The weekend of what could have been….
Having used Anglesey for a shakedown in pre-season testing we were quietly confident about the performance of the car for rounds 3, 4 & 5. The weekend started with promise, qualifying 6th overall and 3rd in class despite have some issues with traffic.
James got a great start in race 1 (round 3), running as high as 4th overall before a couple of mistakes dropped him back of the leading pack. The rest of the race was spent experimenting with lines and downshift techniques whilst remaining in 3rd in class.
The result from race 1 gave us 4th overall for race 2 (round 4), after Saturday’s performance we were expecting a good result, however from the moment the lights dropped we knew there was an issue with lack of power again (same issue as at Silverstone), dropping James down the order. Then only a few laps into the race, the dash started reporting fluctuating oil pressure so as a precaution James retired the car.
With only an hour or so to turn the car around for race 3 (round 5), the race was on to find the cause of the oil pressure fluctuation and lack of power. With only a couple of minutes to spare we managed to find what we thought was the cause of the oil issue but not the lack of power. We took our place on the grid but after a few laps the oil pressure readings on the dash started to drop quickly so James pulled off as a precaution. To add insult, we then required an extinguisher to put out a small oil fire caused by a leak. This means a long afternoon of clean extinguisher powder and oil off the car….
What went wrong…. Ultimately the oil fluctuation was caused by a leaking pipe connection, which is frustrating, but another lesson learnt. Thankfully being able to see the data in real time on the dash and having the Accusump meant when the connection failed, James could stop the car quickly and the Accusump kept oil pressure, ultimately saving the engine from the scrap heap. As far as the loss of power is concerned it is still a bit of a mystery, hopefully something we can find out during the rebuild of the car ready for Silverstone in June.
What went right…. It was great to see the potential of the car. To be where we were, still running old tyres and still not using full RPM, gives us a lot of confidence that we have made the right decision on the engine, and that all the hours spent going down the ‘Yamaha route’ will be worth it.
In summary… the highs and lows of motorsport…despite the issues with the last 2 races, the ability to see those problems play out in real time combined with warnings you just can’t miss on the dash means we don’t have another scrap engine, which we are grateful for. The whole dash/data/shifter‘ system’ still needs some work and the increase in ‘grunt’ means we need to look at spring/damper rates/suspension settings. Over-all clean and rebuild, plus try and find why we keep running on three cylinders!