Fall Showdown: Real Steel Series Final Round.
15th-16th October '05
Friday and Saturday,
Mid October and all is well!
The final round of the Real Steel series had come for the Wild Bunch, and we headed off to Shakespeare County Raceway. We arrived on Friday afternoon to find a lone Buncher in the pits. Steve and Leslie Field had arrived before us with the Black Pig, and had started to set up pit. We parked next to them and unloaded the car and tools (..aka: beer..) ready for the weekend.
Dean has his Friday night tinker...
When the alarm woke us (or not, because we forgot to set it!) on Saturday morning we had expected the pits to have filled up a bit with some late arrivals, but it was not to be; looking like a scene from an alien "B" movie, with just a few weirdos walking around.. (us lot......)
It looked like we would get as many runs as we wanted through the day, hoorah!
Twisted Fan, Adi, tries the Belle on for size.
Dawn shows us just how busy the weekend is going to be !
P and P showing off their fantastic new quilt. (Made by mummy Helen)
After a brief warm up and tweak of her timing, the Belle was ready to roll. As there was no queue, Helen suited up and strapped in before we headed to the track. We were hoping to run fast and maybe get a new PB, the first run was a 9.87 @ 134mph and the second was 9.75 @ 135mph but both runs saw the Belle move around a fair bit. On the third run, the traction gave way and the Belle stepped out at half track. Helen drove well and brought the Belle home in once piece.
As we were struggling with grip and consistency, we decided to tune the car down a bit and took two more passes, one in the left lane and one in the right. These recorded 10.63 and 10.56 respectively, so it looked like we had our dial in for Sunday.
During the day we had a visitor, Dean's friend Adi, who enjoyed watching the racing and sat in the Belle to get a feel for the confines of the cockpit. Adi wasn't the only one to get the feel of being in a race car as some of the start line crew and marshals took their road cars for a blat down the track instead of staring at the empty fire up road!
Off she goes..
Dean managed to grab a short piece of footage of the girls doing their stuff, so check out the video below.
After the queue-less day we had on Saturday, Sunday also looked like it would not be too busy, so the Bunch let the track warm up a touch before heading out for our first round at 13;00 following a short oil down. We ran 10.19 at 128mph, a bit too fast for our chosen dial in of 10.55. After a slight adjustment on the car, the second run was a 12.85, way off the mark and ending our hopes of competition for the day. after Dean corrected his mistake, we ran twice more on Sunday afternoon netting another out of shape 11.3 and a final 10.60 as a consolation.
The Wild Bunch had had a great couple of days racing with the emptiness of the track making for a very relaxed weekend and a very quick pack up too! At the prize ceremony Team Twisted were very pleased to have won the trophies for "Best appearing Team" and "Best Altered". The points for the season were also tallied up and we had succeeded in securing fourth place in the 2005 Real Steel Series.
With the competitive rounds sewn up for 2005, the Halloween Showdown will be the final showing at the track before we head back to the garage for the winters tinkering... See you there!