Last weekend - long race, long write-up
Oct. 8th, 2010 12:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pauln1964I was never particularly taken with 24-hour time-in as a lrp concept. I always wanted to be able to get a decent night's sleep knowing that it wouldn't be interrupted (except on occasional nights by an over-full bladder). I found myself remembering that at about 0400 on Sunday morning as I stood by the side of the track and watched a train of 45 to 50 cars go round and round behind the safety car for an hour and a half or more as it was too foggy to let them race properly.
It all started on Friday. I'd aimed to get out of work half an hour early. The pressures of student registration issues and doing an end of day update with increasingly inadequate reporting tools meant it was half an hour late. I got home at ten to six and had the car loaded by the full hour. At the circuit they were heading towards the end of a normal day’s qualifying and racing when I rang Penny to let her know I was on the way. “Oh,” says she. “Don’t come the usual way. The cut-through from the A5 to the village is probably flooded and anyway could you stop off in Towcester to pick up five lots of fish and chips for me, Dale, Simon and Peter? And you’d better get one more large chips for the gannets on the back desk.”
It had been wet all day. Very, very wet even for Silverstone and that was also the case in Towcester which often has completely different weather even though it’s less than five miles away as the crow flies. The queue at the chippy was halfway out into the car park when I got there, even though it was still tipping down in a manner that would have had Noah hefting his axe and eyeing up some trees to turn into gopher wood. A bit of a sod, but probably a sign of a good establishment. The queue was still as long when I left to be welcomed with open arms in race control by a bunch of hungry Chief Incident Officers. The fish and chips were excellent and well worth the wet wait – Chan’s is highly recommended.
I headed over to Brooklands for the evening qualifying session for the 24-hour race. You want to race in the dark, you’ve got to prove you’re competent to do it. That means a two hour slot from 2000-2200 in which all the drivers have to complete a minimum number of laps. The track was still sodden at this point, though it had actually stopped raining. Lap-times were in the 2:15 region for the fast cars. Somewhat less than that for the slower boys and girls. With some of them having 5 or 6 drivers to qualify, the time slot is really rather tight. We had a couple of chaps I know on post, plus one of the visitors from Knockhill. Lovely bloke, but with an accent as broad as the Forth. Nothing much for us to do except push one down the pit lane when it stalled on the way in. As soon as we got back from that, we promptly went to help the Priory team push the Morgan Plus 8 through the gap between the Brooklands Suites and the BRDC stand.
Earlyish bed followed, bunking down in one of the old farm cottages.
And up and at’em, relatively gently for sign-on at 0730. Quite a lot of folk to get through, including a group of visitors from the Oulton Park regulars as well as the Knockhill lot. Grabbed a bacon sarnie to take to post at Maggotts and munch on while we sorted ourselves out. There were 10 of us for a decent Saturday’s timetable with the last race starting at 1630. The only issue being that it didn’t finish until the same time the following day.
We found ourselves with John as Incident Officer, who I was very glad to see. He’s the one I was paired up with on my first couple of days marshalling and gave me the confidence that I could do it. He’s now officially a Trainee IO, which is a good thing. He split us into three groups of three and we rotated round different parts of the post through the day to make sure we all had a good feel for it. The others were a couple who are semi-regulars at Silverstone, two newish trainees, Wayne an experienced (Red Badge) marshal who’s a regular and three of the visitors from Oulton. It was pretty quiet during the day. There was some good racing, but we didn’t need to do anything – unlike the folks down at Vale who were pretty busy and continued to be through to Sunday afternoon (I think the final count was 28 needing to be snatched out of the gravel beyond the new pitlane entry, some of them repeat visitors).
John’s plan for the long race split the 10 of us into two groups. I’m put with him, the couple and the younger of the trainees (who’s under 18 so still has to have his mum come to sign him on). Wayne was to take the radio and cover IO when John was off and would have the Oulton Park folks and the other trainee. We’d all do the first half hour or so while there was a big pack coming through together. We’d then take it in turns to have a two-hour supper break and then two four-hour breaks with some overlaps before coming back together for the last hour or so. This put me on post until 1700, back 1900-2200, then 0200-0700 and finally from 1100 through to the end at 1630.
