weChook Racing: International Final Day 2

Day 2 started with a nice lie in. The car was pretty much ready .to roll, and with all the running on day 1, we had no real need to go out in practice, giving us plenty of time until 1 o’clock when the F24+ International Final & Corporate Challenge would start.

With the transponder fitted and the batteries nicely charged, we had a good look around the car for last minute improvements to be made – we ended up settling on redoing the tracking (again) and making wheel covers out of duct tape. On of the hardest things in Greenpower is quantifying improvements, but we think the wheel covers must have made a difference – despite being a longer race, our average speed in the F24+ Final was greater than it was in the lap race, and our fastest lap was 2 seconds quicker, despite using a lower amount of power per lap.

We used the ample spare time available to us to watch the F24 race – a particular highlight was Viper dashing of the line and overtaking the pace car before the exit of the first corner – I suspect that driver wasn’t really listening at the driver briefing. A cleverer strategy would have been to hang and get up to race speed over the last quarter of the formation lap, ensuring the race proper was started at top speed.

Seeing as we’re planning a new version of 2galoo’s bodywork before the 2016 season we  decided to give the current edition a bit of a send off, by giving it some additional decoration… with help from my sister who was visiting, and from some of the JLR guys as well. We’d like to hope that Gav appreciated our support!

We <3 Gav (we also <3 Nash)

After another precarious trip up the banking, and a failed attempt to goad Dave Senior into a pushing race to the grid, we lined up in 6th place, behind Jet, Reprobation, F-eV, Bullet and Rotary Racer – all big names! After rather rudely snubbing Nash in our on grid interview (sorry again about that!), the grid was lined up and ready to go.

2galoo shot off the line when the flag dropped, just about reaching 2nd place before the first corner. When the car next came into view from the pit lane, it had been overtaken by Jet 1 and 2, along with Reprobation, and was in close formation with Rotary Racer. We managed to hold them off for the first 3rd of the race, but their lap times held strong when we hit the same mid race dip that we experienced in the Lap Race on day 1.

Probation and REC-349 had both dropped back a fair distance at the start of the race, but began to drag us back in in the last 15 minutes. With time for only 3 laps remaining, both of them caught and overtook Ian up the hill (we really need to look into some lightweighting for the driver) and began to pull away.

We crossed the line with only 4 seconds to spare before the flag dropped, which pushed us into the longest race that 2galoo had completed. It appears that Probation had pushed just a bit too hard to get ahead of us before the end, as its speed dropped significantly as the hour mark passed, and we retook the position – unfortunately REC-349 was just a bit too fast for us.

Across the line!

Across the line!

We finished the race in 11th place overall, and 9th of the cars competing in F24+ rather than the corporate challenge. It was a bit disappointing to finish outside of the points, but we were very happy with 2galoo’s performance, and had a lot of ideas on how to improve our performance for 2016 – both in the car and in race strategy. We also made some good contacts over the weekend, with whom we’re hoping to push on to greater success next season.

The F24+ championship concluded with Reprobation 2 points ahead of Jet, an almighty effort from the Renishaw team to beat a car that still looked untouchable at the start of this season. Driven bettered their previous best ever season performance by finishing the championship in 3rd place, just ahead of the two Bullet cars from Silesian.

Electric 2galoo finished the season in 8th place overall, just behind Minion and ahead of Project E. It was the 3rd highest place new car, and weCHOOK Racing was the highest place all new team. Thanks to building a new car mid season, we also managed to finish 25th with Electric Boogaloo!

Next stop: I’m not sure really…. Goodwood maybe?

An important message

An important message

weChook Racing: International Final Day 1

The end of our first season came up quickly. It was less than a month since Electric 2galoo had been finished, and we’d already taken part in 4 races and finished on the podium twice, leaving us sitting in equal 5th in the F24+ championship, with Rotary Racer.

We arrived at the circuit in good time, and were directed to our garage. We had  great location, in between the Portuguese University, Silesian University and the two teams that had travelled over from America – the now established Team USA with ARES, and the new team from the University of Alabama with Shock.

It didn’t take long for us to get through scruiteneering – we got there just before the queue got too mad! With our final sticker off the season on the car, we were ready for a few laps in practice. After our numerous calamities and failures at previous races, we were keen to put as few miles on the car as possible, so we only completed 6 laps in practice to make sure everything was running smoothly.

We ran the stint as planned, and had minimal drop off, but were not overly happy with the pace of the car, being no faster than Electric Boogaloo had been the last time we had visited Rockingham. In between practice and the race we did some serious fettling – specifically retruing the wheels. Just pushing the car along the ground, it was possible to feel an improvement in how the car was running.

Current log from our stint in practice

Current log from our stint in practice

Once we’d worked on the wheels, we downloaded the onboard logs from the practice laps, to check our current consumption was in a good range. Everything looked good – once the number of laps was announced we did a few quick sums, and realised we could up our power consumption by a couple of amps for the race.

After all that, we still had plenty of time to go for a wander and and chat to the other teams in attendance. The story of Shock, from the University of Alabama, rang true for us – the two guys had built their car in the shed in two months. They’d also got it shipped across to the UK from America, so they were just slightly outdoing us there! The car looked very well made, if not a little large (just like our first car… but Boogaloo wasn’t really well made). We had a good chat about how they’d designed their car, and how to make sure they get to the end of the race.

I accidentally posed in front of the American flag

I accidentally posed in front of the American flag

It got to 30 minutes before the race, so we strapped in the race batteries (not quite our best pair – we were saving them for the International Final on Day 2) and taped on the bodywork. Ian strapped himself in and we wheeled ourselves out to the circuit. Our ridiculously huge turning circle meant we took a bit of an awkward route out to the grid, but we made it eventually.

Ian was very excited for the start of the race

Ian was very excited for the start of the race

2galoo was lined up near the back of the grid for the lap race – only the corporate entries were behind us, but we made a good start and overtook a good number of cars from the flag dropping to the first corner.

The first 20 minutes went smoothly, we were 15s a lap faster than in practice, and we had a very gradual drop in lap time. Half an hour in, we experienced a sudden (and still unexplained) lap time drop of 10 seconds, then spent the rest of the race back at our gradual drop off of about a second per lap. This phenomenon would return to haunt us on day 2, in the F24+ final proper. Regardless, we were reasonably happy with our performance, finishing ahead of cars from Renishaw, JLR and Lockheed Martin, and overtaking Minion on the final lap, as their batteries just gave up before the end. Jet 2, driven this time by Dave, beat Reprobation to the line, but only just, having run very low on remaining power at the end of the race!

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PSEM had a difficult time – they spent their last lap going at less than walking pace, eventually making it into the pits after being lapped a number of times. It turned out they’d hit the batteries way too hard, and in doing so had overheated the motor – it was at 80 degrees when i got to it with a laser thermometer, and it had been off for a good while by that point! We had a good discussion about race strategy and using gearing to manage current, before they set off on a marathon upgrade session – they were still in the garage long into the evening when we had cracked on with the beers!

With the end of the F24+ Lap Race, day 1 of the International final was pretty much done for us, so we prepped what we could on the car (That car has been tracked so many times now that we’ve got it down to a fine art) and made sure day 2’s batteries were on charge, before retiring to the campsite, for some beers, food and sleep!