MWS - Photo Gallery

Gallery

Spa-Francorchamps Six Hours - 5th-7th October 2007

British Sports GT & Saloon Challenge

A very successful weekend of Motor Racing!!

It was supposed to be just a weekend of racing but, from preparing the car to the final race it lasted a glorious six days away with the lads and fellow petrol heads!

We crossed the Channel on the 05:30 ferry. Now anyone who knows me (and the whole of the CKL Developments Team certainly do) realise that I am not the brightest star in the sky especially trying to drive like a bat out of hell at 04:00 through thick English fog in an attempt to catch this blooming boat.

However, we made it with very few inches to spare and proceeded to tuck into our last ‘Full English’ breakfast for nearly a week.

We then continued to drive tirelessly to Spa-Francorchamps in order to make ‘Free Practice’ on Thursday afternoon.

The new-look Spa is really a sight to behold. I now call it ‘Multi-Storey’ Spa. What with the new F1 Garages which are truly fantastic and with fourteen races over the weekend, the organisers had to alternate between the new garages and the ‘Old’ garages for pit stops and driver changes.

Free practice (which is not free of charge of course, it’s just anybody can test their cars) didn’t go ahead as planned for us as it was over subscribed, so we signed up for 09:00 hrs on Friday. So much for rushing to get there. Hey Ho, all in a days’ work!

The one thing that tends to focus a racing driver’s mind at Spa is weather, as it usually pours with rain due to its proximity to the Ardenne Forest. But we were in for a glorious weekend of sunshine and with temperatures of 22 degrees every day. So no thoughts of wet tyres and different suspension set ups, just watching for over-heating engines.

During Practice the Jaguar performed well, with plenty of grip and plenty of power to the extent that CKL and I needed to use the Overdrive down the Kemmel straight to avoid over-revving the engine.

As most of you will know the Spa circuit had to be redesigned this year to qualify for the F1 GP (Bernie’s Laws). The two main circuit features are that the first corner has been extended (La Source) and the old ‘Bus-Stop’ has been replaced with a much slower chicane. This has contributed to an average lap time of two seconds slower than the old circuit for us ‘Old Timers’.

The interesting factor of all this is that we put in a Lap Time of 3 minutes 17 seconds, which was 4 seconds a lap faster than last year, plus the 2 seconds for a slower circuit we were very pleased to have improved a full 6 seconds on 2006.

Some last minute preparation	The lull before the storm	In the queue to race

On Saturday morning again at 09:00 hrs Chris and I were ready for Qualifying. This time we shaved off another second giving us a 3 min 16 sec lap time. In a full grid of 75 cars we qualified in 49th place. We were very pleased with this as the XK was the second oldest car in the race, except for a 1956 Morris Minor. We were very chuffed!!

The race was to be a Rolling-Start having followed the Pace car round for one lap. Then the race was on. Seventy five care heading towards the first corner La Source. I took a deep breath. Luckily, there didn’t seem to be any ‘Red Mist’ from any of the drivers and we all came through it comfortably barring a few slips and slides.

I have since seen our race on www.Youtube.com and looking at the first lap I had moved up from 49th to 42nd…YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This was a one hour Endurance Race and after 30 minutes I came in to hand over to CKL. I have to remove most of the padding from my race seat for Chris so that his more ample proportions fit more snugly and luckily, the steering wheel is adjustable to accept his slightly longer arms. With CKL suitably strapped in off he went to complete another half hour. During this second stint the car developed a misfire, but we use lambda sensors on the car to monitor fuel mixture. As the engine was still running ‘Rich’ CKL continued.

We were ecstatic to realise that Chris brought the car home in 33rd place out of an original 75 car grid. This was certainly a marked improvement from 24th from a 45 car grid in 2006.

A number of observations we made from the race included the fact that we were running on an old set of tyres that had raced the whole of the 2007 XK Championship season. We intend to enter the same event next year, but in May. This will give us new rubber to race on and hopefully much better grip and faster times during the race.

Well, what more can I say? We are so pleased with our result. Last year I made the following written quote after the race:

“I have to say that Spa was for me, a great first experience and one that must be repeated, hopefully when the sun doth shine and in warmer ambient conditions. I can’t wait to return!!”

Therefore, we pulled off the dream and it was also a credit to the ‘Boys’ at CKL especially to Dave, Barry and Justin who work so well on race-prepping my Jaguar XK 150.

See you all again next year. In the mean time have a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

John

Note from MWS: John will be on our stand in Hall 1 of the Classic Motor Show at the NEC on Fri 9th and Sat 10th November 2007 so drop by for a chat and to see some of the in-car race footage shot during this season.

La Source	A couple of happy bunnies!

Click on a picture to see a larger image.