Off they go pretty much bang on time. It’s a full grid of 60 cars. There’s everything from three Moslers, an Aquila, a Chevron and some other fancy stuff in Class One to some quite old Integras and a Golf in Class 4. It’s a rolling start, which is always a little nervy, particularly with such high numbers. On which topic, much kudos to Andy Neate who was back racing after a very nasty shunt on the rolling start of the 24hr a couple of years ago saw him airlifted out and left him hospitalised for several months. To everyone’s relief they all get through the first lap safely.
We’d discussed a few things on post and had a couple of informal sweeps going. How many cars will survive to the end (we’re mostly agreed on about 45)? How soon will the safety car be needed? No-one wins that one as the Chevron breaks fairly spectacularly on lap 3 and out it comes for a few laps. Once it’s back in racing starts again in earnest. An idea of it can be gained from some on-board footage from Malcolm Edeson’s first stint in one of the Civics. For those not familiar with the track, Maggotts is the second corner and we’re all stood at the back of the gravel trap. He’s carrying about 85mph on the way in and you can see how much faster some of the others are.
Once they’re well underway we start to rotate the two teams on post. I’m on supper time first, so pop up to Race Control to see how Penny’s getting on. We’d already arranged to feed race control again and I mentioned that Penny would be ringing in an order for takeaway to the Rice Bowl in Towcester (also highly recommended). Wayne promptly requests some prawn balls. Penny and I relax a bit, go to pick up the food and get back in time to see Wayne and the other chaps on the cameras in race control dealing with a couple of cars that argued over who got to occupy a particular bit of the track and both lost.
My half all got back in good time and we relieved team two, with Wayne pleasantly surprised to find his cheeky request for food granted. Prawn and chicken balls shared round, they head off for a break.
By this time it’s getting dark. The colour is leaching out of the world and the luminescent backgrounds of the cars’ numbers are becoming more visible. We watch on as night falls, trying to concentrate on the piece of track in front of us and not get dazzled by the headlights of the approaching traffic. Shortly before 2100 it starts to rain again. We’re taking it in turns to put our waterproofs on as #71 tries to overtake #80, fails to miss him and they both end up in the gravel. A quick attempt to push #80 out is unsuccessful, so we don’t even bother with the other and John asks me to go get the fire-tender.
The tender is a landrover with two big canisters of foam extinguisher on the back. More relevant most of the time is that we also use them with a tow line to pull cars out of these sorts of situations – a process known as snatching . I’ve driven one before, but not in an incident situation and not in the dark. I get in and take a moment to find the key, which is on the left rather than right of the steering column. That’s about the only thing I get right, as I completely fail to find the switches for the headlights or the flashy blues. John comes over, checks in with race control that he’s the only one about who’s driven a tender to snatch before and is needed to be in charge on the radio. Dale up in Race Control decides to send the JCB round instead.
So there I am on my knees in the gravel next to #80, which has a nice visible towing-eye. I’ve “hooked up” before, but that was in daylight and with a carabina on the end of a strop which is then run back to a tender. It’s dark and I’m flummoxed when John goes over to Rob in the JCB and comes back with a loop of strop and no carabina. That’s another mistake, by the way – I should have picked the strop up from Rob as he came through the gap and headed trackside. Not doing so put John at more risk than was necessary. John shows me what to do, which is simply pass the entire strop through the towing eye and hook it onto the prong on the JCB’s hydraulic arm. #80 is cleared while I head to find the towing eye on #71. There isn’t one that I can see. I start to shift the gravel from round the front splitter – still nothing. John comes back with the strop and eventually we spot the piece of webbing poking out of a slot in the bonnet – which has been taped down and almost entirely hidden by tape the exact same colour as the car. I deal with this hook-up and we’re back to safety.
