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Bicknell PS7 shows pace on debut. |
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Thursday, 17 April 2008 |
After 2 years of hard work by Rob Bicknell on the new Bicknell PS7. A one off car to take on the might of the manufacturers of Juno, Chiron, Norma and Ligier ,no easy task. The action finally got underway at Donington Park in the first VdeV UK race. It was a rather mixed weekend of emotions, our expectations were fairly high due to positive testing, but you never can be quite sure till it gets competitive.
With Ben Clucas and Rachel Green driving we knew we had a strong driver pairing, this was confirmed in Saturday morning practice as the car went very well, only getting pipped to fastest lap on the last lap of the session. Still 2nd fastest on its first run is pretty damn good going; our expectations were not too high after all.
We then headed into qualifying in the afternoon. The weather conditions had turned somewhat for the worst; the car had never been out in the wet in anger so we were unsure on how the car would act. Rachel started in the car and went 3rd we were more than happy with that. It started drying out pretty quickly so we got her in to put some slicks on, changed some settings and sent Ben out, immediately he started flying in these conditions and went 2 seconds quicker than anybody else.
The track was drying out and the times were coming down. Now it was getting
exciting, could we really get pole first time out? Then the drama of motorsport came to spoil our day, with 15 minutes to go Ben came in saying he couldn’t change down. Unfortunately the gear change cable had come lose and had fouled on the exhaust causing it to break. We are certain that pole slipped through our fingers as we didn’t get to set a time in as the track was at its driest (in testing we were over a second quicker than pole time) We ended up qualifying 9th.
With the car now repaired and ready to go we eagerly awaited the race knowing we had the pace to go well, Rachel started the race and was going really well getting up to 7th and setting very good times. It started to drizzle and in these conditions Rachel was flying, even being quickest on a couple of laps, unfortunately bad luck was to strike again, this time the exhaust was damaged.
To what extent to we were not sure, we decided to take a gamble and leave her out there to stand a chance of a good result as her times were still good.
Unfortunately we ran out of fuel just as she was due in, this meant we lost a lot of laps before being towed in. The damage to the exhaust was worse than we first thought and causing consumption to be a lot higher. We discovered that 2 pipes had come apart at the joints on the manifold; still we had to soldier on. After refueling we sent Ben out and he put in a blistering performance posting lap times just a fraction off the leader, looking at the data we would have easily set fastest lap by some margin if we didn’t have the manifold problem.
We eventually finished the race in eleventh, second fastest just 3 tenths shy of the works Norma, the main thing was we finished, despite the problem with the exhaust and with better luck we are certain we would have been on the podium.
The future of the car is not yet known, but I’m sure we will be seeing the unique Bicknell PS7 at the sharp end of the grid in VdeV.
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I’m gutted that we had the problems with the manifold, but for that to be the only problem on its first outing and to set the times we did shows the potential of the car. It certainly didn’t go unnoticed and we got some lovely comments on the car from fellow competitors” said Rob Bicknell
“Rachel really enjoyed her first outing in this type of car and was very impressive in the dry but sensational when it started raining in the race, Bens pace is well known but he was fantastic all weekend and felt sure we would have been quickest without the problems.”
"It was always going to be difficult given the short time frame to get everything ready, and the team all did a great job to be as competitive as we were. The car was really quick the whole weekend and it was just a shame we weren’t able to show it’s full potential. Given the problems we had during the race, I think to set the lap times we did despite them just shows how quick the car would have been if we hadn’t those little niggles (3 tenths off quickest). Overall though it was a really fun weekend and I would love to have another go.” Said Ben.
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 17 April 2008 )
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