Category Archives: Caterham Seven 420R

Premature End Game at Cadwell

I’d made the decision ahead of Cadwell that this would be my final seasons racing for the forseable future. I kind of ‘semi’ retirement. I’ve had an epic time racing cars but unfortunately, my ‘sensible head’ had it’s say and realised that another season in the 420R wasn’t a good choice.

I’ve got to drive every step of the Caterham ladder, stood on every step of the race and championship podium and met some amazing people and made friendships with many of them.

It was therefore a little sad to be arriving at Cadwell. It’s a track that comes with a reputation. Both for being an absolutely epic track to drive but also a track that bights back.

It’s another new track to me and whilst it felt very familiar as I’ve raced it on the sim and seen plenty of racing on TV, it was the first time visisting for real. The first few laps out I knew it was going to take everything to find pace and hold on for the weekend.

I was blessed and curssed by exceptionally fast team mates. They never relented all year and therefore, every session of every track was relentlessly rewarding and bruising all at the same time.

It litterally took me all of the 2 days of testing to finally find the pace. However, in the final couple of sessions of the second day I found something. Suddely, everything clicked. We had a wet session and I finally found the confidence I’d lacked all year in the car and with the tyres. The result was a lap 1.5 seconds faster than my nearest team mate. And in the final dry session, I put in a time that put me in the running.

I went away from the track feeling bullish and finally things felt like they had come together.

Qualification

However, qualification didn’t go to plan. It didn’t go to plan at all. On about lap 4, a clipped the wet grass coming out of Chris Curve. The car immediately swapped ends and the rest is history.

Contact with the tyres meant some reparis were needed and, as this was the final race weekend of the season, the ‘sensible head’ once again came to the fore and I decided to pull the plug early so the car could be made right and I’d be in a good position to give some lucky person my pride and joy in mint condition.

The season has been a tremendous adventure. The whole year, I’ve compared every aspect of my racing with the best. That has weighed heavily but there have definitely been sparks of my old form there. I just wasn’t able to bring that out often enough.

The car defeinitely needed 2 years of experience and I really feel I could give things a far better go if I had my time again. But right now, that’s not possible and I am forever grateful that I’ve managed to do something I love for so long.

New adventures await and I’m sure racing cars will be a part of that again at some point. But just not in the immediate future.

Oulton Park British GT Weekend

We should have been supporting several British GT weekends through 2021. However, Covid saw the foreign rounds disappear and we were left with one final partnership at Oulton Park.

It’s not a track I have loads of experience at. However, it’s a brilliant track to drive. Such a wonderful set of corners. You really go on an adventure every lap with something for everyone. Fast and committed. Tight and technical and gradient thrown in everywhere. Plently of barriers to punish you as well if you get things wrong.

Qualification

Frustration! Slick tyres on a drying track was the correct choice and I was on the correct combination. However, I was further back in the queue than I would have liked at the start of qualification and that meant I was finding it hard to get any track position and a clear lap.

It’s not often I can say that I was held up by Will Smith, but I certainly did as he was on older slicks.

After several off track escapades in what were very tricky conditions and a session only 10 minutes long, it all came down to the final lap.

It went well, although I had to navigate Tom Eden who had parked on the final apex. I was sure this had scuppered my lap, but was surprised to find myself again in Superpole.

Superpole

A steady lap. And it showed. 4th on the grid was the result after James Murphy fell foul of track limits. I felt more was possible but I failed to get back up to speed quickly enough. A familiar defect to my season.

Race 1

A good start for once. I made up a place to run initially in 3rd. This changed to 4th when James Murphy taught me a lesson on the amount of grip you can generate early on with a specacular move into the Chicane. 4th was looking good. Great actually.

I had a gap behind and was keeping up (just) with the ultra rapid Steve Nuttal, Henry Heaton and James Murphy. This was more like it! Due to the tight schedule on the GT calendar, we were only having 2 races this weekend, back to the 30 minute race format. That comes with advantages for me; less starts; less early laps; more ‘settle in’ period. However, this year it also comes with a big downside. Fitness!

13mins in and I made a mistake coming out of the second chicane. I drifted onto the grass and lost positions gathering things back up onto the track.

I then got spooked into the final corner braking zone causing Greg Monks to hit my rear. Not his fault at all. But that saw me lose more places. So disappinting from the drivers seat. Gonig from 4th and now dropping to my more familiar mid field setting.

I got stuck behind Rob Watts and Greg Monks having an epic battle. I felt I had the speed over both of them but just not the racecraft, or energy frankly, to make it stick.

