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Leonard Out, Lex In, fill her up and let her rip again. Final stint.

It’s exactly one month from now that the GT/TC post historic championship will have its deciding races at Zandvoort. I’m second in the standings, out of 24 cars, and I know it’s going to be a closely run set of 3 races. Everybody wants to be on the podium when they smell a chance. I had a right scare last time with an Escort pipping me for third in the last race and that should not have happened.

I made driving errors because I was focusing on my tail, where the Escort resided, and not on driving faster. I made a mistake driving with a bit too much pressure in my tires, so I couldn’t get out of the corners with the same grip as in the morning. These are all lessons I suppose race drivers learn at one stage or another.

I’m not taking chances however. Ton is shaking down Woodstock already, adjusting the fuel mixture back to race-spec after the Bergmeister Tour and addressing a creak I experienced going over bumps. The latter turned out to be nothing serious; just the noise of the front A-arm bushings. We’re also refining the coupling position  for the WEVO Tall Boy setup a bit, as we hadn’t done that properly yet.

The Avon slicks have arrived yesterday. These should give Woodstock about a 1-2 seconds a lap advantage, not counting the slightly smaller diameter. I’m also swapping to the short gearbox from Silverado which runs an 8:35 crown and pinion and a shorter 5th gear.  That should help me accelerate better on the Finish straight and through the Slotemaker curve.

Speaking of tires; I don’t think I ever shared this story yet. A few years ago, Lex Proper and I ran Woodstock with its first 3.0 SC engine on carbs in the Open Class 500 km of Zandvoort. We were running Michelin TBs and the set looked fine for the weekend. I had done the math on the wear ratio and we should be able to finish on this broken in set. However, 15 minutes before the finish Lex comes into the pits, unplanned, and complained about an imbalance in the front train… We checked out the tires and this is what we found:

Towards the end of the 4th hour stint, Lex felt a strange imbalance coming out of the top speed Bosuit right hand sweeper...

The expression “running on canvas” is a myth therefore. What you see here is pure and simple the metal carcass of the tire coming though! No Canvas! It was down to Lex’ excellent instincts and experience as a driver that he kept the car straight coming out of Bosuit at 150 km/hr whilst running a slow puncture…

What happened was simple. We drove a free practice session of 30 minutes which never made it to my calculations earlier in the week…. Another educational experience. Within minutes though, our voluntary pit crew had changed the front wheels and Lex was off again to finish at a third from the rear in a field full of GT3’s and other modern delights.

Track Day at Zandvoort on August 27 where we hope to break in Woodstock with its monster high butterfly engine. To be reported then!