Duncan does it again!

The weekend threw fog, wind, rain, bright sunshine, mechanical problems and the eventual demise of an engine at us, but Team ZEN’s Duncan Graham still managed to take 3rd spot on the Club Challenge podium and has moved up to second place in the Club Challenge championship points table. 

Duncan had started to have doubts about his motor early last week, fearing that he had suffered the cracked oil pick up pipe fate again! To keep all bases covered, he made his way over to ZEN on Friday to see what we could do. Paul decided to chop and weld a single scroll pick up, making sure it was strengthened at the weakest spots. As we were still very much finishing our car, we sent Duncan on the long journey up to Knockhill, planning to replace his pick up pipe on the Saturday practice day.

Knockhill on Saturday was foggy, windy, rainy and cold and poor Tim and Duncan spent most of their afternoon on their backs on the cold tarmac under the car, rain dripping down their necks. Doing any major mechanical work at Knockhill is a PITA but taking off the sump and replacing an oil pick-up has to be up there with the worst! Whatever way you look at it, Duncan’s paranoia was justified as the pipe was cracked, so on went the ZEN special. By tea time, it was all done and our pro car had been flung around the track for 20 or so laps, so off for Chinese and plentiful beer (for the non-drivers).

Sunday and the sun was shining, which we took as a sign of better things to come! By the time we had unpacked all the gear, got the awning up and woken up ( ), it was driver briefing time. I asked Steve Fullbrook to go round Duncan’s car checking tyre pressures, torquing nuts, checking oil, water and refueling, so  when the time came Duncan could jump straight in and out on track. In the warm up, Steve accompanied Duncan keeping an eye on everything on the laptop… Tim and I stood on the pit wall,watching and within a lap Duncan was in and worried about an oil leak. Tim double checked everything but no signs of any issues, so we sent him out again.  Oil pressure was still not great, so Duncan called it a day at 7 laps in total.

On to the practice session and Paul and Duncan had decided that the best course of action was to carefully nurse the car through each session, to make sure it held out for the final, so 1 hot lap in practice and 3 hot laps in qualifying was the order of the day. Duncan qualified comfortably in 3rd place on a 57.5s lap but was concerned that there wasn’t any more time in the car to move up the field…

On to the final! Team ZEN were struggling with problems on the pro car and so it was just little old me that made my way down to the track.  I went straight to the timekeepers office to check the screens and Duncan was showing 58.3s, 5th in the list. Only 1 lap was recorded… I waited and waited. No Duncan. The session had not been red flagged so I presumed the motor had died and he had pulled off in to a safe place. All I could was wait anxiously for the session to be over. In Duncan’s session there were 3 classes all out together and it was beyond me at that moment to work out where Duncan was placed in his class. I returned to our pit just as our pro car was rolling out and told the team my fears. As we stood in the pit lane Duncan was towed back in, we all lent over the barriers, I drew a hand across my neck, Duncan nodded and did the same. Ah well. At least he knows some good engine builders

After all the finals were dealt with, Duncan brought a timing sheet over to me. We thought he had got 4th but on closer inspection he thought hmmm, maybe 3rd, so off he ran to the office. As he came back over his face was unreadable. I was showing him combinations of 3rd / 4th fingers but he was blanking me. As soon as he was in earshot he shouted ‘3RD PLACE’, Paul cheered and I gave him a huge big hug.

It was more than we could have dared to think of once we knew the engine’s time was up, so all in all a proper result. Plenty of whistling and cheering at the podium later, lots of cheap motorsport champagne sprayed and glugged down our throats and then party time!

It’s Thursday now and the engine is out and stripped, the parts have been sent over by Mark at Lateral Performance and so (at last) Duncan gets a ZEN engine He will be back in full effect at Silverstone in 9 days time

Read more from Duncan / Race Dynamix

Close, but no cigar… Team ZEN make it to Oulton but don’t score!

