Mapping all done, I arrived at Motorsport Engineering late Friday afternoon to pick up the car. Another last minute problem reared its ugly head - I took over my slicks from the end of last season so we could mount them before loading the car on the trailer. This would save time for the morning - but Steve noticed that two of the slicks were too worn to use. Its not so obvious when the canvas is black that you have worn through, but I'll certainly be paying a lot more attention to them in the future. With no spare slicks, I made the decision to run on road tyres for the track day, better than not running at all. Luckily I had a set of Integrale 16v wheels with tyres, the same size as my race wheels and within 3mm offset value.

A bright early start to Goodwood, by the time we had unloaded the car and changed the wheels it was about 10:00am. Passed through scrutineering, basically a noise and basic safety check and queued to go out on track. While queuing, we added the passenger seat harness and my good friend Peter Dietsch jumped in the passenger side. This would be the first time I had driven the car since last October, the first time as a left hand drive car so ideally I planned to shake down rather than go for ultimate speed just to check everything worked OK. The pit lane light went green and our time had come. I nailed it out of the pit lane onto the track - oh dear, immediately I could tell it wasn't too quick. We carried on - Goodwood is very bumpy and she moved around quite a bit, but even at the reduced speed we were travelling at I could tell that the brakes pulled up nice and square and turn in was good, the Y10 went pretty well where she was pointed. On the third lap of trying to check the car, we had already given up on power but the gauges had been showing normal, suddenly the water temperature gauge went right up so we slowed and cruised back to the pits where the temperature went back to normal. A quick check when cooler showed no obvious water loss, but nothing else looked obvious either as to why there was no power, so that was it for the day.

Back to Motorsport Engineering on Monday, Steve carried out a quick timing check but that was fine too. The Y10 was booked in for a rolling road session at Bob Watson Engineering out in Middle Aston, virtually next door to my old friends at Helix Autosport.

So on Friday, we trekked over to Middle Aston, a guy from Motec also attended to do the actual mapping. All we proved was that I was right in that we had no power. The engine was reluctant to rev properly, and delivered 100bhp (flywheel) at 5500rpm, with maximum torque coming in at 5100rpm. A bit of a change since the last mapping last year where we achieved 177bhp at 5960rpm with max torque at 3900rpm. At least this proved that something was wrong.

On Monday a few discussions between Motorsport Engineering, Evolution Engineering, the original builders of the engine and Turbo Developments, the supplier of the turbo unit, took place. Checks were made and by process of elimination the turbocharger is taking the blame. Seems its possible that the AR value is too high for the engine and we are just not producing enough gas to spin the turbine - the turbo has not gone back to Turbo Developments to be checked and probably for a casing with a smaller AR value.

While the above was going on, we managed to source a new set of slicks at bargain price courtesy of the BMTR site where the correct Avon slicks for our fitment were listed in the special offers section.

The upshot of all, of course, is that we didn't make it to Castle Combe for the race - good old Easter intervening put paid to that. Hopefully we will have the new turbo in time for next week. If at all possible we hope to get the Y10 back to Castle Combe on 26th April for the Cars & Car Conversions Action Day. Failing that we will try and get a test in somewhere before the next round at Snetterton. Funds are very low at the moment, if you would like to become associated with team Nyssa Racing, please email us for details of how you can help.

A last minute kind offer from Tony Soper to borrow his Class A Alfa Romeo 164 V6 was very tempting, and gratefully received - but alas we had to decline in order to save funds for the Y10 effort. Shame, I suspect it would have been quite an interesting car on such a fast circuit.

As I wasn't there, the following report is reproduced by kind permission of Tony Soper.

Viva Lancia

Its been a good few years since a Lancia won a race in the UK, probably the mid nineties when John Day's Beta Coupe was a dominent force, but Lindsay Ward pulled off a stunning victory at Castle Combe on Easter Monday with his Thema Turbo.

Qualifying on a damp track saw Andy Thompson's class B Minari top the times followed by Wards Thema. Next up was Neil Smith with his eagerly awaited Alfa 156 which is built to class C production modified regulations and he was closely followed by John Rutters Hawk Stratos. The Ferraris of David Back (355C) and Alan Cosby (512) struggled for grip on the slippery surface, a surface which caught out class E pole man Roger Donnan as he pushed a little too hard. Ian Stapletons run of poor reliabilty continued, with the engine now repaired after Brands Hatch the propshaft coupling disintegrated and he would be a non starter. Also in trouble was Tim Lewis whose Sprint was cold & damp and refused to start. Tim qualified out of session and was destined to start the race at the back of the grid. Class D was headed by Paul lund from Graham Scott who was running an Alfa 33 until his Corse Stratos is repaired.

The race saw the sportwagon diesel of Bryn Griffiths burst to the lead, which he held for almost one lap before Thompson's Minari went around the outside of him on the approach to the start line. Thompson set about creating some space whilst the class A cars were stuck in traffic but before long Ward was clear and was quickly closing. The two Ferraris were a little behind with Tim Lewis' howling sprint on their tail. Ward took the lead and headed a five car train, Back, Cosby, Lewis & Thompson. The top three eased away and it was soon apparent that Back's 355 looked to have the legs of the Thema but with two laps to go Back got on the gas a little early and the 355 slid from under him, by the time he had recovered Cosby was through and Ward was clear.

So Lindsay Ward scored his first ever victory, followed by Alan Cosby and Tim Lewis who won class B. John Rutter was sixth in a lonely race, however his best lap equalled that of Andy Thompson. Neil Smith took a maiden class C victory in seventh place. The midfield battle was as intense as the front runners, and saw Smith, Westley Evans, Graham Scott, Bryn Griffiths and Roger Lund engaged in another train, however Smith, Scott and Evans broke away, Scott taking the Class D win. Roger Donnan hung grimly to the tail of the diesel sportwagon and their best laps were just 0.3s apart, but the grunt of the 156 told and Griffiths scored a historic class E win.

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