This weekend is the first time the 750MC RoadSports race is not on the same weekend as the Club Enduro Championship until the last race of the season at Donington. ClubEnduro will be on its own at Oulton in mid-September.
Last time out at Snetterton, we had a bit of a nightmare, that resulted in Ryan and Dylan's TT coming back with a few extra holes in the engine block that we expected! Ryan didn't plan to do this round, but Dylan was going to jump in his place, however an engine swap in less than 2 weeks was not going to happen with our current workload!
So I was going to be flying the flag for Darkside at Silverstone, on the International Circuit, solo for this weekend. It looked like the reprep was going to be pretty simple, until a quick precautionary bore scoping on Monday evening revealed a slightly melted piston in cylinder 4.

The car had been making power on the dyno all season, so we think it has just been slowly getting worse, so it might have been OK to race. However, now we knew about it, it was going to fail on us for sure. As it was, the engine would need a piston, set of rings and would be good to go again, if we left it any longer, it could end up looking like Ryan's with nothing to be salvaged.
Reuben was confident he could get a new engine in and sorted before the weekend, so set to it. By Tuesday afternoon he was confident we could make it to Blyton on the Thursday for testing (thanks to the RAF Motorsports guys for inviting us along and letting us give the car a shakedown (whilst scaring a few passengers in the process)!.
Other than a few niggles, the car was mega, so Reuben and the other guys had done a great job in a short period of time to allow us to make the race. We have not missed one yet!

All the details and dates for future races we are entering can be found on the Darkside Motorsport Page.

Below is the layout of the Silverstone International Circuit. It is basically the GP Circuit with the National Circuit cut off. This means they can run 2 separate events at the same time as there is a gap between this and the National Circuit:

Our TT TDIs have a declared weight of 1210kg without the driver, Class A petrol cars can have 300hp/tonne if NA and 295hp/tonne if they have a turbo. We can only have 281bhp/ton due to Diesels having a 1.05 power multiplier. This works out to 339.95bhp on the Championship Dyno at our minimum weight.
So we are ~15bhp/tonne down on Forced Induction and 20bhp/ton on NA cars, which we think is unfair but those are the rules!
The 750MC now uses TSL for timing.

Full Race Day Vlog

We have a full Vlog from the weekend, with snippets of the races:

Testing

With the race being on the Sunday, we decided not to test on the Friday as that would mean a day sat around doing nothing. Really, with all the issues the car had over the past few weeks, it would have been worthwhile!

Roadsports Qualifying

We had a 9:25 start for Quali, and the race would be over by 15:30, so a short racing weekend for sure! It was forecast to be bright, sunny and around 24c for most of the day, so it was going to be a warm on for me and the car!
We were not right at the front of the queue, and the short lap also meant that on the first flier I was already encountering traffic. It took until my 3rd proper lap to set a reasonable time of a 1:13.022. This put me P2, almost 0.7s away from the #18 Cupra TCR of Simon Mauger / Alan Blencowe. The car was understeering so much I didn't think I could get anywhere near the low 12s! I pitted for a pressure check and managed a 1:12.302, by which point the Cupra had put in a 1:10.969, over 0.9s faster than they had gone last year in the race, and over 1s faster than Qualifying last year. It was unobtainable for the TT, so I just wanted to maintain the front row of the grid.
I struggled with traffic and Goes in the RS3 TCR pipped me by 0.017s, but I knew I could have gone faster with a clear lap, so I was not too worried about the race.

I lost a lap to track limits, I am assuming from cutting the inside at the Loop onto the Hangar Straight.

There was no chance of Pole today!

Qualifying Laps

My fastest Quali laps is shown below:

Roadsports Race

So the second row this time, I could still make it work from here, but the Cupra was going to need to be caught in the pits rather than on the track, made more difficult for my 20s success penalty vs their 15s.

There was no Live Stream from AlphaLive this weekend unfortunately.

The start was a bit dodgy, with the front two picking up the pace into the chicane and catching quite a few of us out. I expected it to be abandoned but the lights went out and we were away. As expect the Cupra was way ahead within the first few corners, so I had to get past Goes before I could try to make some progress.
I did this on the second lap, and had a 3.717 gap to make up so I started to push and on lap 3 I pushed too hard, cut the chicane and dropped off the edge of the track. This made an horrendous noise and the impact went right through my spine. The vibrations were so bad I thought the tyre had popped, but after a few corners I figured it must have just been a bent wheel, so I pushed on and hoped to make the pit stop window 15 minutes into the race, likely another 12 laps or so.
The gap peaked at 5.850 until lap 7, as I exited Stow, the sound of air escaping from somewhere it was not meant to, along with a decent amount of smoke meant I was bound for the pits way too early.

The Turbo to Manifold Gasket had decided to prolapse, most likely from the impact of the incident at the chicane pulling on either the boost pipe or the downpipe. It only needs a little leak to quickly turn into a big one with the almost 1000c exhaust gas leaking out.
Reuben managed to tighten it all back up, but it was still leaking a bit, and I knew that it would eventually melt something important under the engine bay. The race was already over for me, so I decided to retire the car.
My very short race is below:

Who knows where we could have been. I think a pretty straightforward P2 was on the cards. Again, the Elise had the fastest lap despite this being a power track for sure.

The #18 had made a quick escape in the first few laps, so the only way to catch them would have been in the pit stops.

The #18 led the way for the majority of the race.

The time the best laps for the #18 were pretty close to each other. The #2 Elise had a much bigger difference.

The Elise let the guys in the Cupra think they were going to take the fastest lap before setting a blistering time.

Fastest Laps

My fastest race lap is below:

The Lap record from last year was set by Mauger in the #18 TCR. In Quali Ryan and Dylan had set a slightly better time than that, but during the race is a different story with traffic, high fuel load and worn tyres. This year it was beaten by the Lotus Elise driven by Alan Henderson.

I came into this round with a 12 point lead over the #117 Gadsby / Jones BMW and left with only 2 points to spare, and only a 7 point lead over #18 Simon Mauger / Alan Blencowe who have been at the pointy end of most of the races lately, and the same over #19 Wayne Lawson in the RS3 TCR. If the #18 Wins and gets the fastest lap at the last round, I need to come at least 3rd to win the title. If the others do I would need to come 4th or better.

Another massive thanks to the guys. They worked hard to get the car ready, and my mistake cost us a podium and some decent points to go with it. We have 4 weeks to get ready for the ClubEnduro at Oulton Park in September. Hopefully both cars have better fortunes there.

Photos courtesy of Mick Walker, Jonathan Elsey Motorsport Photography and 750MC

All the details and dates for future races we are entering can be found on the Darkside Motorsport Page.