That then cost me more positions with Jake Swan-Dixon coming back through. Ultimately, he made it all the way to 5th place and that would have been a position I was capable of if I was more race hardened and fitter.

Race 2

The race that never was. Well, “half wasn’t” I suppose.

Conditions once again were extremely changeable and tricky to judge. The whole field decided on slick tyres even through there was rain threatened. With the banks absolutely chock full of specators, it was going to be an absolutely epic advertisment for Caterham racing. For whatever can be said about our brand of motorsport, it leads to endlessly entertaining and epic racing.

An initial delay being released onto the track and then an even longer delay held on the grid before we got going meant that the threatened rain had a chance to arrive.

I made a reasonable start and then managed the conditions well to move forward. I’d got all the way to 5th place when Alex Jordan found the barriers and a safety car was thrown. Unfortunately, this meant that all the residual heat from the tyres was lost and the rain was getting heavier by the second.

Unfortunately, some poor communication by race control meant that instead of calling us all in to swap to wet tyres, they showed us a premature chequered flag instead.

That’s a signal there is no recovery from. The race is over and restarting it would have lead to more technical and regulatory issues that would likely have lead to the result being void.

Finishing in 5th would have been a result to take away of course, and I would have been happy to! However, half points was all that was awarded so it was added to everyone’s dropped scores list for the season.

We all went away from that weekend feeling disapointed. It’s a long way to go to only get one race and for me, 2 potentially great results went away.

More Firsts at Brands Hatch

I am still waiting for my first race around the Brands Hatch GP track, what is oft touted as the best track in UK. However, this weekend would see several more firsts for me. Most of which were not welcommed!

However, first up was 2 days of testing on the tight and relentless Indy circuit. The slick shod 420R is a beast around the track but it is notoriously difficult to overtake around the track and so grid position and race craft are important.

Qualification

Grid position wasn’t going to be an issue though. We were again treated to a wet qualification session after several days of dry testing. It seems that 3rd time is a charm for me. Now more confident on the tyres and with a greater knowledge of Brands Indy, I was able to dial in some good laps and came out in 4th place on the main qualification session.

Superpole

That placed me in the Superpole session once more. The conditions were drying up every minute and it was clear that going out second in the Superpole was unlikely to be a good result. However, just as the preceeding session got tidied out on track, the rain started once more.

Instead of being a hinderance, the earlier lap was an advantage and I managed to make the most of it and slung it on 2nd place on the grid. A touch lucky perhaps but it was about the first time in the year where I felt like I’d done a reasonable job.

Race 1

Before the race, there was an incredibly emotional tribute to a marshal who had been killed the previous weekend at the cirquit. The mood was heavy and it’s a reminder that so many people allow us to do what we love to do and that it’s dangerous. They put themselves in the line of fire out of the love of the sport and it was a wakeup call to motorsport around the world of how dangerous our sport can be.

#ThankYouMarshals

Running early in the race in 3rd, things were looking good. I was shuffled slowly back behind various team mates as time went on but I was still feeling strong. However, a safety car meant that a reasonable safety margin to the car behind was eroded and I had to manage a restart. Starts and pack racing have, ultimately, been my donwnfall this season with a lack of confidence and endlessly having to learn and sometimes relearn lessons of hard racing.

By the flag, I was in 7th place. Just behind Jake Swan-Dixon. Whilst thanking the marshals, I failed to spot the queue of cars stopping unexpectedly at the end of the pitlane. By the time I clocked it, it was too late and I managed to hit the rear of Jakes car. Causing fairly large damage to his rear pannel and puncturing my radiator. A silly mistake and one that left me even more deflated! Jake was incredibly understaind under the circumstances and I’m grateful for that.

Race 2

Another diabolical start. Another slip back through the field. Another delay in getting dialed in and up to racing speed. We were into lap 4 before I was getting going and it took a good number more laps to catch up with the main race pack.

I had some good racing with Chris Aubrey and Tom Eden on my way back through the field to 6th place. However, after pulling a slight gap from Tom I felt a strange reaction from the car going out onto the start finish straight and the car didn’t pick up speed as normal.

Tom made his way back through into paddock and by the time I got to Surtees, I felt what I knew was a rear wheel failure. The car wiggled and sat down and I watched as my wheel overtook me. I was initially worried it was going to bounce back into me off the barrier but it crossed the track and sat on the infield, upright. My car ended in the gravel on the outside of Clearways.

