Day 20: To do list

No more weekends left! Oulton Park is in 5 days.

Today the following arrived:

• Rear brakes - unfortunately Paul ordered the wrong bracket so we either need to modify what we did order, or return for the correct part.
• Toyo R888s - 1 set, so we now have 2 sets of tyres (no budget for more than that, should do for next couple of rounds)
• Paint - high pressure rattle cans for speed and cost.

Recap of what is left to do to commission the car for running in, mapping and dyno testing:

• Paint the front wing and bumper
• Get heads drilled for larger studs
• Build long engine (waiting on cam followers, ordered today)
• Assemble fuel rails (waiting on injectors)
• Refit fuel tank and fuel system
• Fit remaining ancillary parts (waiting on wet sump, query whether we need to re-fabricate exhaust manifold, which may mean switching to one big wastegate)
• Modify existing loom to fit Solaris - making a new loom specifically for the Solaris has been axed in favour of speed and budget (waiting on new map sensor)
• Drill brake disc bells for correct stud pattern
• Fabricate front anti roll bar
• Commission new brakes (waiting on pads, ordered today)
• Fabricate remaining mounts for front splitter
• Final flat floor install
• Engine etc install

Luckily Fred was able to help again today and he was worth his weight in gold driving to and from the machine shop with heads and bells, all drilled and ready to go now. Further afield Steven Darley kindly removed his wet sump set-up over the weekend which has now been picked up by David Wallis, for delivery on Wednesday. Team ZEN has the greatest friends and seriously, I would be willing to place bets on it being the biggest team effort in all of Time Attack (as well as the most last minute )

In other news I have been crunching the numbers and so far so good. To date the money spent is just under half of the income derived from selling parts of the 2008 specification of the green car, combined with the income from selling the blue car shell and some of it’s component parts.

Crunching the numbers

I am still trying to beat down the budget as much as possible: Negotiations are in progress with driver Tom. Luckily we have lots of friends willing to help out and also staff (Tim and Richard) willing to work on the race car after hours and at the track for free. I have declared that there will be no overnight’s this year, apart from Knockhill. This means 4:30 am starts for Oulton, Brands and Snetterton and long, long days, which meant some long, long faces but I keep telling them I will remember and at some future point they will be richly rewarded. Seems to work so far! The tyre budget has also been attacked and we hope to do the first couple of rounds with the best set saved from 2008 and 1 new set to be bought imminently. We won in 2007 on just 2 sets of tyres, so this is achievable

Paul is busy in the workshop on customer cars tonight and I am busy with administration. Thankfully my mum has got the kids, so it’s a late one.

The build up has begun!

Survived April Fool’s Day (sadly my 1.4 Golf did not but my revenge will be sweet…) My day has been made – Tom got his dates mixed up and can do Knockhill, so that is him secured for the first 3 rounds, awesome!

Roy, demon detailer is here again and treating the car to some of his finest Carnuba wax and a machine polish. I cannot tell you how hard Roy works on keeping our car in the best condition possible. It isn’t easy keeping a racer looking top dollar, especially when there is no budget whatsoever for resprays. I think you will agree that despite the wobbly kevlar, it looks fab.

In other news, the brand spanker Solaris ECS turned up today. Solaris are a new sponsor for ZEN in 2009 – Paul is totally won over by this engine management system, it really does do the job in the best possible manner and we have fitted a few to customer cars already.

After hours and the lads are chipping away at the to do list. Santa’s little helper is here (names have been changed to protect the innocent) and he has whipped the brakes off. We are making way for new stopping power - we are currently trying to negotiate a deal.

Said elf has also started attacking the driver’s door fit. We had so many problems with these doors last year. At point of purchase we were led to believe they would fit like a glove but alas they did not and we had to modify and improve them a hell of a lot, just to get them to go on the car! As the season wore on the poor fit became more problematic, as can be seen in the photo below.

The front wing and bumper are being filled and prepped for paint by Tim, having sustained some damage in the final at Brands Hatch in 2008 (the famous gravel trap incident). Paul has put together a dummy engine to help with planning out the engine bay enhancements

Today I hacked more out of the budget, this is going to be a no frills season that’s for sure (we will be the ones in the tents out the back of the Holiday Inn ;)) Smiles all round though, as we had 2 crates of Alibi delivered from Olly @ Solution Sciences. That should keep us going!

Go out and buy the Pomegranate flavour and you will be supporting POM354, working to replace Afghanistan’s opium poppy fields with pomegranate trees. Nice work.

