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A View From The Driver's Seat: Donington Park Race Report

By John Thorne / MJP Media | 18 April 2012

John Thorne gives us the inside story of Thorney Motorsport's weekend at Donington Park.

They say in racing you need luck, talent and money and certainly after our poor showing at Brands Hatch we were hoping for at least 2 of those but sadly Donington Park was not to go our way I'm afraid.

We knew the weekend was going to be a tough one. After Brands Hatch we still had a damaged radiator and intercooler, smashed bodywork and an engine miss-fire that never went away all weekend. Looking through the data it was pretty evident that we had some grave handling issues especially regarding the car's rear end grip - we simply had none and whilst I took a lot of responsibility on my shoulders for the poor performance on track, the fact was that the car needed more testing before we raced it. The benefit of hindsight eh?

During the week we did our best to sort the replacement parts we needed but came up short. We managed to get new bodywork in time (it was still a little wet when we fitted it) but we couldn't replace the radiator or the intercooler so we had no choice but to refit these. Not great seeing as they saw more than their fair share of gravel at Brands Hatch. As regards the rear end grip, we looked at the data and the video and decided to make some changes to improve this, so as we arrived at Donington I was at least hopeful that we would be improving. We thought about pulling out of the race as clearly running from one meeting to the next without testing isn't ideal, but as we'd already paid the Donington entry fee we figured we'd use the free practice sessions as testing and see how we got on.

Initially things went well. In first free practice the car still wanted to come round but it was about 10% better than Brands so we felt we were at least on the right track. We were off the pace of course and we still had this miss-fire but off the back rather than off the grid. We made some further changes in the same vein and went out in free practice 2 and immediately we knocked nearly a second off the sector 2 times after only a few laps so when I came in for a tyre check we were much happier. Sector 1 we were still slow but as that has Craner Curves which is a ballsy corner that needs to be taken flat out and as I still had little confidence in the back end we weren't surprised that that was our weakest sector. We made a few more changes and went out again but immediately the car felt worse, I missed my braking points several times, the rear locked up under braking and turn in and grip was worse - what the hell had we done?

The session ended and after looking at the data it appeared the right hand front shock had collapsed, there was no damping at all, no wonder it was bad. Penske, being a TOCA supplier, were on hand and re-built the shock in lightning fast time but with only 90 minutes before qualifying we were rushed to get the car out. Sadly, it was nigh on un-driveable as the car felt like it was on 3 wheels, so after a couple of laps I drove it back and parked it. We were gutted. Data showed that the corner we replaced the damper on was locked solid, no movement in the wheel at all. Either the damper was locked up or the rocker was seized, either way it was game over for qualifying and for the first time since starting this project I was angry rather than disappointed - surely we were due to some luck sometime?

After a bit of calm down time in the truck we went through all the data and it almost made me feel worse. We had made some good progress on Brands, identified where we thought we could improve on this and then get slam dunked by a faulty part and an engine miss-fire that simply wouldn't go away. I'd have almost been happier if we were scratching our heads, at least we could identify the area that we needed to fix. But now we had another issue to fix and still not enough running on the car to work out a solution. Certainly we made some improvements, gaining nearly a second on one sector demonstrated that, but we need to be able to put all the pieces together to connect up a decent lap time. The car was relatively quick in the speed traps due in part to its excellent aerodynamics and we think we are on the right track on the rear end grip issues - we just need more time to fully sort it. The engine miss-fire is annoying but as we run a control engine we are beholden to Swindon to fix it which thus far they have been unable to do.

After a team meeting we decided to park the car and withdraw from the race. Brands was a terrible weekend for us bought about by lack of testing, funds and a big accident at the worst time. For us to race at Donington we needed to bounce back and at least improve and at that stage I didn't think we could rely on that happening on what we had learnt. It was a bitter disappointment for me. I like racing at Donington Park and was hopeful that even with a compromised car I could get more from it but with a persistent engine issue and random suspension or rocker failures leaving the car literally on three wheels is not something you can easily drive round. I was however more disappointed for the fans, we have been completely blown away by their support and even opening up the garage for the weekend so people could get up close to the car was scant compensation for not allowing them to see the car race on track. I spent most of the day saying sorry to people.

So where now? Well clearly we've no chance of securing sponsorship when we mess around at the back so that's on a back burner now. We can bleat and moan about how we wouldn't be in this situation if we had more backing but who cares? It is what it is so whatever funds we have left need to spent wisely to maximise our returns but it's clear we need to spend more time testing than racing to sort these issues away from the glaring public eye. With Thruxton less than 2 weeks away the decision is whether we race there or not. If we can get some testing done in between and give us some confidence that we are sorting the handling issues we have then we should be OK, if not we will miss that round and concentrate on getting fully ready for Oulton Park.

My thanks again have to go to the fans - you all really lift us up with your good wishes on line and at the track so I feel we are doing something right and we are determined as ever to progress and improve (and prove) ourselves to be worthy of the support. I must thank you for the birthday wishes (Saturday was both my and my son's birthdays), so whilst not my greatest birthday, it was nice to have so many people wish me happy returns, thank you.

John #66

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