2017 24hr

[Paul]

On a lighter note, I'd like to thank everyone from the four ECAS drivers. Paul, Fred, Phil & myself had an absolutely fantastic weekend! We had no idea what to expect - Fred has raced karts & single seaters, Phil raced tin tops 25+ years ago and while Paul has worked on the engineering side he, like me, had never actually done a race.

What we experienced was the best weekend's motorsport any of us has ever had.

Camaraderie, advice, banter, helping hands, competition. Just mega. We all loved driving the car too; its a real challenge to nail a 'perfect' lap and the racing was brilliant. Massive thank you to the Team Gadget caterers too, you girls made the weekend.

Really hope to return, although I think we used up all our luck this year!

It was a pleasure Dan,glad you enjoyed our misunderstood racing.You might as well make use of all that safety equipment you bought and come out to play some more next year.

[Marty]

I assume seat belt location and way they are fitted to car will form part of any review. After my Oulton crash (car 92) somebody told me that belt mounting points are more important than frame mounting. If the frame breaks the belts should hold you, if the belt mounts fail then you have major problems however good the frame. Appreciate some belts attached to frames at all or some points so in those cases focus on the frame.
My seat was badly broken at Oulton and I suspect the hip harness may have been at the wrong angle, the hip belts according to manufacturer sites I have seen state that they should be mounted as close to the line of the leg and hip as practical & at an angle of 45-60 degrees. Moving the seat more centrally while using the cars original belt locations at the B pillar may not be best location for instance. The belt mount locations in Car 92 crash were all fine.
Not much of a frame either if you look at the photos but that did hold being attached to plates.
The seat uprights also were bent on Car 40 at Snet I noticed like mine above - so the 'frames' seem to hold better than the uprights in all these accidents, maybe its by design the uprights are meant to flex.
The seat was not very straight afterwards.
I agree with Wayne and Pete amongst others that the driver should for safety reasons be more central if possible. If Car 92 had been left hand drive I doubt I would be walking very well today.
Reading Chris and Louis's notes is I am going to look at adding tube between the vertical roll cage behind the B pillar and the rear cage legs to brace them.
Also at CSCC scrutinner this year with my hybrid car they wanted to see roll cage bar between the feet running forwards (below the hip bar).

After being hit at Spa in 2015, we were very happy to have no injured driver, although the shock was on a left-hand drive.
This is due to the very good quality of the metal chosen for our roll cage (it folded under the push of the left door)


But we are also lucky that the shock did not take place 50 cm higher.


Consequently, during the construction of our new 2CV, for 2018 Eco Class 24HR race, we'll slightly raise the horizontal bar to the left of the driver, increase the quality of the materials, and be extremely careful on the points of attachment to the chassis.

[Dartiailh]

The thing with the baton's is you almost have to be looking for them they aren't exactly Mensa level of brightness.A beacon would give off so much light that even if you were unsighted of the marshal you would still see the flash .

This would be a very good alternative to light boards. As you say Paul, they would be very difficult to miss

[Trevor Williams]

I know what was available at the circuit, both wand-style and beacons, which have been used at all the 24 hour races since it came back to the UK in 2003.

My question was more in relation to the circuit light panels which are located around the circuit, and can either be controlled by the relevant marshal post or centrally from Race Control

[Caterham Man]

Nice write up on the 24hrs, but you missed Tom Perry out of the Team Gadget drivers. He set the fastest "602" lap of the race so I think he deserves a mention.

[gadget]

The wands are fine when you are following the safety car.
Not that good when at race speed.
It should be an easy fix as led lights are now so much more advanced than 4/5 years ago.

[gadget]

I think so too Mr Caterham man,
Cos when he set that time it was pitch black,about 2 in the morning.
We ha be always thought that he was a little strange though,with these little pointy ears, and he's always hanging around.

[naughtybear]

On the subject of lights, I did question with a few other drivers if you actually needed the two spots/floods........
I ran at Spa last year on just two LED headlamp bulbs and again this year at snett and didn't have any issues.

[Derek Coghill]

"Did they not use the circuit light boards?"

Yes they did, Trevor. Yellow ones and white ones.