Spa-Francorchamps has many well-known corners. Eau Rouge you likely know. But the one that prompts a reflexive wriggle against the harness straps on approach is Pouhon, a downhill, fourth-gear left-hander round the back of the circuit. It’s probably just a lift but I’ll confess to a confidence dab before committing. Both actions have the same, butt-clenching effect of making the back end go light at around 90 mph, just as the full corner reveals itself

Only this time it’s not just the corner. I’m three-abreast in the dark, the lightning illuminating the Ardennes forest has turned to rain, and the guy in front has just discovered the grip levels have totally changed since the last lap. I’m fixated on his elegant pirouette before sense kicks in and I’m looking for an escape route over the curbs.

I juke right. This is fine. We’ll be okay. Oh shit, he’s now coasting backwards into my path. Cars scatter across the run-off area, weaving wildly in all directions. A good 20 yards past him and we’re all back on track, scraping doorhandles as battle resumes for the next corner.

It’s 1 a.m. on a Saturday night in Belgium and I want a beer. God, I want a beer. Instead I’m on shot tires, the rain is so intense I can’t see where the track ends and the grass starts and I can only hope the taillights ahead are going the right way. Meanwhile the car behind is so close he’s pretty much parked in my trunk, his lights dazzling me in the mirrors as I try to find a line through the dark and the spray. Pretty standard for Belgian freeway driving as it goes. But even that, and Spa’s reputation for dramatic weather, hasn’t quite prepared me for the intensity of this fight.

Welcome to Citroen C1 racing, upstart addition to a 24-hour 2CV eventthat’s been a fixture at Spa for over 30 years. They’re still here, their slammed Deux-Chevauxs and Dyanes corrupted by air-cooled, flat-twin BMW bike engines with over 100 horsepower and crazy homebrew bodywork, faired-in wheels and all.

And they are fast, carving through the traffic like weird, scuttling bugs. These are now $100,000 machines though, a series that started as affordable fun in cheap old cars now a budgetary arms race

Which is where the C1 picks up.

C-what, you ask? Picture your stereotypical, front-drive Euro hatchback with a gutless, 1.0-liter, 67 HP three-cylinder engine and you’re there. Also sold as the Peugeot 107 and Toyota Aygo, first-gen donor cars can now be bought for a $1,000 and converted into a racing car for less than $5,000. This explains why there are nearly 70 in this 121-car grid, 40-plus of them from the UK-based C1 Racing Club

It doesn’t, however, explain why so many drivers from supposedly more prestigious and (let’s face it) faster race series seem so eager to compete in a stripped and caged shopping car. One of my teammates is fresh from driving a million-dollar historic in the most blue chip of blue chip races at Goodwood Revival. Others are salty VLN and Nürburgring 24-hour veterans or have experience in GT3 and GTE, including here at Spa. There’s one guy from Idaho more accustomed to racing Porsches and guys and girls from fiercely competitive one-make Caterham, Ginetta and Radical series back in the UK. A team of American drivers led by New Jersey-based Jon Meyer have, with help from the C1 Racing Club, had a car built in Germany and are ready to race on SCCA national licenses. Why are they all here?

Because it’s competitive as hell, not 24 Hours of LeMons-style wacky racing. It’s basically everything we love about circuit racing. Minus the bullshit or million-dollar budgets.

“First it’s Spa. This is hallowed ground,” says Meyer. “Second, night racing. We just don’t get the chance to do that back home so much. And the third is we’ve all watched British and German touring cars and the level of racing here makes this really attractive.”

The C1 Racing Club succeeds where others have failed by maintaining strict control on car specs. You can only build one with the parts and packages supplied by the club, the idea being it’s the fast drivers who get to the front of the grid, not just the rich ones. Writing the rulebook from scratch gives them authority to enforce component changes on anyone they suspect of buying extra speed, up to and including swapping out their engine for a spare stored in the pit garage.

“Trust me, between us we know all the tricks,” says series co-founder Meyrick Cox, “basically because we’ve thought through all the ways we’d cheat if we were doing it.”

Bottom line, if the next guy is faster than you, it’s not because of the car.

So it’s as much about brainpower as it is horsepower. You may nail that guy into La Source hairpin with a fist pump for the GoPro and social media glory. But he’s now got your tow all the way into Eau Rouge and along the straight that follows, ducking out of your draft with the extra five miles per hour you gifted him. Six-car battles for position can last—literally—hours, the lead changing constantly as every corner becomes a who-blinks-first battle of bravery and wits, inevitably spiced up by one of those ridiculous 2CV prototypes carving between you at a critical moment, or a standard one blocking your path and costing you five seconds in one lap.

For much of the race 70-car C1 field are circulating the 4.3-mile circuit to within two or three seconds of each other, it’s that tight.

At night I find myself drafting so close I’m watching the track unfold through the windscreen of the car in front, using his lights to pick my braking point and opportunity to duck out the slipstream. It’s the kind of racing where you’ll be locked in a fight to the death one moment and exchanging thumbs-up the next, my battle with one car lasting half an hour and having us swap position but not paint once or twice a lap.

The driving standards are ruthless enough to make you wince but respectful with it. Rubbin’ is definitely racin’ but anyone taking it too far won’t be invited back, simple as that.

