Caterham Academy 2004, Round 3 – Lydden Hill Sprint
Jun 21st, 2004 by Tim Skipper
Another day, another trophy.
Well I’m pleased to report I took another 2nd place at Lydden Hill on Saturday, for round three of the evo Caterham Academy and the last sprint event. I had never been to Lydden before and I knew some of my competitors had been to a track day and a test day here, so I was expecting to have to work hard for a decent place.
Not helping matters, I had to get up at 3.50am and drive down on the Saturday morning, having not got around to finding somewhere local to stay the night before.
Lydden is an interesting but short 1 mile circuit that goes up and down a lot, each corner is different from the others and there are a lot of camber changes and bumps. It was also pretty slippery. Because of its short length we were to do 1.75 laps for each of the three timed runs, starting from the pit lane.
Practice consisted of 2.75 laps from a standing start – all very well but this one-shot at the circuit before the timed runs means you have no chance to do a lap, change something, and do another. So you either have to just suck it and see, or waste your 1st timed run on checking any set up changes. Just to add to the confusion, only the first 1.75 laps of the 2.75 lap practice run were timed.
I did a steady first lap just leaving it in 3rd everywhere and figured the last two corners would be better in 2nd, which certainly felt quicker on the last part of my practice run. I was encouraged to see that I was 4th fastest in practice even though only my slowish one-gear lap was used. The car felt good, pretty well balanced but it was locking up the rear brakes a bit too early for my liking. It wasn’t causing it to slew to one side though so it wasn’t a huge problem to deal with.
I felt no need to fiddle with the car so just put my feet up in the sun until it was our turn to go out for the first timed run.
Finally we were all lined up along the assembly area waiting to go out. The start line was inside the pit lane and it launched you straight into the fastest corner on the circuit, so we were all getting a great view of the cars ahead of us going round it in various states of slip, and occasionally off into the gravel!
For my first timed run, I felt I got a little too much wheel-spin off the line, but the rest of the lap felt great. Over the line for the final 0.75 of a lap and into that scary fast bumpy right-hander I came out with my left hand wheels right up to the edge of the track. I missed the apex slightly for the next one but I felt overall that I had set a decent time.
Back to the paddock, feet up and more ray-catching until the results started to appear on the board by race control. 2nd place! Jeremy Ellis, who has won everything so far, was ahead again by a good second.
For my second timed run I got a much better start, but on my second visit to the first corner I went in far too hot and got two wheels into the gravel – sending dust and gravel flying. The rest of the lap was ok, but I had clearly blown it with that slight off. When the results were posted I discovered my time was void due to “four wheels off”. I’m pretty convinced my right hand wheels were not over the white line, despite having the left side into the gravel slightly, but since the time was over a second slower than Run 1 it didn’t matter. Had it been quicker I would have protested the decision. Jeremy had also had a slight off and suffered the same fate, and thankfully nobody else had improved sufficiently to take away my 2nd place position.
Run three got off to another good start, but I went way too wide on a couple of corners, and lost some time wheel-spinning away up the hill from one of the slower 2nd gear bends. I was praying that 3rd place man Guy Harrington hadn’t put in a blinder and swapped places with me!
Thankfully he hadn’t and the status quo remained, with Jeremy taking the win, me second and Guy in third place. This means my joint 2nd place in the championship standings moves to a clear 2nd. My good friend Peter had taken his best result of the season so far in fourth, but barring DNFs on my part he’s in no great danger of overtaking me in the championships standings, being 13 points adrift down in joint 6th place.
The next event is the one and only Hill climb at Harewood, North Yorkshire, on August 1st.
