My CSCC Swinging Sixties and Triumph Competition & British
HTGT calendar was as follows -
Some meetings were 2 and 3 day events but the calendar shows the day we were
racing.
CSCC 2024 Swinging Sixties official race calendar
2024 Race & other dates and results | ||||||||
# | Date | Venue / Event |
Club & Series |
Car | Result o/a | Class result | Weather/comment | Results |
23 24 25 Feb | Stoneleigh Park | Race Retro Show | n/a | It was cancelled | ||||
12 March | Snetterton 300 | CSCC test day | Mazda MX-5 | Yes | ||||
1 | 23rd March | Donington | CSCC Swingers | Tuscan | dnf | dnf | Race start video | |
A | 10 - 12 May | Zandvoort | Triumph Competition & British HTGT | Tuscan | 1st 1st 4th |
1st 1st 1st |
Fabulously warm,
moderate breeze, lovely! fastest lap video |
Race 1 results |
2 | 22nd June | Silverstone GP | CSCC Swingers | Tuscan | dnf | Engine failure | ||
23rd June | Thruxton | CSCC Swingers | Tuscan | dns | Could not attend | |||
B | 26 - 28 July | Hockenheim | Triumph Competition & British HTGT | MGB GT V8 | 11th 13th 13th |
1st 1st 1st |
Warm then hot and |
Results page Race 1 results Race 2 results Race 3 results |
C | 4 - 6 October | Dijon | Triumph Competition & British HTGT | MGB GT V8 | Dry / Dry & Fog / Wet |
CSCC Swinging Sixties class structure for 2024
Class SA - Up to 1400cc
Class SB - Up to 1400cc Minis + Derivatives
Class SC - 1401cc to 1600cc
Class SD - 1601cc to 2000cc (4 cylinder)
Class SE - Classes SA to SD cars on Dunlop/Continental Historic Tyres
Class SF - 2001cc to 3000cc (and 6 cylinder <2 litre)
Class SG - Cars over 3000cc Class SL - Lotus cars (Seven, Elite, Elan etc.),
Ginetta, Wooden-chassis Marcos
Class SV - Cars with original V8 engines
Class SH - Classes SF to SV cars on Dunlop/Continental Historic Tyres
Class SZ - Any car entering a 2nd, half-priced Swinging 60s race
Not a total disaster but pretty poor really. A dampish qually with sprinkles of rain intermittently making the track very slippery - I managed to be in the pit lane discussing setup stuff with the guys just before the rain came so I missed the best two dry laps on the circuit so ended up 8th on the grid; not terrible given the mighty start capability of the Tuscan.
The race was great to terrible in 30 seconds! I had an awesome getaway and was up to 2nd place by the Redgate (turn 1) but then on the drop down Craner curves I felt the car go loose at the front and steering went well off-centre. At the same time the marshal posts all started displaying Red panels meaning stop racing caused by a significant incident on the first corner which was clearly visible on my rear-view camera. Basically my front right wheel bearing had catastrophically collapsed and welded the bearing track to the hub nut which ripped off the stub axle; only the brake caliper and disc were (just about) holding the wheel on. Hey-ho, game over but not as bad as it could have been as the car is in one piece and damage was limited to a wiped out stub axle, brake disc and a hub - we have since changed them all on both sides which does give me an emergency spare to add to the spares pack.
Really sorry to see the state of the Tippet/Norman BMW - lots of work to do to get that back on the track!
See the race start from the onboard cameras here
All the races were reported on and also live streamed click here
2024 Donington after the DNF; on the way back to the
Paddock
Photo: Mark Haggan
Nuts!
After the disappointment of the car failing at Donington, we set off for Zandvoort (just outside Amsterdam) with Triumph Competition & British HTGT on the 11th and 12th May; it was a lot of effort to get an International race licence, new clothing items and make some required changes to the car (as well as repairing the failed front stub/hub assembly). I had not been to Zandvoort since 2000 and it was really exciting to be back again. I was racing as car 349 which was a novelty in itself! One race was on Saturday, two more on Sunday.
Race 1 was my first ever outright win at Zandvoort; it was a combined race on this incredibly technical Grand Prix circuit which has 3 banked corners and a hugely long and fast start - finish straight.
Race 2 was also a win whereas Race 3 was 4th place (3rdin class) - I finished 3rd on the track but was awarded a time penalty after the race for excessive speed under the code 60, a brilliant weekend however.
Fastest lap of the Zandvoort weekend is here Race 1 in-car is here Race 2 in-car is here
The 2024 Zandvoort winners
I had not been to sandy Zandvoort for nearly 25 years and wow it has changed for the better - the paddock no longer has swamps or muddy puddles that were ideal for aquatic camping. I lived, during the working week, in Amsterdam for quite a while in the 1990s and it’s great to be back in The Netherlands.