I debrief with John, who also felt he hadn't handled things particularly well. We point out to each other what we both did well, what we could improve on and what we've each learnt. This is one of the things that I love about marshalling. The spirit is "what can we do better" rather than "what went wrong".
For a feel of what’s going on around us, here’s the on-board from Malcolm E’s later stint in the dark. He’s coming into our spot about 10mph slower than in the light, which is still 75. The faster things are still much faster.
We take our night break and come back to find that the heavens opened and the other team are half-drowned. It stops just as they head off shortly after 2 in the morning. Having set a storming pace initially the Aquila has broken and is not restarting. A couple of others are out as well, including #71. The rest of the race is fairly quiet for us. The fog comes down so thickly in the small hours that there’s talk of stopping it, but instead the safety car comes out and they all trundle round behind it at about 50mph for an hour and a half. It’s long enough that the second safety car has to take over and both of them complete more laps than some of the competitors.
The fog becomes mist, the grandstands opposite and to the side of us start to be visible. The safety car goes in and racing restarts. Looking behind there’s a small patch of sky that’s dark blue rather than black. Slowly the colour starts to come into the world again and the cars become motor vehicles rather than bedazzling growling monsters.
We’re relieved at shortly after 7 and given time off for good behaviour. I go wake Penny up to go back to race control and grab an hour or two’s sleep. A quick shower to wake up and I'm back to post early to spend a while sat in the landy checking on where all the switches are. The Oulton lads head off after 11 and the race has become very interesting. The Ferrari that was a last-minute entry and expected to be towards the back of Class One is chasing down the Porsche from Class Two that was always going to be in with a chance on grounds of fuel economy (not as fast, but not needing to spend as much time in the pits refuelling). After 18 hours they’re on the same lap. The next nearest is at this point more than 10 laps behind.
This continues through to the end six hours later with the lead swapping as they pit. The Ferrari takes the win by less than a minute. We’re proved pessimistic in our predictions as over 50 make it to the end. Some of them got back onto the track in the last few hours after spending much of the race being repaired, but they made the finish. So did the ten of us. It’s a hell of an experience a 24-hour race. There’s a sense of elation just completing it, no matter what capacity you’re there in.
Was I completely knackered driving home Sunday evening? Yes.
Have I recovered properly yet, even with Monday off? Probably not.
Am I doing it next year? Like a shot!
It all started on Friday. I'd aimed to get out of work half an hour early. The pressures of student registration issues and doing an end of day update with increasingly inadequate reporting tools meant it was half an hour late. I got home at ten to six and had the car loaded by the full hour. At the circuit they were heading towards the end of a normal day’s qualifying and racing when I rang Penny to let her know I was on the way. “Oh,” says she. “Don’t come the usual way. The cut-through from the A5 to the village is probably flooded and anyway could you stop off in Towcester to pick up five lots of fish and chips for me, Dale, Simon and Peter? And you’d better get one more large chips for the gannets on the back desk.”
It had been wet all day. Very, very wet even for Silverstone and that was also the case in Towcester which often has completely different weather even though it’s less than five miles away as the crow flies. The queue at the chippy was halfway out into the car park when I got there, even though it was still tipping down in a manner that would have had Noah hefting his axe and eyeing up some trees to turn into gopher wood. A bit of a sod, but probably a sign of a good establishment. The queue was still as long when I left to be welcomed with open arms in race control by a bunch of hungry Chief Incident Officers. The fish and chips were excellent and well worth the wet wait – Chan’s is highly recommended.
I headed over to Brooklands for the evening qualifying session for the 24-hour race. You want to race in the dark, you’ve got to prove you’re competent to do it. That means a two hour slot from 2000-2200 in which all the drivers have to complete a minimum number of laps. The track was still sodden at this point, though it had actually stopped raining. Lap-times were in the 2:15 region for the fast cars. Somewhat less than that for the slower boys and girls. With some of them having 5 or 6 drivers to qualify, the time slot is really rather tight. We had a couple of chaps I know on post, plus one of the visitors from Knockhill. Lovely bloke, but with an accent as broad as the Forth. Nothing much for us to do except push one down the pit lane when it stalled on the way in. As soon as we got back from that, we promptly went to help the Priory team push the Morgan Plus 8 through the gap between the Brooklands Suites and the BRDC stand.