There’s nowhere to hide in these cars and the fact you have to earn every mph and fight to maintain it is the essence of pure racing. The modifications mean the C1s slide and move around according to how you drive them. A fractionally greedy corner approach results in ugly understeer while artistic trail- or left-foot braking can be exploited to rotate the car into the corner and gain whole seconds.

I manage this once through La Source and the satisfaction is still making me fizz a week later, likewise the sideways at 90mph approach to Pouhon when I came in a little too hot one lap.

It’s at this point most successful championships lose the plot and money starts talking. Not in the C1s. If anything the organizers are doubling down on regulations, a recent deal with Nankang meaning the control tire will be manufactured to spec, sparing the faff and expense of shaving down road rubber. A new direct-sale brake pad meanwhile lasts a season rather than a race and saves more money for teams.

And as demand for grid space increases so are the races getting bigger, the Club confirming a new 24-hour round on Silverstone’s full Grand Prix circuit next April. It’s a sign this little series is now outgrowing its club circuit roots and able to fill internationally renowned, F1-grade venues. Meyer is already having a second car built with the aim of selling seats to American drivers, joking he could fill 20 cars if he could field them.

Want in? Get yourself on the C1 Racing Club’s match-making forum with a fistful of dollars and you’re good to go for less than a transatlantic air fare. See you there.

Dan Trent has been working as a car writer for 15 years, several of which were spent editing Chris Harris while he was at Pistonheads, from which he has several stories not for repeating here.

14/11/2018

24 hours, Spa, 2018, C1 Racing in the Press, Other, Race, October 2018

Dan Trent – Goodwood 16th Oct 2018- The Real Holy Grail of Motorsport

Why racing a Citroën C1 at Spa is the real holy grail of motorsport

Why on earth would anyone want to race at Spa-Francorchamps in a Citroën C1? With just 68hp you might think it would struggle to drag itself up from Eau Rouge. And whether it’s Häkkinen on Schumacher back in 2000, Jacky Ickx, Derek Bell and their ilk monstering the track in Porsche 956s in the 80s or Jim Clark and others conquering the infamously fast, road circuit layout in the 60s, Spa has a deservedly fearsome reputation.

What place does a cheap supermini with a roll cage have in this most glorious of motorsport traditions? Be ready for a surprise…

Close, competitive racing focused on driver skill, not how much money you spend, is the holy grail of any series, whether it’s F1 or the Revival. Because, let’s face it, the races we remember are the ones where the lead swaps places several times each lap and it’s a firm but fair fight between committed drivers on the absolute limit.

Creating a series where this kind of racing can thrive is a constant battle for organisers. But one the Citroën C1 Racing Club seems to have nailed by basing its championship around a cheap, everyday hatchback you can buy and build into a racing car for very little money. And making absolutely sure everyone plays fair by restricting modifications to an absolute minimum and controlling the supply of packages and parts that transform cheap, dependable city cars into a machine that can race for 24 hours around Spa.

And, while a lowly C1 may not be the most prestigious or fastest competition car ever built, proof that it’s the racing, not the machine that counts is what attracts everyone from gangs of mates on a shoestring to experienced, affluent drivers moonlighting from GT3 and top-flight historic series. All this becomes clear as I start my first stint as one of four drivers in the C1 Racing Club’s own car. I’ve done about three laps in daylight but, by the time I strap in, Spa is brooding under a silvery, moonlit sky.

As I merge onto the Kemmel Straight I’m down by about 20mph on the pack of cars who’ve carried their speed through Eau Rouge. And I’m basically trying to keep out of their way until I can pick up momentum on the downhill return. It’s chaos, C1s circulating in packs, locked in private battles, while mad bike-engined, Citroën-based prototypes scythe their way through and everyone dodging the slow-moving regular 2CVs, trundling along gamely at half the pace of everyone else.

It’s not unusual to have a pack of a dozen cars of wildly different speeds all converging on one corner, lights dazzling you in the mirrors as you try and second guess whether you’re overtaking or being overtaken. Somehow it works and you get a few seconds to catch breath before you have to do it all again. And, modest power or not, by the time you reach the fearsome downhill left-hander at Pouhon you’ll be doing 90mph-plus and sliding sideways as the budget Nankang tyres start to let go.

Lap after lap, hour after hour these battles go on, slipstreaming up Kemmel and then ‘doing a Hakkinen’ on some unsuspecting 2CV – a winning technique for gaining a place into the Les Combes chicane. And then it rains. As it always does at Spa’s most exciting races. One thing watching it from the sofa on a Sunday afternoon. Another entirely at 2am when the spray is so bad you can’t see the track surface, your tyres are shot and there are people ricocheting off the barriers in all directions.

With nearly 70 C1s on track – two thirds of those from British entrants – and lap times separated by just a few seconds you’re never far from a battle. In my second stint I enjoy one that goes on for maybe 10 laps, my rival and I fighting fiercely for every corner but able to exchange a friendly thumbs-up at the shared thrill as we swap places on the straights. And that’s what it’s all about. No quarter given on the circuit and relaxed, ego-free camaraderie in the pits. In a car you could build and enter from scratch for less than £5,000. Pure racing, the like of which attracts high-rolling racers to gangs of mates alike. And levels the playing field in a way few other series have achieved, for a price within reach of nearly anyone. That’s why you’d want to race a C1 round Spa.

