2006

 
With the car only finished the day before the Renishaw heat we had no time to perform any test runs and decided to test the car during Sunday' practice sessions, well it shot away like a bullet and performed far better than all our expectations. We came away with 2nd place with 162.8 miles and the best South Gloucestershire car, our aim of achieving a Gold award was well and truly met.


After the School holidays we travelled to Darley Moor for the North West heat, but the omens were not good, only two of our regular drivers were available, so we asked “S” Factor if any of them would like to drive Rotary Racer and two drivers volunteered. As they had not driven the car before we sent the first driver out for a practice run, well the rest is history, the car crashed on the infamous hairpin and could not be repaired at the track.


Back at School, an open evening was arranged by the institute of mechanical engineers and during the evening we recruited 4 new drivers. In the weeks leading up to the final Rotary Racer was repaired and recovered with Boatcoat, the original covering was looking rather tatty and had lost tension in a few places (possibly because it had been stuck on in very hot weather and the adhesive had lost its stickiness). With the benefit of past experience it turned to be a much better job than the first attempt, with a lot less joins and better adhesion to the chassis.


And so to the final, with four new drivers, we had to make extensive use of practise time, one of the drivers failed to negotiate the chicane and although no damage was done to the car we decided that he was too inexperienced to continue racing, this was a hard decision and we asked him to consider his own safety and to think of the bigger picture, he was very brave and agreed with the decision.


The race got underway and Rotary Racer was putting in some fantastic times, the best lap was 4 minutes 37 seconds which is over 31 MPH average speed. Just after the first driver change, the canopy blew off in the strong cross wind and was too damaged to use again, the driver was unsure of what to do next and pulled over on to the grass, luckily a quick thinking marshal (thanks Duncan) realised what had happened and quickly got him back on the track and he continued to race without the canopy. We had a couple more excursions on to the grass but a more serious incident occurred when the chain came off (we have never had this problem before) again a marshal helped out (thanks) and put the chain back on, it was rather loose but managed to stay on for the rest of the race. Towards the end of the race we were having a battle with two other cars for fourth place but when the chequered flag came out we had lost that battle by two laps and came sixth with 168 miles, a fantastic achievement for all concerned, well done everybody.