Earlyish bed followed, bunking down in one of the old farm cottages.
And up and at’em, relatively gently for sign-on at 0730. Quite a lot of folk to get through, including a group of visitors from the Oulton Park regulars as well as the Knockhill lot. Grabbed a bacon sarnie to take to post at Maggotts and munch on while we sorted ourselves out. There were 10 of us for a decent Saturday’s timetable with the last race starting at 1630. The only issue being that it didn’t finish until the same time the following day.
We found ourselves with John as Incident Officer, who I was very glad to see. He’s the one I was paired up with on my first couple of days marshalling and gave me the confidence that I could do it. He’s now officially a Trainee IO, which is a good thing. He split us into three groups of three and we rotated round different parts of the post through the day to make sure we all had a good feel for it. The others were a couple who are semi-regulars at Silverstone, two newish trainees, Wayne an experienced (Red Badge) marshal who’s a regular and three of the visitors from Oulton. It was pretty quiet during the day. There was some good racing, but we didn’t need to do anything – unlike the folks down at Vale who were pretty busy and continued to be through to Sunday afternoon (I think the final count was 28 needing to be snatched out of the gravel beyond the new pitlane entry, some of them repeat visitors).
John’s plan for the long race split the 10 of us into two groups. I’m put with him, the couple and the younger of the trainees (who’s under 18 so still has to have his mum come to sign him on). Wayne was to take the radio and cover IO when John was off and would have the Oulton Park folks and the other trainee. We’d all do the first half hour or so while there was a big pack coming through together. We’d then take it in turns to have a two-hour supper break and then two four-hour breaks with some overlaps before coming back together for the last hour or so. This put me on post until 1700, back 1900-2200, then 0200-0700 and finally from 1100 through to the end at 1630.
Off they go pretty much bang on time. It’s a full grid of 60 cars. There’s everything from three Moslers, an Aquila, a Chevron and some other fancy stuff in Class One to some quite old Integras and a Golf in Class 4. It’s a rolling start, which is always a little nervy, particularly with such high numbers. On which topic, much kudos to Andy Neate who was back racing after a very nasty shunt on the rolling start of the 24hr a couple of years ago saw him airlifted out and left him hospitalised for several months. To everyone’s relief they all get through the first lap safely.
We’d discussed a few things on post and had a couple of informal sweeps going. How many cars will survive to the end (we’re mostly agreed on about 45)? How soon will the safety car be needed? No-one wins that one as the Chevron breaks fairly spectacularly on lap 3 and out it comes for a few laps. Once it’s back in racing starts again in earnest. An idea of it can be gained from some on-board footage from Malcolm Edeson’s first stint in one of the Civics. For those not familiar with the track, Maggotts is the second corner and we’re all stood at the back of the gravel trap. He’s carrying about 85mph on the way in and you can see how much faster some of the others are.
Once they’re well underway we start to rotate the two teams on post. I’m on supper time first, so pop up to Race Control to see how Penny’s getting on. We’d already arranged to feed race control again and I mentioned that Penny would be ringing in an order for takeaway to the Rice Bowl in Towcester (also highly recommended). Wayne promptly requests some prawn balls. Penny and I relax a bit, go to pick up the food and get back in time to see Wayne and the other chaps on the cameras in race control dealing with a couple of cars that argued over who got to occupy a particular bit of the track and both lost.
My half all got back in good time and we relieved team two, with Wayne pleasantly surprised to find his cheeky request for food granted. Prawn and chicken balls shared round, they head off for a break.
By this time it’s getting dark. The colour is leaching out of the world and the luminescent backgrounds of the cars’ numbers are becoming more visible. We watch on as night falls, trying to concentrate on the piece of track in front of us and not get dazzled by the headlights of the approaching traffic. Shortly before 2100 it starts to rain again. We’re taking it in turns to put our waterproofs on as #71 tries to overtake #80, fails to miss him and they both end up in the gravel. A quick attempt to push #80 out is unsuccessful, so we don’t even bother with the other and John asks me to go get the fire-tender.
