UCLan Racing’s students make solid start to season
Team achieves two podium finishes on opening weekend
The British Racing and Sports Car Club’s Formula Ford 1600 season is well underway following the opening races of the 2016 season.
UCLan Racing, the University of Central Lancashire’s Formula Ford team, began their Northern Championship campaign at Oulton Park in early April.
The team scored consecutive third-place finishes thanks to the efforts of the team’s Motorsports Engineering students, and Dutch driver Jaap Blijleven.
Optimism was high heading into this year’s championship, as Senior Technician Nick Johnson revealed in March, and he feels that the team have started the season well.
The Formula Ford 1600 Championship returns next month, and students from the University of Central Lancashire are…medium.com
“It’s a good start to the season,” said Johnson.
“We always look at things on a season-long basis, rather than just race to race. If we can score points consistently, and score good points on a bad day, then you’re going to do well in the championship.
“We felt really prepared. Small things like having the garages for the first race can make a difference because you’re not worried about having everything for your awning. That made some of the preparations a little bit easier.”
Despite those preparations, Johnson feels that the students coped really well when they were forced to make changes to the car on Friday, following a clutch issue that threatened to disrupt pre-race testing.
“Normally you could lose track time from that. But we managed to get all of that done in between our sessions on track and we didn’t lose one minute of track time.”
Saturday morning’s qualifying session result meant the team started the first race from the front row of the grid, having been beaten to pole position by just one tenth of a second.
A slow start off the grid in the Race One meant that Blijleven dropped back to fourth position by the time the cars reached the first corner.
“It was a gamble that Jaap wanted to take,” said Johnson. “There’s a hairpin at the circuit that ideally you would use first gear at, to get a good drive out of it.”
The car was set up to attack that hairpin bend, Johnson explains, albeit at the risk of a slow start.
Nevertheless, Blijleven soon found his rhythm and was setting consistently fast lap times. He set the fastest lap of the entire race, 1:33.284, on lap nine.
The Dutchman finished the race in third place, finishing just one tenth of second behind Calum McHale, narrowly missing out on second position but giving the UCLan Racing team their first podium finish of the season.
In the afternoon the weather took a miserable turn.
“Everybody went to the assembly area from the garages with dry settings on the car,” said Johnson.
“From experience you know that just a little bit of rain doesn’t make much difference.”
But after more and more rain fell onto the track surface, the team had to take action.
“We were waiting for the tarmac to get a certain amount of moisture on it before we had to make changes,” Johnson chuckled.
“It got to that point so that was it. Bodywork off. Students making the changes. Then it started to dry out again!”
The team then hastily set, or reset, the car back up to as it had been originally before the rain started to fall.
“We decided to go back to dry settings because it didn’t look wet enough to need an intermediate setup.
“Then as the cars pulled up onto the grid it started raining again! That did then affect the whole race, but everyone was in the same boat.”
The rain meant that lap times were roughly ten seconds slower than they had been in the first race, and several drivers made mistakes in the poor conditions.
Despite it all, Blijleven was able to bring the car home safely and the team celebrated another third-place finish.
The team are now focused on competing in the third round of the Northern Championship, which will again take place at Oulton Park, on 7th May.
Whilst Blijleven will again be behind the wheel battling it out on track, it’s all change when it comes to the students working on the car.
The teams operates a rotational policy when it comes to those working on the car ahead of, and during, race meetings.
The university students involved in the team are in their first year of study, and the third race of the season takes place during a particularly busy time with examinations.
One of the reasons that the team competes in the Northern Championship, as opposed to the National Championship, is to limit the amount of time that the students spend away from campus.
Being part of the team is an extracurricular activity, with the idea that both the team and the students benefit from it. The hands-on approach will help students apply practice to the theory being taught, and the knowledge and enthusiasm of the students brings fresh energy to the team.
And both the team and the students involved share a common goal.
After all, third place is a decent start to the campaign, but ultimately both the team and its students want to achieve ‘firsts’.
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-All images/video/audio originally created/recorded by Matt Deacon.
