We’ve now had a debrief meeting with Rockingham and are meeting BARC later this week to review how the 24hr weekend all went; we’ve also had some feedback from members on the weekend, although precious little. Thank you to those who have given us feedback, but surely more of you must have views on driving standards, admin, facilities and so on? Please – tell us what you think on how we can make the weekend better both on and off track?
Pembrey, and the trip down the M4 half way to the United States of America-land, is already looming large. We have a full grid for the 5hr race on the Saturday. BARC have also just made some track time available for us on the Sunday, so we took that like a shot – if you’ve made the pilgrimage all the way down the M4 to Pembrey, you might as well do two races rather than one; another 2hrs racing and 50 minutes qualifying for £200 is great value in anyone’s book.
Full details for the weekend are on the BARC website here:
Bear in mind that, although signing on and scrutineering starts bright and early on Saturday morning, we still have nearly 50 cars to get through, so expect it to take some time. Please present your car with all drivers in kit (with helmet and HANS), full of fuel, with its C1 Club passport and MoT and with the drilled bolts in the right place for the lock wires. You will be allowed a maximum of 2 weighs on the shiny new wireless scales; and if you aren’t sure about your car, please bring plenty of ballast with you, since the weight limit requires ballast in pretty much all cases.
As usual, in addition to our shiny new wireless scales, our trusty Breathalyser will be in action again. If you’re crew chief, pit lane crew or a driver wearing your HuTag, please remember that we have a zero tolerance for alcohol.
To cut down on race day admin we have re- programmed the HuTags with your club membership number; and rather than paying a £10 deposit and returning them, you will now purchase them from us for £10 at your first race (or when you join as a member). It will then be your responsibility to bring it to every race to have it fitted at Signing on. Without your tag you will not be able to get out onto the circuit. No more collecting, returning, deposits etc etc.
Driving standards remain in our focus, since there was still too much panel damage at Rocky. We will be testing some low-cost in car cameras at Pembrey, which we are likely to mandate in all cars when we are confident that we have a cost and reliability with which we are comfortable. We are likely to require all cars to have an operating camera at all times, with a penalty if its not working. Given how little in-car cameras cost now, we hope that you will all agree that this is a step worth taking to raise driving standards.
We are thrilled to announce that Scruffybear will be providing full coverage of the Pembrey weekend. Find him on www.scruffybear.com. We are working on the in-car cameras with Scruffy so that he can use the footage direct from the cars, to give full in-car coverage. Coverage will be on the C1 Racing channel on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW-ebEnSs-c0f7qJRA_-12g), BARC TV (www.barctv.net) and all the websites that covered the Rockingham 24hr weekend. Marvin Hall, our club photographer (https://www.facebook.com/mhpic/) will be there taking stills; and Peter Scherer writing it all up.
Rick, from www.smallcarsrus.co.uk will also be at Pembrey with an improved selection of spares and consumables based on what was needed at Le Rock. If there is anything specific that you’d like him to bring, please let him know. We will also have a number of everything that is available on the club shop; and will be bringing some of you recent orders along to the track with us.
Lastly, you may have heard about the exciting and thrilling new General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) that came into effect May 25, 2018. We are overjoyed about this and have been looking forward to it for years! It’s taken up virtually none of our time and has been so much more interesting than running a race series (Said no-one, ever!). To help comply with GDPR consent requirements, we need to share our Privacy Policy with you, so please read the page-turning exciting document here: https://c1racing.club/privacy-policy/
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 16th.
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 32nd by 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 18th, 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 14th, 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.
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpg00coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2018-05-30 18:37:562018-10-21 11:35:56Motors1 – Budget racing with a Le Mans Legend
24-hour racing in a Citroen C1: the most fun race on Earth?
On the weekend of the 24 Hours of Rockingham, we look back at the time our man competed in another day-long C1 race
A modest 68bhp and 75mph, but no less thrilling for it
Prior leads a convoy of unmodded C1s – but where are the 2CVs?