The outward trip was unexpectedly and probably unnecessarily complicated. I had spent a few days getting everything ready as this was to be my first ever FIA type International event. The RV had a bucket of nastiness ready to surprise me though. Just 30 minutes out and I could smell hot brakes, there was a distinct feeling of loss of power and the vehicle was pulling to the left. I stopped in the first 20m+ long parking spot I was able to and the front left brake disc was glowing bright red and there was a disturbing warmth radiating from the entire wheel. Even after 2 litres of hot water from the tea flask it was instantly vaporising any liquids - it was all very, very hot!
It was a proper James May style “oh cock!” moment and I thought it was all over. However after a stern and firm talking to myself I got the jack out and lifted the wheel clear of the ground, it was stuck solid. There was only one thing for it - get access and hit it. The wheel was soon off (it’s bloody heavy and quite tricky on your own) and I was able to access the hot caliper (ideal 70s punk band name?) and back out the bleed nipple. No change so hit the caliper open with my finest lump hammer. A quick depression of the brake pedal instantly re locked the brake. More hammering and the emergency procedure of isolating the caliper from the system by brutal use of a pair of mole grips on the hose! Bloody hell it actually worked (have actually used this trick before) and an hour later I was on the way again.
Fortunately, a great feature of American RVs is that the braking effort is heavily biased to the rear axle so actually other than a slight pull to the right on braking it all felt ok. While I was under the vehicle i also noticed a diesel drip. Yet another leak-off pipe was dripping; luckily I had one spare but they are clearly terrible quality as I have had to replace quite a few since fitting new ones 4 years ago.
So I arrived in Harwich in good time - just as well that I left home 2 hours early in case of issues. The Ferry was fab, I have to say Brittany Ferries, which I use a lot, need to learn a bit from Stena. The cabins were much better and it was just a nicer, more modern decor ship.
There were no difficulties coming through passport control and customs (other than they wanted to see the race event details) and I was pretty much set up in the paddock by 11:00am and scrutineered by 12:30 so I was then just waiting for Richard to turn up in the afternoon with his MGB and Stack to arrive via EasyJet and Schiphol airport in the evening.
Stack and me all ready to go at Zandvoort in
2024
Richard King's MGBGT being scrutineered - way quicker
than the old Spitfire
Practice Saturday morning Somewhat tentative because of the failure at Donington and the hope that the weird brake problem we had been having was finally resolved. I did 2 laps then a pit lane visit to check wheel nuts (on new hubs the studs draw into the hubs on the first few uses and make the nuts go loose), then another stop a few laps later to add more front brake bias. The circuit was much more technical than I remembered and also very steeply banked in places - it was surprisingly difficult to get to grips with it and even by the end of the practice session I wasn't too sure of the best lines. In the time between that session and the race I was lucky enough to meet a really helpful local guy who does a lot of track days here and was able to give me some great suggestions and insights. I knew I could go quicker but didn't want to take too much risk! I qualified 8th of the Triumph Competition cars and 18th overall, remembering it was 2 races combined into 1 grid so the other race which was slick-shod post historic sports and saloons was irrelevant to our results and as it was a 44 car start, there were a lot of cars on the grid!
Race 1 Saturday afternoon I had an awesome start and made up several places by Tarzanbocht, the first corner, but was immediately up against a mighty fast gang of very modified MGAs and MGBs driven by some very determined locals who know the track very well. I had a fabulous race for the next 10 laps and finally got into the lead but not by much and the pesky MGs were getting back in front under braking then I was able to pull away on the main straight. I eventually managed to open up a 4 second lead and left them to fight each other and won the Triumph Competition & HTGT race despite two virtual safety car periods in which I was lucky to maintain my gap and finished 6th overall. Clearly nobody understood the VSC rules as they are different from F1 so they were dropped for the next 2 races and replaced by Code 60 which means everyone must reduce speed to 60 kph and maintain the gap to the cars in front and behind (easier said than done and there was quite a lot of speed and rules interpretation and a variety of penalties in the later races)
Race 2 Sunday morning Another race win after a strange red flag incident mid race which nobody understood, a great battle with the Post Historic saloons (the guys in the other race that was running alongside ours) until their slick tyres won out. Probably the least interesting race but still really hard work and pretty close at the end. Post Script: The red flag was caused by excessive noise from the front running cars!
Race 3 Sunday morning A slightly tricky one as we had already won 2 races so decided not to put new tyres on the car although the rears were certainly looking very sub optimal, however for some reason the car suddenly lost grip half way through lap 1 and gently tipped me into a half spin. We have watch the video over and over and analysed the data and I think I just didn't have as much right rear grip as I had before; also the track was definitely more contaminated in places as well as it being quite a lot hotter. I did it again 3 laps later! What that did lead to was a great fun recovery drive back to 3rd which was then dropped to 4th after I was awarded a time penalty for excessive speed under the code 60 which happened at about 2/3 of the race. Hey ho, I wasn't worried as I already had two cheeky wins in the bag!