21/10/2018

24 hours, 2018, May 2018, C1 Racing in the Press, Other, Race

Motors1 – Budget racing with a Le Mans Legend

MAY 25, 2018 at 14:30

The Citroen C1 Racing Club offers almost comically affordable, yet seriously competitive endurance racing.

We took part in the Citroen C1 Racing Club’s 24-hour race at Rockingham Speedway, sharing a car with Le Mans legend Anthony Reid. Read on for tips from a pro-racer on how to make the most of your budget racing experience and our story on why this club should be your first stop if you want endurance racing on a shoestring.

Introduction

It’s not entirely representative of all the Citroen C1 Racing Club’s races that you find yourself sharing a car with ex-Le Mans racer Anthony Reid, and a garage with WEC driver Andy Priaulx, Seb Priaulx (Andy’s son), Alan Gow and Richard Solomons – all significant names on the racing scene.

An odd one-off, because the club exists to offer cheap endurance racing. It’s estimated that £12,800 will get you the car, its modifications (which are deliberately minimal and basically involve stripping it out, putting in a roll cage, kill switch and extinguisher, fitting a strut brace and that’s about it) and 107 hours of racing, including a 24-hour race at Spa. Split that between four drivers and it’s £3,200 each. You do have to factor in transport to the races, crash damage and who does the spannering, but any way round it’s crazy how cheap this is.

And here’s another thing: While Priaulx and co. in car 303 were a class apart from most others, they didn’t put it on pole and there were others on a similar level. So while the C1 Club’s garages may not often be so star-studded, there’s a rare mix of brilliant drivers you can learn vast amounts from and novice drivers who offer a field of more reassuringly realistic competition, if (as in my case) you come to the C1 Racing Club with little or no race experience.

Naturally, Reid and the other pros may not be willing to give up the secrets on how to get the most out of a budget race like this, but I am. So here’s my story, as someone who knows how to drive a car fast but is – by my own admission – inexperienced at racing and crippled by politeness and fear of causing carnage when it comes to overtaking. And also read on for tips straight from the racing legends on how to save time and have the best possible race if you’re planning on having a go at cheap racing yourself.

Elastic fantastic

‘Racing is about saving time, in the pits or on the race track.’

That’s a John Surtees quote and one that Reid lives by. With quite some fervour. He might be quietly spoken, impeccably polite and about the nicest bloke you could meet, but there’s also an obsessive, burning competitiveness that characterises everything he does over the race weekend at Rockingham. Sure, this is grass roots motorsport, but he wants to win just as much as he did when he came third with Porsche at Le Mans in 1990.

The first thing he did was elasticate the seatbelts – using the basic, stretchy white elastic normally found in camping shops, he tied the harness to the cage, so that the belt jumped back out of the way when it was undone. It saves precious seconds during driver changes, as you always know where the belts are.

I found out just how good this trick is as I threw myself, deeply terrified, into the car at about 7.30pm. We were in P7 – the same position we’d qualified in. All our testing had happened in dry sunshine and now I was faced with a soaking track, darkness, and a car that had already lost its driver-side mirror.

Still, it was a relief how easy it was to get the belts on since we knew exactly where they were… A nifty, cheap free hack to save you time. Remember that one.

Tyre torture

Another of Reid’s major focuses in testing and the run-up to the race is the tyres. The skinny Nankang tyres cost around £20 a corner, and are of course obligatory in the series. Box-fresh from the factory, they’re then shaved down (still leaving plenty of tread, mind), which makes them rather less grippy.

Reid is tireless (if you’ll excuse the pun) in figuring out the best pressures and how worn they should be in order to achieve the best times. We make sure that all of the tyres are scrubbed with a few progressively harder laps so that they are race-ready but honestly, the monsoon weather makes much of that redundant.

Taking over the car at the end of a safety car stint, I was immediately launched into a field of 52 cars all bunched together into a crocodile. The club is stringent on its driver standards and it has thrown out drivers for executing unsafe manoevres, so the racing is – while utterly hectic – also quite clean.

This stint is hard work. Judging where the cars are and trying to keep the car on the perilously slippery track is more nerve-wracking than fun for me, and it takes a good 30 minutes before I begin to relax and gain confidence – take a wider line than usual to find the grip on the sodden track. Let the car slip a bit and use the lift-off oversteer (there’s plenty in these conditions) to pivot the car into corners. Ease the throttle on with painstaking timidity out of corners or you’ll understeer wildly and let that bloke behind you through…

I managed some adequate times but I exited the car after two hours – when a safety car came out again – feeling wrung out and uncertain whether endurance racing was really for me. If it’s this hard in a 68bhp, front-wheel-drive shopping trolley, I couldn’t help but spare a thought for those who were currently pedalling much, much hairier machinery around a wet Nürburgring at the same time. Fun? Hmm. Maybe. It was time for teammate Jason Barron to take over.

Fuel pump pain

The Friday before the race, Reid had noticed that the fuel nozzles – a plastic affair that screw onto the jerry cans – were painfully slow and varied dramatically in effectiveness. So he started testing all of them, with the help of the truly brilliant pit crew (check out XDR Motors in Salisbury if you need a good mechanic or race support). Remarkably, the best nozzle was more than a minute faster at decanting the full jerry can into the car’s fuel tank. How much intense driving would it take to save that much time, for a trick that most of us wouldn’t have thought of?

