the exhaust. Not good. The technical committee met over the engine of the 74 car, which was now starting to look a lot bluer than it did at the start of the season, when it was largely white. Parts of carburettor starting flying about and finally Tony (who else?) put his finger on the problem, an inverted jet that was doing the very opposite of carburetion and may have been more than a contributory factor the strange noises and the lack of progress.
Out on the track there was little I could do about the cars in front as the world turned to treacle on the uphill sections. Frustration got the better of me in the complex and I nearly put the bluing beauty of the 74 car into the very brown and sturdy trees. Passed by two other cars I took me the rest of the race to catch up and pass these two but given the circumstances it was probably a blessing just to get out and round for a finish.