This weekend, a field of Citroën C1 racers will take to Rockingham for a 24-hour race. To mark the occasion, we look back at the time our man Matt Prior competed in the same series for a day-long race at Spa. Over to you Prior…
Have you ever heard a small-capacity two-stroke motorcycle haring along the road at top speed, gone to a window to look at it and realised that it’s not going very quickly at all?
It’s all ‘niiinnnnng’, and no go.
Welcome to the Citroën C1 Racing Club. Only without most of the ‘ning’.The C1 Racing Club was born because people used to race Citroën 2CVs in large numbers, but don’t quite so much any more. It used to be one of the cheapest forms of motorsport out there but these days even the newest 2CV is decades old and running and maintaining those cars is, by pastime standards, starting to become rather expensive.
So some of the people behind it thought they would put a C1 racing car together and see how that went. Sedately, is the answer. But also cheaply, so here we are.
The first-generation C1 is, as you’ll probably know, mechanically identical to the Peugeot 107 and Toyota Aygo, though only C1s make it into the club for now. There were 3dr or 5dr versions but the racers are 3drs and alterations between road car and race car are pretty limited to keep cost down and the playing field level.
In the technical regulations, the phrase ‘no modifications’ appears no less than 15 times. Every car has its interior stripped and safety equipment added. The dashboard has to remain in place, with a working radio, to prove the wiring loom is standard, and the handbrake is still there, because every car must have an MOT. The engine, gearbox, exhaust, glass and even the window winders (manual or electric) have to stay as was. The minimum weight limit, including driver, is 910kg. Most cars carry ballast to bring them up to the limit.
Power is – drum roll – a heady 68bhp, delivered to the front wheels through a five-speed manual gearbox whose fifth gear I suspect you’d never see on a race track.
You can’t change a thing on the transmission, either.
There are, though, a couple of changes to the suspension. You can shim the rear to adjust the toe angle (dead straight is best, clubbers find), fit strut braces if you like, and mount club-supplied lower front suspension arms, to adjust camber and keep more rubber on the road.
That rubber, mind, is the Nankang AS1, because the club tried a few different tyres and decided that these ones delivered the best balance. And, crucially, not very much grip. They’re also quite cheap.
Does all this sound silly to you? Same here, but it has obviously struck a chord. The club’s first races were this year but already there are more than 80 cars complete or in-build. And I think that’s because, all in, you could be looking at having a car built, race ready, for around £3000. It’s so popular that the club recently announced it would hold a 24-hour race at Rockingham in May. Within a week, it was so oversubscribed that it had to announce it was holding another one in August.
There’s also another 24-hour race, at Spa-Francorchamps where no fewer than 108 cars raced – half of them 2CVs, or curious derivatives thereof, and the other half C1s. Remarkably, they all fitted on the same circuit.
This is, I suspect, because the speed differentials aren’t that big. In ‘proper’ GT racing, you might have LMP1 cars and GTE cars on the same track with massively different closing speeds. With C1s and 2CVs (and some weird developed 2CV racers with BMW bike engines and the odd classic Mini), everybody’s broadly… slow.
How slow? A Formula 1 car will lap Spa in 1min 46sec, at an average speed of 147mph. A C1 cannot even dream of 147mph, so wants almost two minutes extra to complete a lap. So there is time to think about what you’re catching, or what is catching you, and that makes 108 cars fit into 4.3 miles quite easily. Besides, an average of 75mph over a lap doesn’t sound so bad, does it? It sounds, dare I say it, exciting. It is.
It doesn’t matter if it’s quite sedate. Racing at Spa, in the dark, even with only 68bhp, is utterly, utterly brilliant. My first ‘stint’ was two hours from dusk and it was, I kid you not, one of the best drives I’ve ever had in my life.
How’s the car? Not fast, by proper racing car standards, but turning into Eau Rouge, in the dark, in the rain, at 4am, with wipers smearing 12 hours of grit and grime and oil and filth across the windscreen, at 90mph, only a few inches from another car, felt quite senior to me.