Sure enough, the fast nozzles were marked up and quietly reserved for our car, although strangely we ended up sharing them with the Priaulx car some 10 hours later… Still, even Reid’s perceptive race prep didn’t save us enough time to make up for my less-than-ballsy racing, so when Barron steered 301 into the night just before 10pm, we were down in 16^th.

I’m down for the dawn stint, so it’s time for a nap.

A mild crash

While I sleep for a couple of hours, 301 is involved in a mild shunt and ends up with much of its front bumper being held on with duct tape. We write it down to a bit of weight saving, but being recovered from the gravel costs three laps and lots of time, so we’re down in 32^ndby the time I creep back into the garage at around 2am.

Sunlit second stint

Journalist Mark Walton does an ace job of climbing up the ranks during his stint, as the rain eases off and the track begins to dry. Reid’s up next, and I pace, sup coffee and pace a bit more. At some point I have a weird, slightly delirious conversation about exploding penguins, before deciding that what I really need to do is brush my teeth. And drink coffee. And more water, lots of water.

Finally I’m called forward at around 5am. Reid comes in under the safety car, and I’m back out on Rockingham’s International Super Sports Car circuit, heading towards the tight left-hand hairpin that swings you off the speed bowl and into the twisty inner circuit.

There’s a clear dry line appearing, so I stick to it and find loads of grip. With that and the first tint of dawn in the sky, I’m immediately more confident than before and start to gain on cars ahead. Car 301 feels good, turning in well as I trail-brake in. While I still find myself in tight, aggressive packs of cars, I’m confident enough to fight back and hold my own.

In fact, with each lap I feel the racing tunnel vision creeping in. There’s a great overtaking spot if you dive up the inside of Deene – the hairpin running off the bowl. Another if you take a tight line through Gracelands, a fast left-hander that needs just a lift off the throttle to settle the car before you swing in.

Maybe I can get down to a 1:54 rather than the 1:55s that have been my best so far – around three seconds off the fastest times posted.

Next thing I know there’s a car spinning across the bowl in front of me as I’m flat-out in fourth with the car loaded up. I think it’s going to be The End, but somehow – mostly by clenching hard and trying to stay smooth on the brakes and steering – we make it through the melee to live another lap.

The safety car comes out, I check the clock and find I’ve done some two hours. I want to stay out longer but I’ve honestly no clue how much longer the fuel will last and it saves time doing driver changes under the safety car, so I dive into the pits already wanting to head back out again.

Don’t mind the bullies

Cue more sitting around the pits, and eventually I manage to sleep a bit. At some point I ask Reid about why some cars flash their lights aggressively behind you, since I had come out of one such (granted rather rare) altercation only to be miffed to find it wasn’t even a front-runner as I had assumed. ‘It’s just intimidation tactics. Ignore them,’ was the answer.

So there you have another gem. Of course in endurance racing there’s the difficulty of having cars that are laps ahead or indeed laps behind, but the really fast blokes are notable because they never employ those tactics – they just go round you. A touch humiliating, but then learn about their lines and how they make it look so infuriatingly easy by doing your best to keep up.

So stick to your line, and don’t dive wildly around to give somebody else space. Well-intentioned as you may be, it makes you erratic and more difficult to get around. And don’t be intimidated if somebody goes flashing their lights at you. Be courteous, be clean, but also be brave and don’t let them ruin your race.

Final stint

1pm. It’s lunchtime and I’m back in the car, desperate for more time on track. We’ve clawed our way back up to 18^th, which is quite impressive. Everything feels good, the track is now totally dry, and I’m gunning for a 1:54. I can hardly believe how much confidence I’ve built in this one race.

Confidence has always been my issue when it comes to racing – oddly, I have it in karting but have struggled on the handful of occasions I’ve done ‘proper’ racing of any kind. Yet here I find myself the aggressor on the track. I know I’m faster than plenty of the cars out there and I know where I’m comfortable overtaking.

I spend a deliriously brilliant 30 minutes racing with car 399, which is almost exactly matched to my speed around the track. With this circuit taking in a quarter of Rockingham’s speed bowl, drafting is critical, and I get round him that way. Then he gets by me the same way. I open up a bit of a gap. Then I fluff the entry to the bowl and he’s right back on my bumper. So it continues for I have no idea how long, but it is undoubtedly the finest and happiest racing I’ve ever done. I virtually wanted him to win as much as I wanted us to win by the time my stint was drawing to a close.

And all the time I’m learning how to go round backmarkers, how best to maintain the C1’s momentum (because these are comically slow cars), how best to keep the lap times down and chip away at the field… It is the most remarkable learning curve and the best fun.

Competitive comradeship

Racing can be bitterly, unpleasantly competitive at times. The Citroen C1 Racing Club is not like that – competitive, yes, but also friendly. I had someone give me the thumbs up during an overtaking manoeuvre – it’s that kind of experience, plus the car is slow enough to allow you to do that kind of thing.

Maybe what sums it up best is what happened at the end of the 24-hour race. Around five minutes before the end, car 402 ran out of fuel on School Straight – just ahead of the pits. But he hadn’t run out of luck or friends, since car 318 driven by James Poulton – who had been to-ing and fro-ing with car 402 – took pity and slowed down to give 402 a shove into the pits, where he received further shoves from crews of various garages all the way to his own garage. He managed to get back on to the track to finish the race.

