SPORTS RACING WORLD CUP

RACE REPORT, SR2 Lights

Drivers Richard Fores and Adrian Cottrell

DONINGTON Race Meeting 26th to 27th August 2000 

Practise Sessions

With the forecast of rain for Saturday the decision was made to convert the MBR972 from its MKIII rear end back to the MKII type, since the 'old' rear is a softer set up and would most probably give better handling in the wet. The decision proved to be a good one when both practise sessions turned out to be wet.

Qualifying

The unfortunate part was that the Avon Wet Tyres appeared to handle no where near as well as other competitors tyres in the wet (Pirelli and Dunlop), this was shown by the back of the SR2 grid being covered by those using the Avon Wets for qualifying. The MBR crew tried to get better handling after the practise sessions by switching over the rear end of the car to that with a slightly different Differential Set up, but their effort was in vain, and they qualified 12th in class out of the sixteen SR2 cars on the grid.

The Race

The weather looked like being dry for Sunday, so yet another change of rear end to the new MKIII one was on the cards, since something drastic was required to move the car quickly up the grid in the race. The new rear end had performed well at a previous Test at Mallory earlier on in the week, so it seemed like the right choice. Also with the knowledge that the Avon Slick Tyres (for use in dry conditions) performed really well, the Team knew that they would be in with a good chance of a top result for the race.

Richard went out in the warm up to check the car out and reported a slight clutch problem, but that it had seemed to improve by the end of his 4 laps. The crew checked the car over and couldn't find a quick cure and after Richard's prognosis were not too concerned that they had a major problem, so decided not to remove the rear of the car on such a tight timescale before the race.

Adrian was going to start the race, and the Team had planned to take advantage of the 10 minute pre race open pit lane rule to get Adrian some dry laps in the car ready for the race, but the clutch problem reappeared after just one lap. This meant that the car ended up starting the race from the pit lane after a frantic time spent trying to source the problem, the time available meant that the car had to be sent out on the track to see how it performed under race conditions.

All seemed to be going really well once Adrian got out on the track, after just about half an hour of racing he had worked his way up from 16th in class to 6th in class, then over the radio he reported a problem starting to occur with the car. Team manager Mark Bailey called him in to check out the car after it had lost its clutch, they managed to get him back out again after a quick refuel and with no clutch, and the chance had to be taken that the car might reach the end of the race without the use of a clutch.

But on the second lap round Adrian was forced to pull the car over off the track, with no drive left to the wheels, and after such a brilliant drive it was a big disappointment to the whole Team.

Work Shop inspection back at MBR

The reason for the failure became all too evident once the car has been inspected back at base, a clutch housing failure had caused the whole clutch mechanism to flail around in the gearbox bell housing, destroying the clutch, clutch shaft, wiping out the clutch fluid pipes and the inside of the Gearbox bell housing. The clutch shaft was twisted and bent like a banana, and had snapped from the forces put on it.

Team Manager Mark Bailey said afterwards ' I have never seen anything like this before, we knew that there was a problem, but not such a major problem or that it would have done this much damage. The Clutch Spigot opening in the Gearbox bell housing is chewed oval beyond all recognition - its destroyed. Even if the car had limped back to the pits we couldn't have got it back out again in the time available, it was such a depressing end to the race for us'.