The suspension changes make the C1 really adjustable too. It’s not exactly sharp on turn in, but it hangs on gamely and the rear is only a lift of throttle from becoming quite active. The steering is light and uncommunicative, but the brakes – light pedal aside – are phenomenal, the gearshift easy and the engine revvy. It’s amazing fun.
There are places, even at Spa, even in the dry, where you have to take a small breath before turning in flat. And there are places – quite a few of them – where your right foot feels like you’re trying to trap a lost expenses receipt to the floor in a high wind.
Anyway, I shan’t bore you with full details of how my teammates and I fared, except to say that I didn’t break the car and we finished mid-order, it was the friendliest racing grid I have ever been a part of, and we all had an absolute ball. How much of a ball? Put it this way: I don’t always enjoy racing, but should you happen upon a Citroën C1 race, my intention is that you’ll find me in it.
How to make a race-ready C1
On top of a donor car, there are 12 things you need to fit to a C1 to send it racing, mostly to meet MSA regulations. They range from £7 bonnet straps and a £5 foglight bulb, to £650 for a rollcage. The club- supplied suspension and guard kit costs £620 and new springs, which lower the car by 35mm, are £110.
When it comes to the donor car, the club recommends you buy the lowest-mileage car available. Although you can pick them up as cheaply as £1200, and engines are generally robust, they recommend you walk away from any car with more than 100,000 miles. Consumables are resilient. We only used two sets of tyres in a 24-hour race and even that wasn’t essential. Uprated brake pads will last a twice-round-the-clock race and then a few other sprint races before a change becomes necessary.
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpg00coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2018-05-24 13:18:152018-10-21 13:28:32Autocar – 24-hour racing in a Citroen C1: the most fun race on Earth? – 24th May 2018
Well that was quite a weekend, wasn’t it? A lot of firsts – it was the Club’s first 24hr race; it was Rockingham’s first 24hr race; it was the first use of HuTags in the UK; it was many driver’s first race; it was many team’s first 24hr race; and it was our first race recorded on video throughout. The most important first, though, was that of our winners, RAW. Warmest congratulations to Robin Welsh and his team for a brilliantly-executed race with both first place and the fastest lap. Well done.
Second, we want to make a big apology to the winners in the 3hr race. The timetable for the Saturday was so tight that we didn’t have enough time for a podium ceremony and make sure that everything else happened on time. We are extremely sorry that we couldn’t fit it in; and appreciate that it is an important part of the meeting. All the 3hr trophies, caps etc. were in Club HQ ready to be presented. We are planning to do the presentation at Pembrey as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd teams have all entered and should be present. We are going to work out a way in which we can manage a podium ceremony for the 3hr race at the next Rocky.
Thank you to the volunteers who helped us. To Christine, Aubrey, Miranda, Ryan and Richard, to over 60 marshals, to the scrutineers, clerks and course staff, to the 20 people who volunteered to drive the safety car, all of whom gave up their weekends for no pay to make the weekend happen. We all tend to take this for granted, but having now been on the other side of the fence and seen really how hard they work, we owe a big debt of gratitude to them all.
We’d also like to thank all the drivers who started for the race. As we said at the drivers’ briefing, you can only lose an endurance race on the first corner, so thank you all for such a clean start to the race: that is the standard of driving which we expect in the series. Sadly, not everyone followed suit as the number of damaged cars at the end of the race testified. Endurance racing is different from sprints: its much more about how many laps can you do before the end than can you stop the person behind you getting past – especially if that person is leading the race and blue flags are being waved. A more sophisticated approach is needed: one driver commented to us that he had waved the lead car through and tried to stick to its bumper, so as to learn from it; and had gained 2 seconds a lap in so doing. Its not often one gets the chance to follow a Touring car driver in an identical car
We also learned a lot, as it was our first 24hr in the club; so here are some of the things that we know we need to sort out or change for Rocky II:
Briefing documents need to be better. We now know the list of questions that we got asked, so can deal with them in advance.
