Donington park Last weekend saw Team Morgan Sidecar Racing return to the North Gloucester Road Racing Club Championship. Glorious sunshine welcomed the team to Donington Park on Friday evening for rounds 8 and 9 of the club championship and the weather would remain that way for the two day event. The team had raced at Donington only once before and were keen to see how their lap times would compare with their only previous visit from last year. An added attraction of the event was that round 4 of the British FII Sidecar championship was being run over the same weekend, which saw the team lining up against the likes of Conrad Harrison, Ian Bell and Tony Baker. Saturday A combined Club/British Championship practice session saw the pair circulating the famous Donington circuit with regular British Championship contenders. By the end of the session, the team had managed a best time of 1m 24.98 sec, putting them 9th in the Club times and 25th overall. Race 1 As the grid for Race 1 was set by current championship positions, the duo lined up on the outside of row 6 in 12th position. The start saw the pair drop a couple of positions off the line but then pick up 3 places by out-braking a number of outfits and then driving around the outside of a few more through Redgate and down Craner Curves for the first time. This put the team into 9th place by the end of lap 1, a position they held over lap 2. However, on lap 3, a small problem caused the team to slow and having done a 1m36 lap, they were dropped down into 11th position. Picking up pace again for the remainder of the 7 lap race, the team caught and passed two outfits to climb back up into 9th position by the chequered flag, with a best lap time of 1m 24.54 sec. Race 2 The 9th place finish from the qualifying race 1 meant that for the afternoon Championship race, Team Morgan would line up on the inside of the 5th row. A repeat performance at Redgate on lap 1 saw the team pick up three spots on the opening lap and held an excellent 6th position for the first four laps. However, very disappointingly they then lost one position on each of the remaining 4 laps and ended the race down in 10th position, despite having improved their fastest lap time to a 1m 22.97 sec, an average of 84.91mph. The team were up into an excellent 6th position by the end of lap one. Sunday After some overnight changes including gearing and jetting, the team managed a very slight improvement in lap time in the Sunday morning practice session. Race 1 As was becoming customary, a solid start from the 5th row of the grid, put Team Morgan into 7th position at the end of lap 1. As the pack sorted itself out over the opening few laps, Kevin put a really good move on the Broadstock/Truman pairing into MacLean’s on lap 2 but were also passed by a couple of faster crews who had suffered poor starts. This meant that at the end of a hard fought race, the team had picked up a 7th place finish overall, with a further improvement in lap time to a 1m 22.59 secs Race 2 For the final race of the weekend, the team had their best grid position of the event, heading up the fourth row in 7th place. Given this the pair were confident of a positive result to finish off the weekend. However, as they left the line, a F1 machine (1000cc) beat them to turn 1 and with the extra power and top end speed it had they were unable to find a way past. They were clearly being held up in many places on the circuit, but the straight line speed of the bigger machine made it an impossible task. It did mean though that the team enjoyed a race long battle with four or five other outfits who were all having the same difficulties. Positions changed on every lap with the team slipping as low as 11th by mid race distance. By the chequered flag however, they had moved themselves back up into 7th position. Team Morgan Sidecar Racing
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 19:43:28 +0000