Car 318 actually lost a position in the race (benefitting 301, no less) for his gentlemanliness, but no doubt he got beer enough to make him feel better about it. He also got two points on his licence, but I’m told he’s rather proud of them…

And that’s the sort of stuff that makes the Citroen C1 Racing Club simultaneously a brilliant place for just having fun and also one for seriously working on your racecraft. We finished 14^th, which I am heartily chuffed with, especially given how far down we slipped in the middle of the night. Team C’est La Vie in car 349 won the race, and also started on pole, which gives you some idea of how fiendishly rapid the crew of five drivers was.

In truth what I took from it was just how perfect this series is if you want to learn to race better – if you want to learn to race full stop.

I learned how to take time to judge another driver’s style and lines before overaking, I learned strategy, and I had an absolute ball doing it. It’s the perfect balance of unintimidating fun in a race car that’s as easy to drive as they come, mated to low costs, a great field of drivers and some brilliant tracks and good company all round.

If you want to learn to race, start here. Definitely do some track days or karting first, but whatever you do, get into the Citroen C1 Racing Club because it’s the best fun and the best racing, the best bunch of people and the best tuition you could hope for, regardless of the bargain price.

Photos: Marvin Hall Photography
Thanks to the Citroen C1 Racing Club

Gallery: Citroen C1 24 Hours

24 Photos

30/05/2018

2018, May 2018, C1 Racing in the Press, Other

A Driver’s Review – 25th May 2018

Citroen C1 Racing: A Driver’s Review

15TH MAY 2018

Whilst Le Mans 24hr is a fantastic event with an understandably huge and fanatical following, the cost to buy, enter and run a competitive racing car is very high. For drivers who are new to the racing scene, or experienced racers who want a low-cost alternative, the C1 Racing Club has quickly gained a reputation for providing extremely fun yet competitive endurance racing on a budget.

Scott Parkes, Evans Halshaw Citroen Regional Director, is part of the GMP Developments with QSP Motorsport C1 Racing Team, and we caught up with him to find out more about Citroen C1 endurance racing from a driver’s perspective.

What drew you to C1 Racing?

C1 racing is a unique proposition for UK motorsport, it offers the lowest price endurance racing in the UK and with over 50 cars on the grid it is the closest most competitive series outside of Touring cars.

How many races have you completed?

This weekend (Rockingham 3hr, May 12-13 2018) was the team’s first outing in C1 Racing but we have 2-3 cars out at Snetterton 3hr, Rockingham 24hr, Croft 4hr and then the season finale at Spa in Belgium for the international 24hr.

How much does it really cost to buy, enter and run a Citroen C1 racing car?

It is costing us on average £4,000 per car to build and entry fees are between £1,500-£3,000 dependent on the circuit and whether it’s a 3, 4 or 24-hour race. Each race we use between 3 and 8 sets of tyres (which are £150 per set) and we use over £300 of fuel.

The C1 isn’t the most powerful car in the world, is it frustrating not having more power?

On a general track day, the power can be frustrating when you have Aston Martins out with you, but when it’s just the C1 racing it’s fine and the cars drive and handle great.

Have you done any other forms of racing, and how does C1 racing compare?

As a family we have raced for over 15 years now. Myself personally, I’ve held my race licence for 3 years, I have raced in the Blue Oval Sports Saloon Championship and the Classic Touring Car Series. Our previous racing experiences were 15-minute sprint races so completely different to C1 endurance, as with sprint races you have to fight from lap 1 whereas in endurance racing you have to ‘finish first to finish first’.

If you could race any car what would it be?

I would love to try BTCC. As a tin-top racer, it’s the pinnacle of motorsport.

Favourite thing about C1 Racing?

It has to be the great team spirit in the pit lane. With over 350 drivers at Rockingham this weekend it was like a huge family party, everyone willing to help everyone. Also, the cost is great!

Any future racing plans?

We plan to continue in C1s helping the club grow and we would like 5 cars out next year. Beyond that, we don’t know as we always need good sponsors to create the budgets.

How have Quickco/QSP supported your C1 racing endeavours?

QSP (Quality Sourced Parts) have been great. They have supplied us with all the initial parts required for 3 cars, from oil and filters to discs and pads they have been amazing and without their support we would not have been able to get out on track this year.

After an impressive P5 finish (as well as cars in P25 and P29) at Rockingham 3hr everyone at Evans Halshaw would like to wish Scott and the team best of luck for the rest of the season.

Want to get involved? Check out the C1 Racing Club on Facebook.

15/05/2018

24 hours, Spa, 2017, C1 Racing in the Press, Race, Other

iNews – Racing a Citroen C1 at Spa? 9th Nov 2017

Racing a Citroën C1 at Spa? Yes, really!

Night racing in the most unlikely car on the market Back in the day, Citroën 2CV racing series was tremendously popular, providing cheap, fun motorsport for the masses. Now we have its successor – the Citroën C1 Racing Club, which caters for the French brand’s three-door city car. It doesn’t sound especially exciting, but here’s the thing; we sent a colleague to take part in a race at the legendary Spa Francorchamps circuit in Belgium, and he reported that it was one of the very best drives he’d had in 20 years of writing about cars. So, what does Citroën C1 racing entail? Well for a start, modifications are restricted. Most interior components still have to be present and correct, such as the dash, stereo and even the window winders. You can remove carpets and the like, however. Mechanically, the engine exhaust and intake must be factory spec, while the suspension set-up can be only moderately tuned. Essentially, you have 68bhp to play with, fed to the front wheels via the five-speed transmission. Wheelspin is unlikely to be an issue.

