Martin Galpin | Racing Driver | number66.net

Snetterton is probably my home circuit. Although I am actually equidistant between Brands Hatch and Snetterton, the Norfolk circuit offers me greater sentiment as my home track. Ultimately, we had one of the most frustrating weekends possible but I think overall, we learnt enough during the to be much clearer about what we do next.

Going into qualifying, I was pretty confident that pole position would be a high 1 minute 14. The Formula Ford lap record (held by Peter Dempsey) was a 1 minute 14.8 and after dominating FF1600 in 2005, I think he is quite a reliable benchmark for performance. After the long 25 minute qualification session, I posted a 1 minute 15.1. This lap, my fastest lap, I set on my own and without a tow (slipstream or draft).

I have to say I was somewhat surprised that this was only good enough for sixth on the grid, roughly a tenth off Matt Shawyer and just under two tenths off Gough in fourth. Rory Butcher posted an astonishing pole position time of 1 minute 13.7 which is indecently fast for a Kent-engined Formula Ford and faster than slowest of last years Duratec Formula Ford’s (with 150BHP and slicks)!

So I’ve been trying to work out why this was the case. Firstly, conditions for qualifying and indeed the entire day were very good – there was an immensely strong tail wind down the long back straight. So much, in fact, that I was on the rev limiter over 100m prior to my braking point. Despite running what is considered a “Snetterton top gear” (21:24), if I was geared longer, I would have benefited from this tail wind. Second, my fastest lap in qualifying was set on my own, without the tow of another car. And for what ever reason that was, I find it hard to believe many others were also set on their own (and the fact these times were not replicated in the race would also suggest this).

Starting sixth on the grid, I was expecting to have a fight for a podium in the race. If Rory could indeed do 1 minute 13s or anything close, it is hard to imagine anyone staying with him. However, with only a few tenths separating 2nd to 6th, there was definitely a battle to be had there.

However, I never got the chance because after increasing the rev limit after qualifying (owing to the tail wind), it was incorrectly reset and cutting in at 6000RPM (about 1200RPM short of normal). So I pulled into the pits after the first lap. We reset the limiter and I went back out on track, albeit four laps down on the leaders. As the grid for race two was determined from the finishing order of race one, if I was classified as a finisher, I would at least start ahead of those who were not.

And here is where it gets interesting. During the race, the only person who was consistently faster than me (and not by much) was the eventual race winner, Scott Malvern. Consider the following five laps as an example:

I think that suggests a potential race that never was, considering I was again on my own and not pushing 100%.

Come race two, I was starting on the penultimate row of the grid after being classified as the last finisher in race one.

I made a decent start and got up into the top ten in the first lap. After battling it out in the “train” for one or two laps, I lost of few positions at Sear corner after my foot got caught under the bulkhead in the pedal box. Soon after this the safety car was deployed for an incident involving two cars which collided as I went around the outside of them into Richies.

After the restart I got stuck behind the train of cars which led all the way up to 3rd position and I struggled to make any real impact for the remainder of the race, eventually finishing 7th behind Matt Shawyer in 6th position.

This weekend was the first time I have properly raced wheel-to-wheel with other cars this year. And I think that what it did was highlight the deficiencies and relative strengths with our own car. Despite lapping as fast as I can on my own, caught in traffic, I was stuck, half a second to a second slower than normal. When I was behind another car, I simply did not have the straight line speed to pass, no matter how quickly I exited the preceding corner. I could pull out from the tow, only to have to pull back in shortly after. This tells me that our next focus for improvement has to be engine and I will start that tomorrow with a phone call to Scholar.

Chassis-wise, I think it is fair to say we have improved the car thus far and my outright pace relative to the winner in comparison to Anglesey is telling. I still do not think we have reached the optimum yet, the car continues to squat under power more than is ideal and is similarly dives under heavy braking (read: too much load transfer) but it is much closer than we have ever been before.

I like to be honest about my racing. When it came off the dyno after being rebuilt two months ago, my engine had 106BHP at 5800RPM. As it stands, I honestly do not think that is enough to win a) a national championship round and b) a one-off trophy event. And as both of these are my ambition, I now need to work out what can be done to rectify this situation.

Thanks to Dave Kilburn at Elite Photography for the photographs!

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