A prop shaft had sheared and the whole wheel assembly had become detached. I watched the race finish without me. My first ever mechanical failure in my racing. Another first I wasn’t particularly happy to have but I’ve been lucky through my racing and the fact that this was the first time I hadn’t reached the flag because of the car is quite something.

Race 3

So, even after a good qualification and reasonable performance in the races, I found myself once again at the back of the grid.

It took me a while to get by a few cars in my now traditional slow start. Once the early laps had settled, I battled back through and caught up with my team mate Alex Jordan. Overtaking him for 8th on the last few laps. A poor set of results from what started off as a promising weekend.

Silverstone Exposing Weakness

In my years of racing, I’ve never raced at the Silvertone GP race track. Indeed, I’ve only ever done two track days on the GP circuit. On was in the Academy car back in 2013 and the other was my only pre-season practice in the 420R, which was cut short by my arms failing to be able to turn the wheel any more!

It was therefore the first time I have had to push on through such iconic racing corners as copse and the becketts esses. Silverstone is built for one type of car – F1 cars. For a Caterham, the track is epically wide and every single corner is devastatingly fast and committed.

The SCUK 420R car with its slick tyres is about the only Caterham than gets close to being fast enough to make sense of the track. It’s still long blasts down straights followed by ultra committed corners. Keeping the car balanced on the edge of grip whilst in the upper speed ranges we get on any other track is quite an experience.

However, as the lap is so long, any loss of speed is penalised heavily. It’s therefore really tricky to extract a full lap time and as our two days testing was in full mixed grid format with Academy and all other classes out on track, trying the thread a lap was almost impossible.

I came into the weekend pretty hyped and fairly confident after Knockhill. Even though the results weren’t everything you could wish for, I’d made a step forward and I wanted desperately to solidify this. However, that just lead to me over driving and getting stressed when things didn’t initially show the kind of speed I’d hoped for.

Qualification

After 2 days of dry testing, the weather threw a spanner in the works once more, with heavy rain in the morning of our qualification. I started the session really well, and was making great lap time progress. You have to push from the off so that you can learn and progress as much as possible in a short session. However, on the 3rd lap, I touched a white line coming out of Copse. The car was instantly spinning. Several rotations later I was back pointing the right way but some of the confidence was now gone.

With the track drying out and my innability to adapy quick enough, the end of the session came ever so quickly and I found myself back in 11th. Gutted.

Race 1

That left me deep in the field for race one and in a position that throughout my career I’ve not seen very often. A full pack of cars ahead. My natural tendancy towards caution and the longer race game isn’t particularly suited to starting deep in the field and a lack of ultimate pace doesn’t help.

And that showed. After dropping some places initially, as we approached Abbey, I saw an opporuntity to make up some places and placed myself on the outside of another car coming out of the fast chicane. However, I misjudged my positioning and ran out of road on the outside of the circuit. A touch paniced on grass I was initially worried that the car wouldn’t stop and I would meet all the other cars mid track if I was spun back onto the track.

Sadly, this pannic meant I faied to see the acre or so of tarmac on my right side that I could have happilly been using! Eventually, a small patch of gravel on the grass area spun the car and for the second time on the same day, I found myself facing the wrong way and having to restart the car.

A lonely race at the back ensued with the only consollation being that this was the first bit of good clean lapped testing I’d had all weekend.

Race 2

The rain was back. It was epically hard and getting worse as we approached our race. Having had qualification in wet conditions, at least I wasn’t going into this one completely blind. And that showed.

Although, not for the first few laps, where I made silly mistakes and got a little caught behind others having their own. I was therefore plum last at one point. Hardly an auspicious start.

In the car, it’s hard to judge just how hard the rain is, however, it was clear it was getting heavier and the lakes and streams across the track aren’t a normal navigation feature around a lap. Still, with only 10 mins of the race to go, I got through to 9th place, ultimately finishing in 10th at the flag.

Race 3

Again, a poor opening set of laps saw me losing spots at the start. However, anything is better than facing the wrong way as happened in race 1. It again took too long to get settled and dialed in – a luxury that isn’t available with the shorter races this season.

So, after 10 mins of the race had already passed I started picking my way through the field. It was a satifying feeling to finally be moving forward and whilst there is still so much to learn, the ability to put passes in, defend and then ultimately move forward to the next battle was a good tonic.

The lead pack of cars has a multi car pile up nearing the end of the race and I was in a good position to pick up the pieces. Battling Jake Swan-Dixon hard for 4th place. A battle he ultimately won as I hadn’t reaslised it was the final laps and he did me a kipper.

5th was the result and I took that gratefully. However, it was a relatively lucky result and overall I left Silverstone frustrated and down.