The lure of the Citroën C1 series has already attracted more than 80 teams – which just goes to show that motorsport is the affordable preserve of everyman, not merely for the well heeled. Next year’s big event will be a 24-hour race at the UK’s Rockingham speedway, which will see 70 C1s on the grid. To find out just how it will feel, our man Matt Prior flew to Spa to take part in a 24-hour race in which C1s made up about half of the 108-car grid. He discovered that racing the tiny French city car is anything but dull – even if it does a lap in twice the time it takes in a Formula One car. He reported: “It doesn’t matter how thrilling a road car is, racing at Spa in the dark, even with 68bhp, is absolutely brilliant. It may not be very quick, but turning into Eau Rouge at 90mph in the dark and the rain, with wipers smearing water relatively ineffectively across oil and filth, only a few inches from another car, it all felt real enough to me.”

He continued: “Besides, the suspension changes mean that there’s some chassis adjustability, too. The steering remains pretty uncommunicative, the brakes are superb, the gearshift light and the engine revvy. And even on a big, senior circuit, it’s great fun. In places at Spa you have to take a deep breath before turning in flat, places where you have to brake heavily, and places where your foot is pressed so hard to the floor that you emerge from a stint with an aching right calf.” The diminutive C1 racer clearly punches well above its weight on a huge circuit such as Spa – just imagine what fun it will be on smaller tracks. Roll on Rockingham 2018.

09/11/2017

Spa, 2017, Other

C1 Racing at Spa hits the headlines

Matt Prior reports on his time in car 322 at Spa on PistonHeads website here.

01/11/2017

24 hours, 2017, C1 Racing in the Press, Other

Aftermarket Magazine – Absolute Alignment sponsorship 27th Jan 2017

27/01/2017

24 hours, Spa, 2017, C1 Racing in the Press, Other

Bridge to Gantry – Spa 24 hour 2016 – 18th October 2016

WE JUST BUILT A 68HP CITROËN RACECAR AND DROVE IT FOR 24-HOURS AT SPA FRANCORCHAMPS…

18TH OCTOBER 2016 DALE LOMAS

…and it was AWESOME.

So what do you want to know first? Let’s divide it up for ease of reading:

20161015-photo-15-10-2016-12-28-35 — 2CV racing may have started as a ‘budget’ series, but it’s not any more…

How, what and why Citroën C1 racing?

Many years ago, when the earth was still cooling, and dinosaurs didn’t even need an FIA-approved suit to get in a racing car, somebody started a budget racing series for the Citroën 2CV.

It was the automotive equivalent of Honda C90 scooter racing. All the fun of real racing, but with a budget of pennies on the pound.

Nowadays a clean 2CV, good enough to turn into a racing car, doesn’t sell for hundreds, it sells for thousands. Then comes the knowledge, the “black art” of making one go fast. And the modifications aren’t cheap either…

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Enter the C1. It’s a super-light, 1-litre econobox built as a 3-way project by Toyota, Citroën and Peugeot. Crucially, it appears that Toyota did most of the real engineering, and the other guys just made some lights and bumpers. It’s cheap, cheerful and fun. All the reliability of the Toyota Aygo, but the C1 has a badge more suitable for joining a 2CV race full of French-car-fanciers. The “movement” started this summer when the British 2CV club allowed Meyrick Cox (a prolific 2CV racer, who owns some of the fastest 2CVs ever built) to bring two C1s to the 24-hour of Anglesey.

One month later, last weekend at Spa Francorchamps, there were SIX on the grid…

How do you build a 24-hour C1 endurance racer?

The concept is simple, some of the draft BARC Citroën C1 regs are here if you want to read them in full. Everything is standard, except:

Normal racecar safety equipment (cage, seat, harnesses, cut-offs, extinguisher, etc…)
Club-supplied front control arms and longer driveshafts for -3º camber and some more caster on the front axle.
Club-approved GAZ suspension kit
Control tyres (Nankang AS-1 in 155-55-14 or 155-65-14)
Brake pads are free (but OEM really work fine)
Strut braces are also free (we ran without)
Two 40w LED lamps from Masai Omega.
Spacing of the rear axle to get more negative camber
A very noisy and rattly fuel-tank guard that protects the stock plastic tank.

You can buy all the parts easily enough, although followers of the BTG Facebook page will notice there was a shortage of those Nankangs in the weeks approaching Spa!

Total cost for all the club and safety parts is a little more than €3000. Yes, that’s more than the cost of a good C1, but it’s worth it.

Just remember, if your car is faster, if the club suspects foul play, you’ll be given a stock motor from the van and asked to change it. #TrueStory #NoCheating!

This was a team effort. We bought the car four-ways, and we built it at Racers-Retreat Nürburg and it took about a week of hard graft, and 12-to-18 hour days from 2-4 people. Ali from RR took the lead. Kjetil helped, but his role was now more of a driver…!

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Black Fish did the sticker work, resurrecting memories of the C2 R2 factory rally car, but with more RR and BTG branding. They even got the car sprayed in Nanolex ceramic coating. Finally, Inne and Michael even volunteered to join us at Spa and offer their tents and gas-ring cooking skills!