Later on I analysed the VBOX data and it showed I was pulling 15% more lateral G on that corner compared to the previous race and the break away is very sudden - unusually I made no specific driver input mistake. I did however hit Vmax in race 3 which was 142.9mph on the fastest part of the finish straight as you pass the control line.
The Tuscan on the grid for Zandvoort race 3 -
notice how close it is to the town
Photo: Martin Stackpoole
I managed to get fastest lap of the weekend for our race series during the 3rd race click here to see it.
Official race reports and results click here
Not too much to say about this particular race meeting as it went spectacularly badly. I qualified 4th on the grid in a field of about 70 cars including reserves and the car was running as strongly as ever however all was about to come to a very sudden end. I had a great start and was comfortably up in 2nd place when there was a small shudder from the car as I joined the Wellington Straight and a vibration set in. The engine was still running but rough so I cruised round to the pits where the guys immediately spotted that there was oil dripping from a small split in the sump pan.
Game over and we pushed the car back to the RV to loaded it into the trailer. Once back at the workshop we dropped the the sump and it was evident what the problem was; one of the connecting rods had snapped and the whole big end part was sitting in the lowest part of the oil pan. Most annoyingly it has taken a chunk out of the crankshaft and the lower end off one of the bores so it will need, as a minimum, new block, rods and crank which will take several months to sort out. The engine went up to the engine builders place the following week but they can’t even look at it until September at the earliest. Probably no more TVR this year.
Not sure that this big end will go again - aftermath of
the 2024 Silverstone CSCC Swinging 60s race
Looks like it has gone from 1st overall in Swingers in 2023 to not even finishing a race in 2024!!!
Probably one of the most complex and intensive race meetings I have ever attended, not because of the meeting itself but because of the desire on my part to be there despite not having an engine for the TVR. The thought of missing the Hockenheimring meeting as well as Silverstone and Thruxton was too much to accept. Over the past few years I have decided to undertake fewer race meetings but only take part in those with more significance to me hence racing with the Triumph Competition and HTGT race championship this year and probably next year too and so the challenge came that I had no car for this meeting and with only 4 weeks to do something about it and the Elan being sold, I bought another car.
The car was not really one I would have chosen but was an acceptable car that was available! It's an MGB GT V8 but one from the MGCC V8 Championship standard class and it needed a huge amount of work to get it ready for this German race weekend. As it turned out we managed about 300 hours of intense work to get it ready and it finished all 3 races although not quite making the top 10 for any of them. Bits of it are rather rough but it looks pretty good from a few metres away.
This page summarises all the work we did in that 4 week run-up to the event click here
The weather had looked variable for the 2 days (yes, it was Friday and Saturday) and Stack and I had decided that we'd take the RV as the tow vehicle despite it being 350 miles from Hook of Holland to the Hockenheimring, as it turned out it was a good choice and it was good to have it there despite a slightly annoying engine temperature sensor failure on it despite it being a new one. Stack drove loads of the way there and back too which really helps and the roads were mostly very clear so we plodded along at about 53mph which the RV seems very comfortable with.
Practice Scrutineering was all good ( always a worry with a new car) and I decided that practice would just be a quick test of the car. Almost immediately there was a problem; the rev counter, fuel gauge and temperature gauge were not working which is far from ideal on car you don't know. On the up side, the brakes were good and the car felt OK but had pretty noticeable understeer but I was happy to finish 15th in the qualification times. We soon fixed the instrumentation issue (actually Richard did) as it was the new braided oil pressure line shorting out the voltage regulator which was traced by Richard's cunning use of a test meter and sacrificing a few fuses!
2024 Hockenheimring paddock setup JW and Richard King MGB
GTs
Race 1 - Friday afternoon - Nearly wiped out on lap 1 by an out-of-control Morgan +8; there was a good view of it from Richard King's onboard camera shows that he nearly took me out at the hairpin on lap 1. All was well however and I had a fun race to finish 11th overall after a race long battle with a few other cars. Finishing a race was the target for the weekend and that was a box ticked. I also discovered that the understeer is somewhat of a characteristic of Hockenheimring and it has notoriously low grip levels so I did back off the front shock absorbers slightly but I can't say that I noticed that it made any significant difference for the later races.
Race 2 - Saturday morning - the least fun race but still good although I got overtaken and dropped to 13th overall right at the end of the race by Horst Jaekel in his MGB that shows on the results as a GT but is actually a very nice lightweight roadster after the car was rebodied last winter.