I have left it a good 72 hours for this update, to give myself and the team time to recover, digest and collect our thoughts! It has since taken me another 24 hours to find the time to get it all down. Still better late than never…

My last update was at around 6am on the morning of round 1 but I will backtrack slightly to pick up the story… At some point on Friday, having had the car running on the axle stands, with the Autronic ECU from Rich’s car doing its thing, we decided to go for the Solaris install. David spent all afternoon and late in to the evening adapting the wiring to suit, making up new parts of the loom as necessary. This proved to be one of our biggest mistakes of the weekend, as we effectively disabled the engine for 12 hours! When I left ZEN at getting on for midnight on Friday 24th, Paul and David were painstakingly going through every pin-out testing, checking and rechecking as they had just discovered they had lost all ability to start and control the engine. Coupled with what was eventually found to be a dodgy map sensor and the car was not playing ball, at all

Having decided we were far too advanced and committed to quit at this stage, Paul and David continued on (whilst Tim finished up the last bits in the engine bay) and by 6am the car was running again and loaded up on to the dyno. As Paul ran the car up, David tried to get some sleep (Tim, clearly exhausted, slept like a baby through the whole thing.) I was on the phone to Steven Darley, who was at Oulton, asking him to make sure we were OK to turn up late and to look out for Tom for me. Steve Fullbrook and his brother in law Andy, and Roy Kunz were on hand to help me start packing all the gear (we literally just grabbed whatever was lying around) and make cups of tea for the lads!

At around 8am, Paul was satisfied enough with the how the engine was running  (despite some smoke on initial start up) to load the car on to the trailer. With time very short (we were aiming for the practice session at 11am), we put all the aero into Steve’s van, other bits and pieces in to Roy’s van and by 8:30am or so, we were on our way.

It soon became clear to me that it wasn’t going to be straight forward getting to Oulton. Too tired to eat, Paul was literally running on empty, but as the only one experienced enough bar Tim (even more lacking sleep than Paul) to tow the trailer, he had to get behind the wheel. 1 hour in and we were forced to stop at the services on the M6 toll . A quick update to Tom and a decision to scrap getting there for the practice and head for the qualifying only at 2:30pm, meant we could leave Paul to sleep for an hour.

We arrived at Oulton in time for lunch to the relief of some and the surprise of others! Wasting no time, Tim , Paul, David and Rich got the car off the trailer, half in to the garage and set about finishing the car some more! The air dam on the front splitter was shaped, shaved and fitted, then taped up with lots of black tank tape Tom and I went around chucking stickers on. Paul and David continued to finish up wiring and check the ECU with the laptop. It was good to see Duncan in fine spirits and certainly for me, when he was out doing his thing, keeping watch over the laptimes on our LCD TV was a  welcome distraction!

On running up the car, once again we were suffering with a good deal of oil smoke. So, again, Paul checks through everything on the laptop, while the lads check through everything in the engine bay. With no sign of any leaks or any issues with engine parameters, sensors and so on, the smoke began to clear and eventually the engine ran clean. I could see at this point we all had our own little theories as to what was going on!

Aware that Paul was looking too chilled and the Superbattle Qualifying already in progress I let Paul know that 5 minutes had already elapsed in our session. Paul did a double take, thinking it was still Duncan’s qualifying session! Ready enough, we sent Tom out. He had the mammoth task of bedding in the brand new brake discs and pads,  keeping an eye on absolutely everything and setting a laptime fast enough to qualify. We managed just 2 timed laps, as all the niggles you usually iron out in testing came to a head - dodgy sensors throwing up erroneous alarms, in the case of coolant temperature and oil pressure, an issue with the radiator cooling fans and a top end misfire. Tom reported that the brakes were much improved over the last time he drove the car at Oulton with the new Performance Friction pad compound giving him superb bite but the pedal feel was not so great with travel and sponginess. Good enough to qualify but outside the points, discouraged but not defeated, the team set about making more changes for the final.

We spent time bleeding the brakes to improve pedal feel and Paul spent more time working on the mapping to eliminate the misfire, before moving on to try and sort the fan issues. Once again David had the cover off the switch box and delved in to the loom. Unable to get Paul’s laptop to communicate with the digital dash, we were feeling around in the dark regarding coolant and oil pressure but nevertheless certain the warnings that made Tom pull up were erroneous and not real.