Scrutineering needs to start earlier. We are going to aim for starting at 1000 or 1100 hrs on the Friday morning, so as to give a lot more time for the scrutineers to do their job to the full. We have ordered some new scales, since we had some inconsistent results from our trusty old (clearly too old) ones. We will limit the number of weighs per car, since checking six times holds everyone else up (and the winner was 16kg over weight, so it can’t be that crucial). We need to give a clearer briefing on how cars must be presented to scrutineering (full of fuel, with passport and MoT, with all drivers in kit and with drilled posts / bolts for ballast).
The HuTag system needs refining. There are already more sensors on order, so that we have a larger sweet spot at the pit lane exit and at the exit of the drivers’ briefings. We need to add the drivers name to the timing screens as well; and remind everyone that we know the first driver from the nomination form, so you can just drive out onto the grid.
What else, though? Please let us know your thoughts on what went well, and what didn’t. How can we improve the weekend and make it run more smoothly? We will send out a SurveyMonkey survey shortly, but would welcome any ideas or suggestions directly as well, to board@c1racing.club
It was the first time that we have attempted to provide TV coverage of one of our races. Look out for the highlights programme on Motorsport TV, when we know the timing, we will let you know. We think that Scruffybear and his team did an amazing job as there were over 3,000 full views of the live stream. We are preparing short and a long highlights programmes, we’ll let you know when they are ready. We’d also like your thoughts on the in-car set up – we can do that free, but we can also offer a more sophisticated wireless-based set up at a cost: Scruffybear is working that out for us. Again, please let us know your views.
Two final points. Parc Fermé needs to be just that. One team was disqualified because someone, who had lent the lead to them, cut the ballast sealing tags and removed their ballast in Parc Fermé. We have every confidence that it was an innocent mistake, but BARC had no alternative. Please, even if Parc Fermé is a little less Fermé than usual, respect the conditions and do not touch the cars.
There was one moment that made the race for us and absolutely defines the spirit of 24hr racing. Car 318 and 402 had been battling over 8th place for quite a few hours towards the end of the race, until 402 ran out of fuel one corner before the pit lane entrance within the last hour of the race, so there was no circuit tow back. 318 slowed, and pushed 402 so that it could get back to the pits. Its on YouTube here:
As they said: “Everyone wants to finish a 24hr race”. James, you’re a legend, and I’d wear those two points on your licence proudly. I hope that we would all do the same
The spirit of motor racing well and truly lives on, as this clip of a Citroën C1 24 hour race shows
There’s probably nothing more painful than battling for more than 23 hours and 50 minutes, only for your car to stumble at the final hurdle. Just ask Toyota. But that’s what happened at this 24 hour Citroën C1 race at Rockingham in May.
According to the video’s description, car 318 and 402 were battling for eighth place before 402 took the position with 30 minutes remaining.
Then, it all went wrong as car No 402 slowed, having run out of fuel 10 minutes from the finish, and just a corner away from the entrance to the pitlane.
The driver from car 318, in a show of incredible sportsmanship, proceeds to help push his rival’s car into the pits.
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpg00coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2018-05-18 14:32:152018-10-21 14:34:34Motorsport – True sportsmanship – 18th May 2018
Only a few days to go now until Rocky, so we thought that a round up on admin and where to find things would be a good idea.
Firstly, a lot of you have been asking about where you can watch the race live. We have a number of live feeds that will cover the whole race, including our own YouTube Channel, the club website and on:
There will be further videos and articles on the race in Car Magazine and on their website; and on Motors1 website; and potentially a short program on the race on the main MotorsTV channel: we’ll post more details on that as soon as we have them.
