Gavin's 1973 911 in Mallory park 6 hour Endurance event

[Dyno Soar]

Gavin (Gav P) entered his car into the Mallory Park 6 hour event.. also to increase his chances of success he tried to hire none other than Le Mans legend and part time Porsche driver Derek Bell to co-drive. Derek has alot of expirience with these types of events, so he was the logical choice. However Derek was somewhat busy testing a 962 and shaking down a 917 and wasn't available for this event. Shame.. but all was not lost Derek was able to reccomend the next best thing to having Bellof in your car. Thats right, you guessed it.. the drive was given to none other than the master of the BEAST... which would be Dyno! ( thats Me ) this must have assured team success. Just like Alonso I claim that I take 6 ths from any lap time

Seriously this was a team event and we had a joint entry with Gav's mate and owner of Cobra replica.


Here is Team Pilgrim - Porsche

The Players



Matt and his father Tony in the self built Pilgrim-Cobra, which has completed the Monte-Carlo rally.






Gav's 1973 911 E 2.4 You'll notice its somewhat slammed. This is due to the services of a certain Mr Neil Bainbridge at BS Motorsport. He has committed similar such slammery on the my own 911, which is the BEAST. This proves for a purposeful handling car for the track and equally the B-road or any road for that matter. lowered, corner balanced on the table, some negative camber for good measure. SORTED.




Here we are all scrutineered in the pits. Race number 11 for the 911, which is the day my son was born on the 11th 11th last year.. it all seemed to to make some cosmic sense to me having a snack at 11:11hrs pondering my next drive. Yes it all seemed to fall into place. This indeed bodes well. Especially if you double 11, which makes 22, which again incidently is the day I was unleashed upon the world.
I think the previous nights lack of sleep and a very sideways beemer on a wet roundabout near midnight were finally having their effect on me. That and the fact that I hadn't nearly had enough caffine that morning.


Sorry I digress. Lets look at what we were up against....



Westfield looks pretty tough.



Some sort of race car thingy... Ginetta apparently.



More Caterham equipment



Cobra's hmmnn.. tricky



Ohhh big buck Cobra someone whispered 80k's worth of pocket money. Note the AP-Racing brakes on the corners.



Oh crap.. does that say LOLA on it! Had LS1 Corvette power

then there was this....







WHAT THE F*CK IS THAT!!!!


Clearly Team 26 weren't playing with a full deck. That or someone hadn't switched all the light on upstairs. I guess that can be handy if your a endurance racer and like rain.
Note the sneaky Tiger powered by Kawasaki Ninja in the background. Sequential box too.



Do I look scared. See the steely determination in my squinty eye! I am practicing my race mantra; DO NOT CRASH GAV'S CAR, DO NOT CRASH GAV'S CAR!



Here's the team.. is it me or does Gav look worried?



Gav here we are again with the most amazing car ever, Porsche's 911. Notice how we have removed the hub caps to add lightness. should be good for at least 3ths over the lap.



I'll stop babbling now and let Gav chime in with some his own thoughts and pics.

I'll also get the video footage hosted so we can share it.

[willbrown]

nice one. so come on, how did it go? looks a bit wet...

[gav p]

Yep Will, it was pretty wet.. and oily.. The first couple of laps felt like one of those skidpan handling experiences at times! Still, we kept it on the tarmac all day, so I guess we must have been doing something right.

After a few sessions, we found the 911 to be pretty quick in the wet, comparable with much of the field by virtue of being rear engined - traction and hence acceleration out of the corners put paid to many of the cobras and '7 reps out of the bends. Needless to say, some of them out-cornered us on the fast curves, being half our weight (the cars, not you Alam ) and on semi-slicks...

Still, the factory spec 911 didn't miss a beat all day, and was equally at home on the circuit as on the M40 cruise home. These are impressive cars

[gav p]

Oh yes, and in terms of finishing position, well the event was not a race. Rather, it was a points-based system - each team must complete 40 laps an hour, with each of four drivers and two cars completing at least 4 laps an hour.

That boils down to 10-15 min sessions for each driver, then into the pits and the second team car goes out. First team swaps drivers in this time, and gets ready to go out again when car two returns.. and so on. This actually worked really well as it gave the cars and drivers time to cool off after every few laps

SO, its all done on points - points lost for doing too few or too many laps per hour, too few laps for a given driver, and so on. Don't know the full results just now, but out there it felt like we were solid mid-fielders which was nice

This isn't the start of a track career for the car, but was a great learning-experience for us. For any further occasional forrays though, I would probably stick to early-car trackdays at venues with large run-offs in future, just because early-911 values being what they are these days meaning theres a bit more at stake than for some other entrants in this sort of competition

[Dyno Soar]

Gav forgot to mention that I spun off on entry into turn 1. I was trying hard and just had some brain fade in the entry into the turn.. span the car twice before coming to a halt.