The tender is a landrover with two big canisters of foam extinguisher on the back. More relevant most of the time is that we also use them with a tow line to pull cars out of these sorts of situations – a process known as snatching . I’ve driven one before, but not in an incident situation and not in the dark. I get in and take a moment to find the key, which is on the left rather than right of the steering column. That’s about the only thing I get right, as I completely fail to find the switches for the headlights or the flashy blues. John comes over, checks in with race control that he’s the only one about who’s driven a tender to snatch before and is needed to be in charge on the radio. Dale up in Race Control decides to send the JCB round instead.
So there I am on my knees in the gravel next to #80, which has a nice visible towing-eye. I’ve “hooked up” before, but that was in daylight and with a carabina on the end of a strop which is then run back to a tender. It’s dark and I’m flummoxed when John goes over to Rob in the JCB and comes back with a loop of strop and no carabina. That’s another mistake, by the way – I should have picked the strop up from Rob as he came through the gap and headed trackside. Not doing so put John at more risk than was necessary. John shows me what to do, which is simply pass the entire strop through the towing eye and hook it onto the prong on the JCB’s hydraulic arm. #80 is cleared while I head to find the towing eye on #71. There isn’t one that I can see. I start to shift the gravel from round the front splitter – still nothing. John comes back with the strop and eventually we spot the piece of webbing poking out of a slot in the bonnet – which has been taped down and almost entirely hidden by tape the exact same colour as the car. I deal with this hook-up and we’re back to safety.
I debrief with John, who also felt he hadn't handled things particularly well. We point out to each other what we both did well, what we could improve on and what we've each learnt. This is one of the things that I love about marshalling. The spirit is "what can we do better" rather than "what went wrong".
For a feel of what’s going on around us, here’s the on-board from Malcolm E’s later stint in the dark. He’s coming into our spot about 10mph slower than in the light, which is still 75. The faster things are still much faster.
We take our night break and come back to find that the heavens opened and the other team are half-drowned. It stops just as they head off shortly after 2 in the morning. Having set a storming pace initially the Aquila has broken and is not restarting. A couple of others are out as well, including #71. The rest of the race is fairly quiet for us. The fog comes down so thickly in the small hours that there’s talk of stopping it, but instead the safety car comes out and they all trundle round behind it at about 50mph for an hour and a half. It’s long enough that the second safety car has to take over and both of them complete more laps than some of the competitors.
The fog becomes mist, the grandstands opposite and to the side of us start to be visible. The safety car goes in and racing restarts. Looking behind there’s a small patch of sky that’s dark blue rather than black. Slowly the colour starts to come into the world again and the cars become motor vehicles rather than bedazzling growling monsters.
We’re relieved at shortly after 7 and given time off for good behaviour. I go wake Penny up to go back to race control and grab an hour or two’s sleep. A quick shower to wake up and I'm back to post early to spend a while sat in the landy checking on where all the switches are. The Oulton lads head off after 11 and the race has become very interesting. The Ferrari that was a last-minute entry and expected to be towards the back of Class One is chasing down the Porsche from Class Two that was always going to be in with a chance on grounds of fuel economy (not as fast, but not needing to spend as much time in the pits refuelling). After 18 hours they’re on the same lap. The next nearest is at this point more than 10 laps behind.
This continues through to the end six hours later with the lead swapping as they pit. The Ferrari takes the win by less than a minute. We’re proved pessimistic in our predictions as over 50 make it to the end. Some of them got back onto the track in the last few hours after spending much of the race being repaired, but they made the finish. So did the ten of us. It’s a hell of an experience a 24-hour race. There’s a sense of elation just completing it, no matter what capacity you’re there in.
Was I completely knackered driving home Sunday evening? Yes.
Have I recovered properly yet, even with Monday off? Probably not.
Am I doing it next year? Like a shot!