Scruffybear Productions have been hard at work this week putting the cables in place and installing the rest of the equipment for the coverage. The drone will be up throughout the race; and we have cameras covering the pit lane and roving the track, as well as a number of static cameras. You should expect to have a camera lens pointing at you regularly; and the commentators putting a microphone in front of you just as you fall exhausted out of your car at the end of a stint; especially at night, when the track action is less effective. There will be in car cameras in a number of cars which we thought might be particularly entertaining.
Secondly, we are really pleased to announce that, as part of our partnership with Trade Team, Peugeot Citroen’s genuine-parts subsidiary, that TradeTeam are not only providing the winners hats for the entire season (which have just arrived and are gorgeous); but have also provided winners prizes for the whole season as well, including Spa. They will be on a team basis as follows:
1st place: £200 voucher
2nd place: £100 voucher
3rd place: £50 voucher
The vouchers can be redeemed against Citroen & Eurorepar parts including lubricants and Trade Team merchandise (including Jackets fleeces etc.) purchased from Trade Team Robins and Day parts in West London. As the saying goes, terms and conditions apply and will be printed on the vouchers.
Paddock access will require a pass for vehicles from Friday morning until Sunday evening; and these have now been sent out to teams. The paddock is going to be very busy, so the Club will be removing any vehicles that have not got a pass clearly displayed. Motorhomes should be parked at the back of the paddock, away from the garages: happily the C1 is quiet enough that the noise won’t keep you awake, but its safer back there; and we need all the space we can near the garages for the race cars, pit crew and equipment. The end of the paddock near Club HQ will be the area where you will find the trade stands, pop-up Citroen dealership; and one of the food areas. Again, please don’t park there, we’ll just move your vehicle to somewhere you won’t be able to find it.
Thank you to all those who have volunteered to drive the safety car. We have ended up with 20 people in the safety car over the weekend; the rota has now been published. Hopefully, there won’t be too much for them to do, but its been a big help to BARC for the weekend and a great way of getting more people involved in the race and on the circuit.
The supplementary regulations have been published for the weekend. Probably the most important is the 30 kph speed limit in the pit lane. This is deliberately low, so that we are able to use the pit lane next to the garages, rather than the remote (hot) pit lane. Its narrow; we will be using the Club’s speed gun all weekend; and there are suitably draconian penalties for those who break the limit. None of us want to see any one hurt; and if BARC do not feel comfortable with how we have behaved, we may end up not being able to use the nearer pit lane in the second Rockingham 24hr.
The Club breathalyzer will be in action at signing on and throughout the weekend; and we will be applying our usual zero tolerance approach to alcohol consumption for those driving, or running a team, in both races. At the test day in April, one person was caught and was not allowed to drive, so don’t spoil yours or anyone else’s weekend.
Driving standards are also very close to our heart. All four directors have completed the Driving Standards Observers course, which the MSA kindly ran for us. We are all recorded as DSOs and Judges of Fact for the weekend. This is a low-cost endurance series; and accident damage materially hikes costs. In a 24-hour weekend, whatever Senna said, all you can do by “going for a gap”, or trying to win on the first corner, is lose the race, and ruin someone else’s (including all your team mates). We will be out there watching; and we have TV coverage recording the entire race, so please remember that motor racing is a non-contact sport.
The timetable has been live for some time now, here’s a link in case you’ve lost it:
Unrelated to the 24hr, we are planning on a limited run of our rather dashing embroidered Club polo shirts. If you’re interested, let us know. We will put them up on the website after the 24hr, so that we can collect orders, colours and sizes and have them made up.
Lastly, we look forward to seeing you all there. We will be arriving on Thursday evening and setting up camp. Our mobile numbers will be on the wall in the Club HQ if you need us, but Club HQ will be manned throughout the 24hr. We can’t wait.
The first race of the season is nearly upon us, and it certainly feels like that at C1 Towers, where we are working feverishly to get everything ready for a great weekend at Rockingham. This newsletter will focus mostly on the upcoming 24hr and 3hr races. See the promo video above and also available on our website, facebook and youtube.