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The plates that mount the bolt-in rollcage were welded in by SME. We bought over €2000 of regular OEM/Pattern spare parts from ProfiParts too. Because we’re paranoid, and our donor car had 130,000kms on the clock! Our friends and family helped us pick up parts from all over Europe so that we could hit the deadline of Thursday night.

That’s because practice at for the big race started at 0900 on Friday…

WELCOME TO SPA-FRANCORCHAMPS!

(answering the question, “is it fun?”)

Spa 24hr 2cv — Photo by Dennis Noten & Ellen Janssens

Citroën’s quirky little 2CV is an ‘anti-establishment’ classic car. It’s so laughably terrible, it’s actually awesome. And the Spa 24-hour isn’t just a chance for 60-plus 2CVs from all over Europe to race, it’s a chance for all the deux-chevaux fans to converge, drive a lap themselves, and sell 3-bolt wheels to each other…

Into this mix, we arrived with our little three cylinder, 4-bolt-wheel, interloper…

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Because we arrived a little bit late (something to do with finishing the car at 1am on Friday morning) we only had 3 testing sessions available to us. Though truthfully, we hadn’t actually finished yet…

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Yes, that’s us aligning the car one more time after speaking to the other teams. All SIX other C1s were sharing one garage, and the sense of teamwork was amazing. Although we all wanted to win our class, we also wanted to get our C1s as far up the 73 car grid as possible.

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Match Racing from Holland were obviously going to be the guys to beat. Fielding two of their own cars, plus Meyrick’s own personal beast (pictured on the right above) they had experience of testing and racing the C1 already. Decent guys, they always helped the rest of us. At times it felt like I was getting in the way, I had so many questions, but they always smiled and helped.

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Our first laps of practice were simply incredible. For the first minute I wondered if the car was actually broken. The steering was so loose, the back just utterly lethal. The rear steps out of line constantly unless you’re full gas and steering nicely. The Gaz suspension didn’t work any miracles, but that’s not surprising. And it wasn’t too bad, because all had a handle on it within a couple of laps.

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The car was slow, but not boring. Not at all. We’d opted for the ‘safe’ standard rear axle alignment, with a little bit of toe-in. Up front we had a little toe-out to promote quicker turn in. Meyrick’s car was running with toe-out both front and back. The biggest surprise was the tyres…

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We’d noticed with apprehension that most teams had ‘shaved’ their Nankang AS1s. The reduced height of the tread blocks was going to give more grip and better feel, and halfway down the blocks a lot of the ‘cosmetic’ cuts disappear, meaning you’ve got more rubber on the ground.

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You can see below, the 2nd tread bar from the top is solid when they’re shaved.

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But as the day wore on, it got wetter and wetter. Until the evening qualifying session was full wet. All thoughts of ‘shaved rubber’ faded away…

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Like most teams our ABS refused to work, which made braking interesting. And braking in the wet very interesting indeed.

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The night before the race, we all double-checked our lights, and made sure the cars were in tip-top condition.We were lucky, we didn’t have that much to do. Thanks to the RR prep work, and SME’s welding, our car had totally aced the Belgian scrutineering.

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Match racing found themselves doing an engine swap after their drivers didn’t understand that a battery light = no charging = no auxiliary belt = no water pump. Ouch.

But that’s NOTHING compared to the living nightmare that enveloped the stripy Mission Motorsport machine….

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Mission Motorsport’s self-built car had failed scrutineering. The cage wasn’t up to standard, and had to be stripped out and re-welded because the sandwich plates for the rear of cage had been fitted the same side as the cage. As if that wasn’t bad enough, their fire extinguisher then went off, which left the guys looking for a new bottle at 1am…. we couldn’t really help, so we went to bed at La Source (and I don’t mean the hotel),

RACE DAY

We didn’t employ any great strategy in picking our starting driver, just random chance.

So it was Kai who was to make the start, and with the weather still crappy, we gave him and Kjetil (stint 2) the lion’s share of the wet qualifying. I was gutted to be missing the experience of driving our 3-cylinder go-kart in the wet, but the boys needed it more than me.

20161015-photo-15-10-2016-09-36-42 — Ali was VERY happy to send the C1 out into the qualifying session

Qualification ended without incident (for us) and we were thrilled to finally line-up on the start line. Only 10 days earlier this little Citroën had been a single-owner-from-new commuter box. Now it was about to become a racing car, at one of the world’s greatest F1 tracks.

After the world’s most confusing driver’s briefing the night before (held in Dutch, French and something that might have been English) we felt like we knew what was happening. First the 2CV owners were having their demo laps…

And then we were going to be making a formation lap, followed by a standing start. This seemed a very odd idea to us: the cars at the front would be launching at the heights of Kemel from a standing start. The cars at the back would be hitting it at full speed.

_v3a4341 — Photo by Dennis Noten & Ellen Janssens

Obviously somebody else thought about this too. Because the race started from a rolling start. So much for briefings!

a-2 — Photo by Dennis Noten & Ellen Janssens

Kai only had one mission; no laptimes, no heroics, just get us through the first couple of hours in one piece. That’s just what he did, starting lap 1 on P44 of 73 and bringing us to pit lane in P31!

