Not the best result I could have hoped for at Brands Hatch but looking at the positives the car was reliable and predictable. I’m still finding it difficult to commit to Paddock Hill Bend on turn in,  Clearways always feels messy although I have been told it never feels quite right and I’m loosing too much speed along Brabham Straight. Still, I managed a 56.16 lap which isn’t my best but not too far off it. Oh yes, and I got 2nd in class again.

I did manage to leave the circuit with some interesting data though. First off I actually remembered to turn my data logger on so once I work out what it all means I’ll be able to post up some interesting data. I did have a quick look at the G meter results which was reading 1.5G in the corners.

Probably the most important data of the day was the car’s weight. After the race we were pulled into the post race scrutineering bay and weighed. The combined weight (car and driver) of the Phoenix is 512 kgs compared to 470-ish kgs for the front runners. As you can imagine 40 kgs represents a significant disadvantage in a low-weight, low-power formula such as the 750 Formula.

So, what am I going to do about it? Well, on the left you may have noticed an image of a box with some items in it. This is my “diet box”. As the next race I will be entering will be in June I have enough time to modify some of the more over engineered parts of the car and what ever I remove will be kept in this box as tangible evidence of my achievement. Hopefully, further tangible evidence will available in the form of better lap times! I’m going to set myself a target of a 20 kg weight reduction by the next race… Let’s see how it goes…