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Uniroyal Team Challenge

Rockingham 10^th October 2004

Car 41 - Team Prestige Motorsport: Trevor Gibbs, Heather Darwin, Alistair Stenhouse.

by Christopher Darwin

The fifth and last race of the year was at Rockingham. This is an unusual venue built at huge expense a few years ago on the site of an old steelworks north of Corby for American-style races. Within the four-cornered oval has been laid a collection of tracks which can be joined; the 2.45 miles International Circuit with 13 bends and using half of the oval was a complex shape - a modified capital letter E. Around the outside of the oval are enormous stands holding over 50,000 seats.

Needless to say the place was bankrupt within months of opening – someone had failed to notice that the American series a) required a dry circuit, for which Northamptonshire is not renowned, and b) was very boring – few spectators paid to watch. The circuit is now apparently sponsored by BMW. See www.rockingham.co.uk for the international circuit shape.

Heather and I drove up to Corby on the Friday of a weekend that remained dry – much easier conditions than the rain of Snetterton in September. The practice session enabled the drivers to learn the course, which was clearly very technical and with two hairpins among the 13 bends. The team was staying at a small country house hotel a few miles from the circuit, which conveniently included a serve-yourself bar when we returned from eating in the nearby pub. Saturday morning was a gentle start, with signing on and scrutineering followed by qualifying. A good lap time by Trevor - and for the second time we were not in the draw for the rear part of the grid; to our amazement Car 41 was drawn on the front row. We attended the series celebration dinner party that night, but sensibly spent less time in the bar when we returned to our digs.

Sunday remained dry, cold and windy. As it was a five hour race, pit stops were every 50 minutes, and we decided to run the 40 litre tank from 30 litres down to about 6. Trevor started well, but was soon overtaken by the faster cars drawn behind us; by the first pitstop we were 12^th. Heather maintained the position, and a neighbouring car ran out of fuel before the second pitstop. This calamity is both encouraging and worrying – have we (that’s me) got our calculations wrong as well? The starter motor expired, so pitstops required a push start; apart from that the car ran well.

The view from the pitlane was excellent, with a strip of grass between the wall and the track, but slightly surreal. With 19 cars on such a long circuit, there was not a great deal of activity on the track. Furthermore, I counted only a dozen spectators dotted among the rows of thousands of seats.

Each driver had two 50 minute sessions; when Heather came in for the last pitstop we were 10^th. Numbers 9 and 8 were less than a minute ahead and time was saved by cutting the fuel added to a minimum. Alistair was encouraged to drive the car ‘as if he had just stolen it’. This instruction seemed to strike a chord and he cut 2 seconds off his usual 2mins 8secs. There was much gesticulating from the pitlane wall – no need for precise pitboard signs - and Alistair caught and overtook the No 9 and then finally No 8 with only seven minutes remaining; we tried not to think how much/little remained in the tank. Chequered flag, still enough fuel and we were eighth – four laps behind the leader, who had covered 139 laps. Subsequently, the tank revealed 12 litres, about 10 more than I expected – the arithmetic had erred on the safe side by about 8%, which is a lot.

Only two cars failed to finish, so we felt that this race was a fair representation of our abilities.

It has been a very satisfactory year, with five races resulting in five finishes in the top ten of about eighteen starters. The Uniroyal series is a great concept, but there are some matters that need to be resolved. Both the organiser of the series and the UK supplier of the cars (and their spares) take part in the racing, which must lead to conflicts of interests. Talking to other privateer teams there is concern about rules being followed; it was noticeable that the parc ferme was rarely used after races; the first three cars should always be checked. The fact that the first 6 places at Snetterton were taken by Belgian cars is most suspicious. The grids need more than 20 cars - 30 would be ideal - and privateers need to be encouraged. If you are thinking of trying this form of motorsport, contact me via the contact us page.

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