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Amazingly, Kai had managed a staggering 38 laps of the Spa circuit before our nerve broke and we pitted him anyway. At which point our little car swallowed exactly 34.5 litres of fuel.

20161015-photo-15-10-2016-17-49-19 — Michael at the front, and two drivers at the back. Drivers were pitcrew in our team!

What was interesting was that our C1 has a 35-litre tank as standard. And after nearly 2.5 hours of running, we still had two bars on the fuel indicator! Every stop we were checking oil levels too, our 135,000km engine was drinking a little bit everytime. But as Kjetil remarked, our expensive 300V Motul 15/50w oil was so unworried by the temperatures of the little Toyota motor that it was like clear honey on the dip stick. Impossible to see. This would come back to haunt us later…

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Next in the car was Kjetil, finally the other side of the pitwall, though rules prevented us from using radios. We wished him luck and sent him out for 2.5 hours behind the wheel.

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I took the twilight shift, well into the dark. Despite Kjetil’s handy laptimes, we’d slipped down a little to P36. And don’t forget, we’re on the same 4 tyres that we started Friday’s practice session on. As we drove them more and more, they only got faster! I was happy to play with gear choices and find the smoothest way to to the fastest lap and picking our way down to P32 at the same time. Then Johan jumped in after me, driving deep into the evening…

…and deep into the side of an errant classic 2CV that closed the door over Eau Rouge!

OOPS! Both cars escaped with only light damage, but we got docked a lap automatically. 2CV club rules are that if a faster car hits a slower car, it’s the faster car’s fault. That’s a rule I like. So fair enough.

After Johan was out, it was Ali into the seat and he’d be upset if I didn’t mention that he broke us into the 3m43s bracket.

Though to be honest, his stint wasn’t entirely without incident either… when a red ‘oil pressure light’ illuminated! At first he thought it might be the red brake fluid light (which had been flickering for a few hours despite the resevoir being 75% full).

When he realised it was the oil pressure light, he brought the car gently home and we put 2.5 litres of our precious 300V in the motor.

We looked at each other, we accepted that the motor was probably dead. But we didn’t have a spare. Oh well…

After that, it was the dead of the night, and somehow we were 12 hours through the race. How much longer could we last?

We swapped the tyres from back to front, and then put 2 new tyres on the back. Kai jumped in next, then Kjetil.

These tyres had been driven over 12 hours

We went from P32 to P23 at best. Back in the pits, we helped the other Mission Motorsport car after it crashed the second time. We finally got to use our big red roll of Gaffa tape!

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Before long, I was in the car again. The boys did a very quick pad change, with no special asbestos gloves. And it was still dark…

I was tired, I hadn’t slept. I kept my self awake by filming a little explanation of what we were doing. The hardest hours were just before dawn though. My concentration was lacking, when all of a sudden, I saw the P3 car ahead. Yes, a chance to unlap us and a target to chase… 45 minutes later (!) I was close enough to turn on the camera again!

But I couldn’t stay ahead at first, which gave me the chance to really try and better my performance…

This three-way C1-class Battle Royale was the result! As you can see, the car isn’t easy to corner fast. There’s fast, and there’s fast. Sending it to the apex with the minimum of fuss and squeal was hard.

At the next pitstop we were out of 300V, and we managed to scrounge some supermarket-grade 10-40w oil instead, happy and amazed. that the little 3-pot was still buzzing away. Johan then got in, went fast, and didn’t hit a single 2CV. And it seemed odd, but somehow it was nearly lunchtime and we were stuffing Ali into the car for the final stint!

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We were biting our nails, and poor Alister had the weight of 22.5 hours of racing on his shoulders as he went out into the pack. We were way too far behind to scoop 3rd place in class, five laps ahead of us.

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But we needn’t have worried. While at the front Meyrick’s “Team Rent Boys” car held off a last minute surge from the first Match Racing car, our P4 was in the bag. And we finally moved into p23 overall.

The numbers

P33 out of 73 total
P4 out of 6 in class
333 laps completed
3m39.6 best lap (class best was 3m37.1!)
6 tyres driven all race.
2 tyres worn out ‘dead’
2 lightly conditioned tyres, ready for another start and 6-8 hours.
One pad change (using OEM €26 Textar brand pads) and actually, we could have got away with no pad change in hindsight!
Approximately 320 litres of fuel burnt
10 litres of oil burnt

EPILOGUE

This was, without a doubt, some of the best and most fun grassroots racing we’ve ever done. We’ve already been invited to a 1000km race in Anglesey, and we’re planning the next season. If you want to build your own C1 racer and join us, start looking for your donor car now!

The club, which we’re still forming right now, is ordering more cages and more suspension kits, so we’ll be ready to help convert your car. Get your race license ordered and prepare for some epic events in 2017!

WE COULDN’T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOU:

Markus and Ali at Racers Retreat for finding time and space to build our car and build our pits • Inne and Michael at StickerDump/Black Fish Graphics for designing and applying our vinyls AND THEN cancelling a show attendance instead to cook us bacon and egg sandwiches and become our pitcrew! • Nanolex for their amazing ceramic coating, which was like putting a Tiffany’s necklace on a pig • Tom Westendorp for delivering our second batch of tyres • My friends who helped us with this bad idea • Meyrick for sorting our paperwork and ‘enabling’ our bad behaviour

18/10/2016

Jalopnik – Dan Trent – 14th November 2018

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