Turn 7 Limited Turn 7 Logo

Turn 7 Abroad - Dijon Race Report

The Turn 7 Team arrived at Dijon-Prenois Circuit in France ahead of another weekend with the Caterham Graduates Racing Club.

This weekend made for the clubs annual overseas round, where we were supporting the circuits annual historic festival, boasting classic Formula One cars, Formula Two, Classic Endurance and Classic Touring cars. It was a spectacular and incredibly noisy weekend!

Whilst our little Caterham championship was “filling up the schedule”, we almost certainly put on the best show for the thousands of spectators lining the circuit for the weekend.

Dijon

A circuit made for Caterham racing!

The circuit itself is fast, undulating, and surprisingly technical for a Caterham, with multiple lines available through a number of the corners. The circuits key feature for us however, was the 1km long start/finish straight! Due to the Sevens aerodynamic inefficiencies, escape from other cars was pretty much impossible. Getting a good tow could generate a 14mph speed advantage down the straight. This was worth up to 1.5 seconds per lap!

Ultimately, this translated into epic racing! A car starting one lap in 6th, could quite feasibly be leading the next lap, and visa-versa. Winning a race therefore, almost seemed like a lottery.

We qualified respectably, starting race one from 5th and race two from the front row.

Winner

Lottery Motorsport

Race one got off to a chaotic start. At the end of lap one, a car coming from the third row swept past the leading the pack into turn one, but locked the rear axle under braking and parked itself sideways across the apex. This caused carnage… Fortunately, most of the field managed to avoid the stricken car, but one did not, causing a huge amount of damage to both cars. Everyone was ok, but unfortunately, our number 172 car was caught out by a stray wheel from the accident, braking the front suspension and ending their race after just one lap.

The race got back underway after a lengthy red flag, and we took the lead into turn one. Many laps of pass and repass followed, before a well timed tow gave us the overall win in race one! A good start.

Race two was slightly longer so staying out of trouble would be the key as the win would surely be decided on the last lap. After a few laps jostling for position, a poorly timed safety car was called due to a spinner who made contact with the barriers and had to be recovered. This left us with just two racing laps to recover from 7th position. We gave it a good shot, but missed out on the win by just 0.223 of a second, which was only good enough for 4th!.. Another epic race, complete with a photo finish.

Overall, a brilliant weekend in France, and a circuit which must be tried by anyone who enjoys trackdays or racing!

photo finish

Race Coverage

Full length race replays can be found below, including a clip of the incident from race one:

Race One

Race Two

Turn One action replay

Next stop, the season finale!

The next, and final race of the season, is a triple header which takes place at Brand Hatch in Kent on the 24th/25th of October. We are there in support of the British Formula Ford Festival, one of the best attended and most prestigious weekends of motorsport on the British calendar.

Many thanks as always to our fans, and to our terrific sponsors, who help make this possible.