Citroen UK have provided us with a safety car; and in order to involve as many people as possible, we are asking for up to eight volunteers to drive the safety car for two-hour stints. Neither previous experience, nor a race licence is needed; all you would have to do is follow the instructions of the marshalls in the car with you. As usual, it’s going to be first-come, first-served. Please email meyrick@c1racing.club to volunteer.
BARC have now published the full weekend timetable, which can be found on: https://barc.blob.core.windows.net/barcnet/2018-hq08-rk-v1-e9ni8.pdf . We will not have access to the paddock until 1900hrs on Thursday night; and need to clear the paddock completely by 1000hrs Monday morning. Rockingham has very kindly agreed to open the Diner on Monday morning so you can have a bacon buttie to speed you on your way.
We are going to add a group photograph of all the C1 Race Cars at the weekend. This will take place immediately after the warm up for the 24hr race on the Saturday morning: please would the 3hr cars line up in the hot pitlane during the 24hr warm up; we will then guide all the 24hr cars to join them, rather than going back to the pits; and hopefully it will be as bright and sunny as on the test day for the photographs. We will take pictures with and without drivers, so we would be grateful if all drivers (both 3hr and 24hr) could be in their race suits with their helmets for the photo shoot. We will aim to clear all the cars from the hot pitlane by 1120hrs, so that it is clear again for the Pickup race, which starts at 1135hrs.
The paddock will be extremely busy for the weekend, not only with competitors cars, but also with the food arena and trade stands including: Citroen UK, TradeTeam and Evans Halshaw, the local Citroen dealer; Safety Devices; Nankang; SmallcarsRUs (who will bring a cornucopia of spares including engines, gearboxes, front headlights, rear lights, bonnets, wings, front and rear bumpers, door glass, doors, tailgates, starters, alternators, exhausts, cats, wheels and various nuts and bolts); and hopefully Demon Tweaks all coming for the weekend. If there is enough interest, we can also organize tyre changing facilities. Please email meyrick@c1racing.club if you would like tyre changing and let him know how many tyres you expect to need mounting / changing by Sunday 29th April.
Each 24hr car will be allocated two vehicle paddock passes and 16 access passes for team members. Drivers should park their cars in the outer paddock. If you are sharing a garage, please be considerate of the other team; and don’t, for example, grab all the parking spaces just behind the garage. The paddock police will not be accommodating and may remove passes from those being inconsiderate…
Club headquarters will be in garages 35 and 36 for the entire weekend, which is where breathalysing and signing-on will be; and where all drivers will need to collect their Hutags (£10 deposit each), which they will need to wear all weekend, and teams will need to collect their pitlane bibs (£40 deposit). The Clerk of the Course will be in Race Control, which is located on Level 2, Stairwell 6; which can be accessed from the paddock via the tunnel next to garage 36, there is a lift next to the Diner; although we hope none of you will be summoned to visit. There will be two drivers briefings, which will take in the Rockingham Welcome Centre at 0900hrs on Saturday morning. The first part will be for all drivers and team managers in both the 3hr and 24hr races; the second will be for those drivers that are starting both the 3hr and 24hr races and will follow immediately after the first briefing. Entrance to and exit from the briefings will be recorded by means of the Hutags, so there will be no getting out of attending the briefings. If a team manager does not attend, the team’s drivers will not be allowed on circuit; if a driver does not attend, they will not be allowed on circuit.
We will only be using the small pit lane directly in front of the garages for the whole weekend, there will be a pit lane speed limit of 30 kmh, which corresponds to a little under 4,000rpm in first gear, and will be rigorously enforced with the Club’s radar gun. First transgression will result in a one-lap penalty; second, five laps; a third immediate disqualification. All team members on the pit wall will have to wear a C1 Racing high visibility bib at all times, four of which will be available for each car. No pit wall shelters will be allowed, as it would hinder the visibility of teams further down the pit lane; nor may any pit boards be attached to the pit wall. LED pit boards are not allowed.
