Great Onboard Racing Action Birkett Relay 2012 MR2 Multicam

[MaxxUK]

I've not posted up any of my videos for a while although I have been uploading many.

Thought it was about time I did plus these are GREAT ACTION videos and in one of the most extraordinary races anywhere in the world.

They are from the Birkett 6Hr Relay race held on the Silverstone GP Circuit.

The race is open to pretty much ANY CAR.
You race in teams of between 4 and 6 cars/drivers.
~70 teams take part, thats around 350 cars in total.
There were cars there from the 30s right through to modern day cars and lapping between 2:10 and 4:00

I was in a MK2 MR2 rented from Rogue Motorsport which was a last minute deal. The plan was for each of our 4 drivers to do 90 minuites.


I ended up doing about 2.5hr in total as one of our team developed a mechanical problem. My first stint was 90 minutes and the next 2 videos are from that session. I edited out all the 'less interesting' stuff but was still left with a 50minute video so have split it into 2 parts.


If you click through to Youtube there are 'timejump links' in the comments which take you to the various incidents.

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bib5a7Rjks4

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZABjPRRszw

This next video is quite an unusual view which I've called "CabinCam" and shows the driver at work during an early lap of this session, inset is the front view and pedalcam view so you have some idea where I'm going.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWAxcUhYZEg

I also posted the first 16mins (all I had video for) of my 2nd session which had been preceeded minutes before by a hail storm.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgF75uDWYeA

Our team did not place so well as we were a mixed bag, 2 x MR2 Turbo's and the Toyota Powered spaceframed 500kg XP-1 I was however the fastest Mk2 MR2 for the 2nd year running with a low 2:34

http://www.roflsaurus.com/users/Maxx/me-birk-2012.jpg
Thanks to whoever took that pic, sorry I can't remember where I got it.

Malcolm

 

[MaxxUK]

 

[MaxxUK]

Strictly speaking you should have between 4 and 6 driver/car combinations.

You definitely have to have a minimum of 4 drivers but you could perhaps get away with less cars as 2 drivers could share a car BUT as long as they didnt follow each other in order as ...

As one car passes the garage in the pits the other car is allowed to leave. If one of the cars break down on track you can send your next car out but of course ONLY one car is allowed on track at any time. As radios are not aloowed the only way you know if your car has broken is by it not coming past the pitwall for an extended period of time.

Before the race, each driver/car combination must give best laptimes for various UK circuits and the handicappers work out a 'target laptime'. The fastest of these (say 2mins) is used as the benchmark for number of [potential] laps, so that would be 180 laps for the 6hrs (car a)

Each other car/driver combination is then given a target number of laps, so a car marked as 3min laps would be expected to do 120 laps (car b) .. and so on across all drivers in all teams.

Just considering those 2 guys, if at the end of the race car b has done 121 laps and car a has done 180 laps then car b wins (on handicap) by 1 lap. As you can imagine it gets very complicated.

The stop the case where team 1 may have 1 very quick car and 3 slower cars but the quick car does more laps they consider in advance that the quick car will do more laps than the others individually (no-one knows the scaling).

As the laptimes given by the drivers may not be accurate they check again after quali plus they adjust even further in the opening 2-3 hours. They will also occasionally send a memo to the team restricting the number of laps that the 'fast' car can do.

My team were hampered as we had a wide variety of times. 3 of the cars were capable of ~2:25 laps whereas even wringing the neck of mine would rarely get sub 2:35 and as the other cars had mechanical issues I ended up doing almost half the race. I think we finished 27th on handicap.

M

 

[MaxxUK]

Unfortunately not Skeeter I'm not sure if it would be great viewing though, endurance races are bad enough but when it's a handicap as well and for the most part you have no idea who is leading. As drivers though e love it.

Maxx