Final thought for the day: keeping all this secret is tough, as I for one am really very excited! Today we agreed a deal to provide Duncan Graham, Club Challenge driver #6, with on-event trackside support at Oulton Park. Go Duncan!   He doesn’t actually know yet that we are going to be competing too!

April Fools?

Today the emails are starting to come back. I haven’t found our Richard Branson yet but every little helps! A couple of small deals are already done and within another week we should have a solution for some shiny new wheels, get in! Andy Taylor, MD of AET Turbos will be giving us an extra cheer at Oulton Park, his local round of Time Attack and this year our car will be sporting Turbosmart decals. The ZEN car has run twin Turbosmart wastegates since 2007.

Turbosmart

AET Turbos Motorsport

I have had a few to and fro emails with Tom and I am gutted that he can’t make Knockhill. Tom is a great driver and a top bloke, he fits right in with the team mojo (work hard, play hard that is :)) The ideal is to have one driver and stick to it. It takes time to build up a relationship with a driver and it takes him time to get to grips with the car. Believe it or not even the most experienced and seasoned ‘racing drivers’ find Time Attack pro cars difficult - how many race series have tarmac munching 700+bhp, 4wd, turbocharged cars in them after all?! But we haven’t managed a year yet with the same driver throughout due to various other commitments. So anyway, I am pondering who to ask to drive (Phil Glew is unavoidably detained trying to win the Renault Clio Cup for the first 3 Time Attack dates.) Tom is thinking too…

After hours Paul has been pondering and thinking whilst looking over the car. He has whipped out all the perspex windows and rear screen. He has been playing with wheel sizes / measurements. The super duper carbon fibre front splitter is out and the challenge of how to make it fit has begun. That’s it - it has started

Meanwhile, I have done a billion spreadsheets for budget, expenditure, build list and timeline… And most importantly ordered a new webcam so I can record the build via time lapse

Last night we made a mad decision…

Last night we made a mad decision. I was at home about to watch some crap TV, Paul was at ZEN tidying up. We had this plan to take our time developing the car during the first half the year, maybe pick up some events from late Summer… Our MSN conversation went something like this….

Liz: ‘So, the entry list for TA is out…’
Paul: ‘ Who? what?’
Liz: ‘Its all on the website.’
A bit of discussion ensued.
Paul: ‘Do you have itchy feet about Time Attack at all?’
Liz: ‘OF COURSE! LOL!’
Paul: ‘When is Round 2?’
Liz: ‘May.’
Paul: ‘Knockhill.’
Liz: ‘Yeah the lovely Knockhill.’
And then Paul hit send on his reply….
Paul: ‘We could be ready for Round 1 you know!’
At the same time as I hit send on my mine.
Liz: ‘There is a whole 25 days until Oulton you know!’

So, with 24 whole days to go (!), we decided this morning (officially) to make efforts to have our car ready for Round 1. First thing this morning I filled in Tim (longest standing member of ZEN staff) and Richard (about to become the newest member) on our plans. Needless to say there were some expletives. Thing is the car as it sits in our newly planned out ‘Race Car Build Area’ (that’s tongue in cheek by the way), has…. no wheels or tyres, no brakes, no ECU and well to be frank, no engine whatsoever!

It’s not all bad though. Paul has been planning the build up of the car for 2009, since Brands in 2008. We have an extensive list of weight saving measures ordered by £ spent per kilo saved. We have specced out custom brakes and dry sump. We have a demon carbon fibre front splitter we inherited from a proper race team to shoehorn on to the car. Tom Ferrier is on board as driver and the usual hordes of helpers have been messaging me all day pledging days off and free time However… problems are as follows (and they are not insignificant!) We have the most work on we have ever had. We are making more mailorder sales than ever before. But we have no sponsors and we *have* to make steps to reduce our already meager budget

Let’s make no bones about this Time Attack is expensive, very expensive to remain competitive. We had estimated a modest but full budget of £35,000 to do the 2009 season with all the bells and whistles (and a hefty chunk of sponsorship making that up I hasten to add). I need to halve this, at least! (Edited to add the italics and underline!!)

So, this morning I emailed sponsors past, present and potential, to see if any packages could be agreed. Initial responses are all positive - our supporters old and new are glad that we will be present again this year, as I knew they would be. But these are credit crunch times. You only have to look at the international motorsport press to see the big boys suffering to see this. Whatever happens, it is not the ZEN way to give up!

Step 1 is complete at least, the car has been de-nuded thanks to our detailer Roy Kunz