Race 3 - Saturday afternoon - Definitely the best race of the weekend and I gave it a bit more as my confidence in the car had improved and I just wanted to go a bit quicker with lots of dicing for position and generally a good clean race. Finished 13th again, this time ahead of Horst after he thought the race was over but had seen the circuit countdown timer hit zero rather than seen the flag. My best fun race and quickest laps of the weekend were in this one and they are up on YouTube Click here
We came away with 3 finishes which is more than I expected but with the car being a bit slower than I expected; it's easy to drive but is a bit flat for a V8 so there is a lot to do for the next outing for the car at Dijon. The other notable issue is that the car is insanely hot in the cabin and later investigation found a big gap in the firewall hidden away under the dashboard and I am sure it was allowing a lot of very hot air from the engine bay into the car. Also the underside of the car was covered in a film of engine oil - the sump has been off and inspected and we can't really determine where it's coming from but one spot weld had been brazed up and the seals replaced - not sure it'll work but we have to try something!
Since the Hockenheimring meeting the following changes have been/are being made
Lots of weight out of the car - actually about 40KG - Polycarbonate door windows, alloy window frames, stripped out doors, GRP rear hatch - which is about 10Kg lighter than the steel one and loads of other stuff
Revised rear shock absorber mounts - the 'old' front AVO ones are now on the back and with a revised mounting setup
Better exhaust system - it was rubbing on the axle/shock absorber mounts
Sealed up the firewall
New oil cooler and lightweight race hoses
Different camshaft and carburettor setup which sort of half worked
Many other smaller mods
So this was the final race meeting of a very mixed year of motorsport for me. It was 2019 that I last raced at Dijon Prenois and that was in the FIA Elan; this time it was the MGB GT V8 and there had been much useful and much useless work undertaken with the net result that the car was no better and no worse, just different from how it was at Hockenheim. It's quite a long way from home to Dijon so I made it into an 8 day solo trip including a tourist visit to Bastogne in Belgium on the way there and on the way back and this time I took the VW Camper as the towing and sleeping vehicle and it was excellent as both
Bastogne was great and was the site of a notable defensive battle during the Battle of the Bulge in the winter of 1943/44 where surrounded US forces fought off many days of intense air, ground and artillery attacks; there are a number of memorials and museums in the area as well as Bois Jacques where the Bastogne episode of Band of Brothers is set. It's really interesting to look down onto the village of Foy which is well known scene in the TV series and I followed the road down into that village where many of the houses are still pock marked with bullet impact holes.
Regarding the racing (which is clearly the point of this site) it was a mixed bag of results but with 100% finishes again which is more than can be said for the bloody Tuscan this year! We had made a lot of changes to the MG and had gained a tiny amount of power but lost a load of torque which was really disappointing as actually that's bad - it's torque that is key to acceleration in any race car. We also got a lot of weight out of the car which is always a good thing to do. To be honest it needs a better engine as it's a pretty much standard 3.5 litre Rover SD1 type. It does sound better now as a minor consolation.
The MGBs ready to go for the 2024 Dijon Motors Cup
meeting
Race 1 - Saturday afternoon - A great scrap with a 2 litre Alfa 105 of Andre Kardol as well as Carst Span's Mini and a couple of other MGs, really good fun and made the trip worthwhile in itself. The car started making a nasty speed dependant noise during the race which required some investigation. Richard and I had a good look underneath but couldn't find anything - we did, however, find a single very badly worn brake shoe on the driver's side rear brake and it looked like the slave cylinder was weeping very slightly. After discovering that Richard's spare cylinder was seized he managed to find a spare used one from one of the other MGB racers; it wasn't exactly the same but was close enough to be fitted. Annoyingly it didn't cure the noise and we never did find what thecause was while at Dijon - we hoped we would find something back in the workshop in the week
Race 2 - Sunday Morning - The best race of the weekend but annoyingly the rear view camera failed to start correctly so I don't have any of the chasing pack that I was ahead of. My best lap was slightly quicker than the best of Saturday's laps but the race was stopped at around 22 minutes as the fog was so dense you couldn't see the corners or marshal points safely. I had a great race-long battle with quite a few cars including Harald Raschke's very nice Triumph TR7V8. Race 2 in car click here
Race 3 - Bloody awful, horrible damp and slippery conditions with a truly dreadful driving performance by yours truly and the noise coming from the rear of car is louder than the engine. Did finish the race however nearly in last position but 10th in the Triumph Competition section. There were a number of retirements from the race due to the weather and a number of black flag disqualifications which I don't know the cause of. Also, unfortunately, Harald's TR7 V8 engine broke too. This did mean I finished 10th in the Triumph Competition group.
On the up side I did get a 'Trophy' for being second in the
V8 class for the weekend!
So on to 2025, hopefully with the TVR Tuscan back together again and with the MGB GT V8 as backup. I shall do several of these European rounds (I am planning to do Nurburg GP and Most in Czechia at least) as well a number of CSCC rounds too, hopefully including Spa again although October seems a grim time to be in the Ardennes.
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