Furze Platt Greenpower Racing

Super Snail June – September 2005

 The first run, first race and last chance to qualify at Bedford Autodrome

The two cars getting ready for their test runs, Super Snail’s first ever run.

 We arrived at Bedford in 2 vehicles as the new trailer that the PTA had bought for the team was not yet fitted out to carry 2 cars.  With much trepidation SS was put on the ground and those team members who’d not been working on tit over the summer got the first look at its startling colour. We hoped it would go as well as it looked.

 SS was finished in all the important places but it did not have a speedometer or wheel disks and it needed some more of the wood sealing against water but it went to scrutineering and passed as did TT.

 Next came the test runs TT, was the bench mark so SS was sent off with one of the TT team drivers to  let us know what it felt like compared to TT. They both went off on a parade lap but the need for speed soon got them going somewhat faster.  

When they came in everything appeared to be working apart from the over-current warning light which had stopped working on both cars. This was not good as we knew the problems that not having this device had caused at Castlecombe (melted motor). Now we has 2 motors to worry about and we had to qualify Super Snail for the final in this race. TT was probably going to qualify on its Castlecombe distance but Super Snail had to do well over a hundred miles to qualify. 

It was decided that we should limit the gear of the cars to 5th as a max and see what happened to the motor temps. The SS team were very nervous about the chances of breakdown but were willing to give it a go. The race started and TSR 2 went flying off this was definitely their circuit, and try as TT drivers might TSR2 definitely looked like it had the race sewn up. We may have been slightly faster down the straights but the corners always came to soon for the speed advantage to work. The worry about over-cooking the motors did not help either and we also had a couple of over current trips on TT  which resulted in a lot of freewheeling.  SS got some debris off another car stuck underneath it and the driver sensibly stopped and with the help of the break down team had it removed before it caused any damage. This is the drawback of low ground clearance, which was also causing us a problem coming into the pits as the nose of both cars hit the ground as they went from the tarmac to the concrete, this resulted in slight damage to TT.

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Last modified: 08/06/09