I couldn't believe how calm Gav was... he was talking calmly all through the spins and then when we came to rest without hitting anything.

Phew..!



This is a couple laps with Matt and the Cobra


[URL=http://s246.photobucket.com/albums/gg91/dynosoar/Mallory%20Park%206%20hour%20Endurance%20Race/?action=view&current=Alamleading.flv]

Ok so this is us leading, I think this was my stint. Sorry about the short clips, the camara man only had a 20 second instruction on how to use it.

We are slowing into turn 1 because of oil on the track and because we needed a change of underwaer when I spun off.




Leaving the pits..



This is after the spin and after the race had been red flagged due to two car spinning where we had but coming into contact with each other and the gaurd rail. No one was hurt.




A brief clip from the camera man. He did his best.

[Dyno Soar]

nice one. so come on, how did it go? looks a bit wet...

It was alot wetter than the Wales trip at points. The hairpin was unbelievable, you can throw the car in with 2nd gear after a healthy blip from the heel toe and stand on the power with the tail in fantastic oversteer, a arm full of opposite lock flick you back as you power out. Simply amazing.

There was this piont where Gav flicked the car in to a right then left on turn 2 and 3 where the car let go and Gavin recovered it while maintaining full speed! It was masterful pro action from Mr Price. I let off a huge cheer as he gathered t all up and pressed on for the hairpin.

Whata man whata car..

[Lightweight_911]

Sounds like great fun - good to hear that the car took it all in its stride & coped without a hiccup.

Well done guys !!

[hot66]

great to see the car out on track in competition Gav Not sure I'd have the balls to do that with mine

That odd looking car is a Carver One

http://www.carver-worldwide.com/Home/Index.asp?nc=1

[Derek]

Nice work

Stuck a fireblade in the gravel at turn one at Mallory, Not pretty .

[impmad2000]

A great track. I drove it with a mates '70T and my Biturbo. Exactly like the boys say, the 911's traction and stopping power made it faster lap-on-lap. Shame I didn't know you were there. Mallory is 10 mins from my house !! (And I have some spare wheels you could have borrowed !!)
Well done guys, putting a 911 where it deserves to be.... On a track

[Dyno Soar]

It was an amazing experience and one I learnt a lot from.
Basic things like shift points down changes needed a little thought before committing. Also consistencies in laps were another area where we learnt a great deal about our driving. The amount of concentration required is phenomenal at first and keeping that momentum and pace over the duration of the laps.
The heel toe down shifts, gear selection, apex point and full throttle points needed to be explored. I can't help but think sequential gearboxes must be so much easier, significantly reducing the challenge of driving.


I found my initial laps hard because I was (rightly) so concerned about damaging Gav's car. Spinning off (which I did) missing a shift or something. It was raining really hard at points and the track was soaked. So the extra pressure of being worried about that car was playing on my mind. Also my middle stints were clearly short in terms of my ability and after some reflection and watching Gav drive I realised it was because I was being so gentle on the car. I was trying to keep the car under stressed to a fault; it was clearly effecting my driving. I spoke to Gav and drove the car with more commitment after that.
The best part of the event was at the end stints with Gav reflecting about our driving and techniques. We literally nailed every lap of our last consecutive stints. This really was the icing on the cake for us and the perfect end to the day. Nailing the last laps and most importantly bringing the car home with no damage. It was an awesome feeling.



Thanks for the kind comments and I am glad you guys found this thread interesting.


I'd like to thanks Andy B for the loan of the spare Fuchs and the 6" steel.

Also I'd like to thanks Gav for inviting me to drive his pride and joy. It was an honour.

[johnM]

Gav and Alam

Sound absolutely fantastic, enjoyed reading about your adventures and I must admit would fancy having a go myself.

Kind Regards

[Dyno Soar]

Hey John.. yeah its was excellent. I can't wait to get my car out on the track, because I know that its gonna be so much fun. The overtaking of other cars and being taken on by faster machinery is real adrenalin pumping fun!

Racing is fantastic...



I need to watch some more walter rohl video's.

[gav p]

A couple more pics from Matt and from the event forum


Back part of the circuit, during a wet morning session


Crossing the line..


Waiting to leave the pits