Written by zscupdate

 

Please vote for Cassey in the Grand Prix Shootout at:-

http://www.driverdb.com/drivers/13653/

Snetterton was a difficult weekend for us all, we all knew the day would come when mechanical problems would happen but as we try to catch the 888 Solutions Honda Civic in the Championship we really didn't want them. However we finished so although we lost 3 points to the Civic we still scored and we keep the pressure on.

Our first problem came in qualifying, Alan went out first but only did 4 laps before a safety car period when it was decided to do the driver change. He set a time of 1.24.977, Cassey then went out and set a 1.23.170 on her first flying lap before coming on the radio to Eddie complaining the front was washing out, it was decided to pit and check tyre pressures. Cassey then went back out and although she set 3 consecutive 1.23s she was constantly on the radio complaining of an ever increasing vibration so she was called back in and it was discovered we had 3 broken wheel studs on the nearside front. With only an hour to the race it was going to be tight to rebuild the hub in time. However as usual the students got to work immediately and the car was ready to go on time. Afterwards it was discovered this had been caused by a failure to a torque wrench resulting in over tightening.

Alan started the race and lapped consistently, whilst one of our main rivals the 888 Solutions Honda Accord suffered an engine failure due to being sent out on track with the exhaust covered, an extremely expensive mistake. It was decided to pit immediately a safety car was called as Alan was already approaching the pit entry, at this time we were 30 seconds behind the Renault Clio in 3rd a distance we knew Cassey could make up quickly to earn a podium. However we were very unlucky with pit stop strategy, if the safety car had come in one lap earlier or the Clio's pitstop 15 seconds later we would have passed it in the pitstop but instead we lost 16 seconds on the deal, giving Cassey 46 seconds to make up. On her first lap she made up 2 seconds but once again came on the radio complaining of front wash out, she pushed on but then the car started snatching left on the straight, she was immediately pitted as a precaution, as the wheels were still secure as were drive shafts she went back out but quickly noticed we had lost 5th gear. At this point we were two laps down to our rivals, but when the Lotus Elise blew their engine we were in 3rd, so Cassey set about bringing the car home gently, so for nearly an hour she looked after LR1a and brought her home.

We will give an update tomorrow on what caused the problems

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