B’sRACING Ben Bonfield Wiscombe Park April 2022 Jedi Racing Cars Mk4 class winning run

Bit of a tough old weekend this one, well done to the team running the event on dealing with such a large entry. Massive thanks to the marshals as it must have been a long weekend out on the hill you guys are all stars. We definitely had an interesting weekend with clutch failure on the car after Dads first practice on Saturday the return home with a strip and rebuild of the clutch just patching it up enough to just work. Sunday was our only real day sadly and with heading onto the hill with as such an unknown in the clutch reliability practice was removing the slip as much as possible without causing gearbox disengagement issues. This meant we had to pick a gear to launch in and that was it, it wouldn’t come out of gear unless the engine was stopped so it was dragging when stationary and slipping under hard load at full throttle meaning I was having to ease back and feed the accelerator in on each gear change (made a bit of a hash on the exit of wis which is why you can hear the blip as my rhythm was out). It also meant short shifting to keep it away from the higher rpm when slip appeared the worst (you can hear the slip at the top of castle straight). Was definitely slippery out on the hill even on the last run with the car starting to move about quite a bit in the middle section of the esses and running really low in the revs to control it over the crest in the esses. The car felt good on the lower section of the hill and felt the front was really hooked up well. Wasn’t really sure what was going to happen on the Sunday but thankfully the car survived to fight another day and will be treated to a complete new clutch kit. Well done to Andrew for FTD and Ed for pushing me on. I did everything I could to get a result out of the car on Sunday. I Don’t think I’ve had to work so hard to try and get a result. Next weekend is a fresh weekend start again from zero, fresh parts and relax no more stress please I’ve had enough now.
Photo credit: Nigel Cole