The 2CV Racing teams were very hospitable, a good evening was enjoyed by everyone

Race Report-Cadwell - by Katie Croucher (Driver - Car 88)

This was to be the first time that I would race at Cadwell. It is a fairly tricky circuit and I had been studying the circuit guide for a couple of week’s prior, getting myself confused and nervous.

I arrived around 8pm Sat evening and walked the track with my circuit guide and fellow competitor Ainslie Bousfield, who has helped me all season. We were to do the full circuit, which is 2.2miles long and consists of 10 bends, so it took us a while to walk the track.

The 2cv’s qualifying session was first at 9 am and surprisingly I wasn’t that nervous. I tried to go out in the middle of the pack of 19 2cvs so I could follow people on each corner to see how they took the lines but, my car wasn’t as quick and I had been overtaking by everyone by the 2 nd lap.

I had a new engine in my car, which I hadn’t had a chance to run in and didn’t know how it would go, plus my rev counter wasn’t working right. The car seemed slow, it wasn’t revving right and I would be changing in to 4 th along the pit straight and by the time I got on the hill the revs would go down and I would have to change down a gear and be loosing time. I also had a little “off’ at the ‘mountain’. This corner is a very hard one to get right. It is very steep so you need as much speed as possible and the turn in need’s to be late. I turned in too early and run out of room. I bounced along the grass for a bit and had to get it in to 2 nd gear so as to be able to get up the rest of the mountain.

When I came in from qualifying, Ricky (my mechanic for the day) said that I was changing up in to 4th gear on the straight way before everyone else and the car didn’t sound the same as the others. We put it down to the fact that because my rev counter wasn’t working right I was probably not letting it rev enough, but when Ricky looked under the bonnet he noticed that the throttle cable had melted against the exhaust and I wasn’t getting full throttle in the carb, both the butterfly’s weren’t opening properly. The spare engine we had, had a standard carb on so we couldn’t swap it so we just swapped the tops. I also got a new throttle cable from Paul Robertson. I had qualified in last place, which was 19 th.

When we went round half a lap to form up on the grid I knew that the car was running better. At the back of the grid I worked out what I was going to do on the start. Usually I get the wrong gear on the start and try to pull away in 3 rd but I had held back and selected the 1 st gear. I couldn’t see the lights or flags from where I was at the back so I had to relie on the people in front to go, to let me know the race had started. Off I went and then I went in to reverse instead of 2 nd ,so the pack pulled away as I tried to get in the correct gear, but then I suddenly noticed I was about to overtake Neil Thompson who must have had a bad start .He is a lot quicker then me so it wasn’t long before he went past again.

My aim was to finish 15 th as I needed the points. I noticed that Peter Wann’s car was smoking quite badly and after a couple of laps I overtook him, for him to then retire a couple of laps later, so I was in 18 th. I came round ‘Barn’ which is a flat out blind corner and was being shown a yellow flag. I wasn’t sure what to expect and then I saw Richard Hollis in car 71 spinning off the track and in to the barrier, so I went past him and I was in 17 th.He went in to the pits with damage, but came out a lap or so later and was behind me. I didn’t want to let him past because I would loose a position. Cadwell is a narrow track and hard to overtake I knew he wouldn’t be able to get past on the corners, so on the straights I kept him behind me by blocking him for as long as I could, then he got past me on’ Park straight’ but he did have to go on the grass a bit. So I had lost a place but then Brocklebank and Smith collided and retired with damage and Christian Callander also retired, plus one more retirement meant that when the raced finished I had finished last but in 14 th place.

I went from 19 th to 14 th so I scored good points. With the new throttle cable and now with full throttle in the carb, each lap I knocked a sec off my lap time until I was 10 secs quicker than I was in qualifying.

I would like to thank Ricky Impey, who is a fellow instructor from Thruxton for coming along to be my mechanic and David Elliott for towing my car there and back as my dad was not available, Ainslie for walking the track with me, Paul Robertson for supplying the throttle cable and Tim and Sean for trying to fix the rev counter. It was also nice to see one of my sponsors Dick Roberts from 2cvtv and one of my 24hr mechanics Derrick there to support me.

Next race is at Silverstone on the national circuit Sept 18th.

BRITISH AUTOMOBILE RACING CLUB

RACE RESULTS

2CVParts.com Championship

RACE CLASSIFICATION - RACE 1

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