Brands Hatch Festival 2024

23/10/2024

What a weekend that was…

All pre race preparations completed (lots of hours fixing and remediating bits on the car) collecting up the necessary tools and running infrastructure for the weekend all completed by the Wednesday evening. Travelling to the meeting was hindered by a truck flat battery and then a stop over at the DVSA to be weighed (and some bits offloaded) prior to arriving at the track at 19:30.

We quickly assembled the rest of the pop up garage in the corner of the paddock fondly referred to as the Paddock Bend Club throughout the weekend.

Friday was dry and sunny and the car ran really well expectations for qualifying on Saturday were good Sam didn’t match his times from Friday but did manage to get up to 14th although his time was 0.4 seconds down on Fridays testing.

The race itself was good (we didn’t see much from the pit wall but it was being live streamed) with Sam progressing up to P11 by the end of the day. We think we were impacted by some necessary changes on Friday evening but aside from that the team was positive on Saturday night as Sam’s P11 - 1st in class finish was enough for a direct entry into the Semi Final on Sunday.

We ate well Saturday night with a Chinese buffet being served in the garage.

Sunday was gloomy and by the time the semi final arrived the rain had started, Sam was placed 16th on the grid confident that he would do well. An initial gain installed positive vibes in the team, although as the rain intensified Sam started dropping back through the pack. The race ended with Sam 20th a long way off where we were last year. De-briefing back in the garage exposed a clutch failure which meant splitting the car and investigating the cause. The clutch bearing was replaced, as was the clutch in a pretty impressive 1 hour 15 minutes. Sam just managed it onto the Historic grid although the car was making a noise which wasn’t familiar.

Our race weekend ended on lap 6 as Sam exited the track on Paddock bend, and reported after that the clutch had once again failed. We packed up the garage in the wet and trundled down the road. Whilst the weekend didn’t end the way we wanted, but the fact we’re back self running and were (at points) competitive is a huge positive.

There’s some more work to do to remediate the issues from the last race but we’re confident and plan to be at Silverstone next week.

Racing Restarting in 2024

24/09/2024

Hot of the press. Plenty has been going on planning and garage wise with the car being picked up from Swift yesterday preparations are being made with some hours in the garage before the Brands Hatch Festival in October.

More on this in the coming weeks. Anyone wanting SamS Motorsport Merchandise please get your orders in quickly as there’s a lead time on some of the more special items.

Season changing disaster

28/05/2024

Yesterday saw us venture back to Castle Combe. Fortunately for us there was a scheduled practise session for the Formula Fords as such this gave an opportunity to bed in new disks and brakes in advance of the competition real. Sam ventured out onto track in the SC92 Swift at 09:10 slightly ahead of the published scheduled and built up pace gradually as the brakes came in as expected.

Qualifying

It seemed strange as this was due to start just before noon (on a normal race day we would have been done by 10:30 latest). Sam tricked to the assembly area to wait to be called, the wait was longer than expected as the previous tin top session was red flagged with 3 minutes and 10 seconds remaining. The track was cleared and fences repaired whilst we watch the skies darken.

Qualifying started the car was quick and Sam moved up to a season’s best of 4th position (1st in class) as the rain spots started, such is the nature of the Castle Combe layout that it can rain harder in some areas and less or not in others. Today was not in our favour as 7 laps in there was just a little too much rain in “Camp” corner (main one coming into the start finish straight) and following an overtake (of a car which stubbornly would not get out of the way even with blue flags) Sam locked up the rears and lost steering proceeding the the barrier. His qualifying over Sam visited the medical centre and was given the all clear. He was not so convinced about the health of the car.

To out amazement (and everyone else’s) it had been saved by the air tech fence, it needed grass clearing from the side pods and was good to go. Sadly once the qualifying session was restarted Sam’s class competitors were able to take advantage of the dry track which demoted his position to 5th and 2nd in class. Not a disaster at this point in time.

Race 1

More delays through the day, a very nasty incident which involved another tin top, and the pit lane entrance barrier led to a lengthy delay and some alterations to the racing for the rest of the days sessions (Yellow flag on that corner with no overtaking permitted).

Sam lined up and started, a surprising fast (possibly to fast) start saw another car pass him and the 4th placed driver through Avon Rise. This led to some tough racing some of it very close but happily no off track incidents.

We were extremely surprised when Sam pulled off the track into the pits on lap 7, further investigation revealed engine failure with only 3 cylinders firing. The car had to be retired from the meeting and we will be reviewing plans for the rest of the season.

To date we have had to replace, disks, pads, calibers, uprights and now an engine.

Race 2

There wasn’t one for us today. Our Castle Comber season has come to an end we will be planning for the back end of the year if at all possible but may have to resign ourselves to focus on 2025.

WEB SITE UPDATED 31/01/2024

31/01/2024

Well here we are on the new SamS Motorsport website - with a Blog.

We’ve been working on this for about a week now using the old site as a template and tidying a lot of the old stuff up.

Through 2024 we will be blogging about our events, news and results.

Hopefully you will be following us here and on Facebook