Spirits were lifted as some of us took the time to follow Duncan’s progress. As he came back to the pits having finished 3rd there was a small glimmer of jubilation. But facing our own battle to get to the Superbattle, we had to sadly leave Duncan to his celebrations this time.

On winding the car up again, the smoke was there again but with the clock already ticking on the Superbattle final, there was no choice but to send Tom out.

Oulton is one of those tracks that leaves the team edgy - 1 minute 30 seconds is a hell of a long time when you are standing on the pit wall! Catching sight of Tom as he came around the final bend we could see immediately he was coming in. All the lads jumped straight on the car and Tom shouts that the power steering has gone. In the engine bay the auxiliary belt had been spat off. We have never had this problem before but there again, we have changed a lot of the plumbing and routing at the front of the engine bay to fit the Cosworth inlet manifold around the front mounted turbo. In the final minutes of the session, this is a problem we really did not need. With hindsight, we should have cut the belt, put the emergency battery in the car and sent Tom out for one lap without the power steering but in the heat of the moment the team were sure they could fix it. Battling with time, the belt switch did not go smoothly. Steven Darley ran back and forward between TV and pitlane shouting the time remaining. When at last we sent Tom out with a new belt, I was sure we had run out of time and sank to the floor in the pit garage, no longer with the energy to check the TV or the track… All too soon the chequered flag was out and we knew we had not made it.

The events of the last week quickly caught up with everyone and as the adrenaline and energy left us, we were a seriously deflated bunch. But thanks so much to Tom, who wouldn’t allow us to be too disheartened. He gave everyone a huge pat on the back for preparing a car that he described as having the most awesome handling, with huge amounts of potential and time still to come. He reported that the car had amazing grip, was completely neutral and was just waiting to go! Only having been able to cruise around, Tom assured us that if everything was on song it was a podium car for sure. Everyone perked up and got all philosophical after that, even David

The last to arrive but one of the last to leave, the team packed up for the day, whilst discussing the what ifs and buts and proposing our theories on the smoking engine. The general agreement was that there was no problem - it just hadn’t been run in! ZEN have never been overly precious over running in race engines but even we knew we hadn’t done enough this time around. The car had run on the axle stands on mineral oil, before that was dropped, replaced with fully synthetic and then run on the dyno for less than a hour. But only a thorough investigation would tell.

The journey home was slow but livened up by a perfect stoppie and a huge wheelie by Rich on his bike Oh and we started planning for Knockhill Watch this space…

Thanks to all our sponsors, supporters and friends, ever ready to share the blood, sweat and tears with us!

Duncan Graham takes 3rd in Time Attack Round 1!

Team ZEN- supported Duncan Graham pedalled to a fantastic 3rd place in the Club Challenge class at Oulton Park this weekend!

Needing very little help from ZEN, other than words of encouragement and a bit of tactical instruction, Duncan raised his game in every session. Qualifying in 4th spot, Duncan picked up a healthy 20 points mid-afternoon. On to the Superbattle and he had us worried when he momentarily dropped from 3rd down to 6th but he stepped it up in time to finish 3rd overall, scoring a further 80 points.

Although down on speed traps compared to some of the front runners, Duncan was extremely competitive and clearly doing very well through the twisties: Duncan has proved the worth of his chassis and handling tuning from ZEN, as well as his driver coaching from occasional ZEN driver Phil Glew!

Team ZEN will be working with Duncan to make some small improvements to the car and strategy over the next few weeks in the run up to Knockhill. With Duncan just 50 points down on the series leader, his challenge is most definitely ‘go’! Onwards and most definitely upwards!

Read the full story from Duncan on the Race Dynamix website.

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!

ZEN to support Duncan Graham at Oulton

ZEN has been commissioned to give Duncan Graham, Club Challenge driver #6, full tech support at the opening round of Time Attack at Oulton Park on April 25th.

Having experienced the benefits of having your very own race engineer at Snetterton in 2008, Duncan was keen to get ZEN on board in 2009. As it happens, Paul is at a loose end that day

ZEN would like to wish Duncan the very best of luck for the coming season, which kicks off in just over 7 days time. we would also like to thank Duncan for his ongoing assistance with all things web and design related!

Check out Duncan’s car and his progress on his Race Dynamix website