Donington Park 28th July 2002

The Donington round of the series has proved to be a much better weekend for us. We spent time since the last race wondering why the Duratec car was so far off the pace at Brands Hatch, we had roughly the same settings as all of the other Van Diemens that we have supplied and yet it seemed awful last time out.

A discussion with the factory culminated in a test session with the works team boss Jonathan Lewis at Donington , along with Wesley Barber one of their works drivers. It took very little time for them to discover that the shocks were next to useless on the rear of the car, not sure why as we had Quantum supposedly valve them as before. They adjusted the shocks as far as possible and changed the spring rates a little along with rake and the removal of the front roll bar. Wesley put in a good few laps and after these adjustments finished the day with a best of 1.12.8

The factory is building a car for testing and Jonathan will drive it in the last few rounds of the championship. We are very excited at this prospect, as it will mean that development will be made much quicker and by the real professionals.

On race day Nik drove the now improved version and set a pole of 1.13.8 , a second slower than Wesley but a second quicker than anyone else. Nik went on to convert this into an easy win after a hectic few laps behind the Gunn car.

The Pinto race was less successful, but still resulted in a third place after a poor qualifying result, starting eighth on the grid. We tried to be to clever by going out on old tyres in qualifying and then changing to better rubber half way through, this failed miserably as from about lap six nearly all the session remained slow due to oil and muck on the track, Nik did creep up to a 1.18plus second but the damage was done. The race was very watch able, many laps completed with a close snake of cars hurtling around the track, Nik gradually worked his way through the pack but was too far off the two leaders to make an impression before the race ended, and to be fair he thought he had got about as far as he could on the day. Congrats to John Loader and Nick Bates who really were the class of the field.

Our other Van Diemens had eventful times; poor Mike Turner finally blew up his engine, which is probably a blessing in disguise as it has hampered his progress all year.
David Houghton had great fun and diced with Graham Rowan in the final race. He was pleased with a three second improvement on his time and I was pleased to see his lovely wife Silvana Firetto, relaxing in the sunshine as David played.

Graham Rowan also looked to be having fun, he has a great recovery mode from a spin or maybe he was just waiting for David to catch up!. He like David may not yet be the quickest in the field, but he too is improving and has great support from his charming wife Daphne.

We won't be at Zandvoort as we are in the middle of harvest, but we will be out at Silverstone God willing, and looking to get both cars working better at that circuit.

Les Johnson