Flying at Cadwell Park
Cadwell Park, often known as “the mini Nurburgring”, was the 5th round of this year’s CGRC calendar. Once again, the British weather brought us wall to wall sunshine and scorching temperatures.
Following the lessons learnt at Croft, we arrived at Cadwell confident of getting our setup right straight away.
Qualifying was always going to be super important
Cadwell Park is notoriously tight and twisty, which makes overtaking especially difficult. We took part in the Friday testing session, trying out setup changes that would ensure we could qualify as far up the field as possible.
In particular, we focused on setting the car up for two key traction zones which lead onto long straights. As three quarters of the circuit offers little to no opportunity for overtaking, setting the car up to be quick out of these two key corners, even at the cost of a little time through the twisty bits, would give us a much better race car overall.
We qualified in 4th position for race one with a time of 1:37.338, just over half a second away from the untouchable pole lap by the number 127 car of Ian Howes.
The grid for race two was determined by everyone’s second fastest laps, which for us was a 1:37.554 and good enough for third, again nearly half a second behind Howes on pole.
Getting it off the line
Starts are a key part of motor racing. It offers the only opportunity during a race that you can have a large speed offset against your competitors. Reacting to the lights is crucial, but getting the starting revs and clutch engagement right is the real secret. Not enough revs and you bog down; too many and/or dropping the clutch too quickly and you spin the rear wheels. The perfect launch almost always gains valuable race positions.
Lining up on the second row of the grid, the second placed car of Ben Winrow, starting directly ahead of us, had a poor get away, giving us the opportunity to use the extra bit of space offered by the pit exit to nip by. Having had a good start, we swooped around the outside of the pole sitter, Howes, into turn one and take the lead.
From here on, it was 20 minutes of defence.
The aerodynamic qualities of a Caterham (or total lack of) mean that the slipstream effect of another Seven ahead of you is enormous. This is where our focus on those key corner exits came to bear fruit. Getting clean, fast exits gave us the crucial gap we needed going onto the straights to defend into the braking zones.
However, with just five minutes to go, Howes got a great run on us going onto the long back straight. Covering the inside of the road, Howes went left into the braking zone, and we touched. The contact was minimal, but it saw Howes fall off the road and slip down to 4th, before making an amazing recovery to 2nd.
Crucially, this gave us the space to look after the tyres and hold on for the race win. Later, however, the stewards decided overly aggressive defending on our part caused this incident and issued us with a five-place grid penalty for race two 😬
Getting racy from 8th
Sunday morning saw temperatures climb even higher, and the race was five minutes longer than yesterday’s. This was going to make tyre management even more crucial.
All weekend it appeared there were four of us who seemed to have the edge on the rest of the pack. So our focus for the start of race two was to get back up to fourth as quickly as possible, hoping the lead three were still within range of a slipstream.
After some intense racing, we made it up to fourth by the end of lap four. Fortunately, one of the leaders dropped back slightly on the other two, giving us that critical tow back to the leading pack. This led to 15 minutes of great racing between the four of us. Once again, our setup gave us the edge to attack onto the straights and defend once we’d made it to the front.
Despite our grid penalty, we won race two, rounding out a successful weekend’s racing at Cadwell Park.
Race Coverage
The BRSCC had live coverage throughout the weekend on their YouTube channel, and with their kind permission we’ve been able to replay the full-length races on our channel:
Race 1
Race 2
With many thanks
An enormous thanks to our sponsors, who showed up in force for us once again this weekend.
Pauls’ Body & Paint did a tremendous job preparing our second, identical 310R Race Car, which will now be available for race weekend and track day hire alongside our main car.
Moin Moin Bakery who came along with some delicious carrot cake.
The Den, who also came along to show their support.
And of course Team Schemes, Uberniche and Home Time Movers
Next Stop: Dijon-Prenois Circuit, France, 12th September