A brief reminder on car numbers: all 24hr cars must display reflective race numbers as required by Section Q 11.4 of the MSA Yearbook. Touring car style and high visibility race numbers are not permitted.
Finally, the 3hr teams will not have a pit allocation, unless their team is also running cars in the 24hr race. They will be based in the outer paddock, along with the Pickup truck teams; and will only be able to bring fuel, tyres and a working tool box to the pit lane. We suggest that the remaining 3hr teams pair up with a 24hr team, to be located in front of their garage. We would be very grateful if those 24hr teams would help out those 3hr teams with tools and by providing some space if possible.
Finally, please make sure that you have read the SSRs for the 24hr race, which will be published on the BARC website shortly, and any other bulletins that come out. All the Club directors have been published as DSOs and Judges of Fact for the event; and you will see us, especially at the first corner, sporting our identifying DSO bibs.
We will be arriving on the Thursday night and will be staying at Rockingham for the whole weekend, so please come and join us for a drink the night before – although bear in mind that the club breathalyzer will be in action again for drivers and team managers throughout the weekend. See you then.
Thank you all who made the Test Day at Rockingham such a success, although the glorious weather certainly didn’t hurt. We saw 57 cars out on circuit (which collectively made less noise than the single rather marvelous Aston Martin GT3 that was running in the other session); pretty good driving standards overall with only one material incident all day; and virtually all cars running in the final happy hour of open pit lane.
The new club breathalyser was in action at signing on, which will be a consistent theme of the season. One person failed the breath test and was not allowed to sign on or drive; everyone else sailed through with a zero-alcohol reading. Hopefully, with Caryl having processed a lot of membership issues and handed out a lot of membership cards, the signing on process will be quicker as the season progresses. Anybody that couldn’t collect their membership card will have it sent in the post by the 27th April.
At lunchtime, Marvin Hall managed to get some great photographs when we managed to get virtually all the cars at the circuit lined up three abreast in the hot pit lane for a group photo. We’ve already posted one, but if you’ve got any good photos of the group shot, please add them. We thought that they all looked great together. We will be trying to repeat the exercise at the 24hr weekend when there should be 91 cars there!
Philip and Meyrick spent a lot of the day hard at work in the scrutineering bay helping teams weigh their cars, so as to be able to get the ballast right; and check the cars over for eligibility, so that we won’t have any surprises at the 24hr weekend. Looks like we have a bit of work to do on the club ramps, which weren’t man enough for the job; although its nothing that a little wooden reinforcement won’t cure.
Scruffybear Pictures were also at Rockingham the whole day to plan camera locations and their other logistics; and to take some footage with their drone and roving cameras in order to make a short promotional clip for Motors TV. That should be out during next week. We are also able to offer customized edits of the footage for your team, in addition to the TV feed; so if you would like to have a full HD program concentrating on your car, please let us know and we can work out pricing for you. It would probably mean that you would get a live in-car camera in your car as well.
TSL joined us as well; and you may have seen them trialing the new driver transponder system at the end of the pit lane. That trial went very well; and the system will be used at all our races this season. This removes the need for the team to fill in any driver forms and materially reduces the administrative burden on teams.
The Touring Car boys were out in force today, including their leader, Alan Gow in his track return; but we also had Rob Austin, Josh Cook and Anthony Reid out on circuit. The team from Rockingham Circuit was also out in their mostly liveried car, although we didn’t manage to coax Peter Hardman into the car – guess he already knows where the circuit goes. We also had Vicky Parrott from MotorsTV, Mark Walton from Car Magazine, Adrian Mossop’s and Ian Sedgwick’s Citroen UK teams testing with us. Rumour has it that none of the Touring Car drivers set the fastest time of the day, which was a 1.52.
We hope that you all enjoyed the hog roast – it all disappeared, so that is probably an answer in itself!
Looking forward to the 24hr and 3hr races on the weekend of 11-13th, which is going to be even busier, with double the number of cars and teams present. Paddock space is going to be at a premium, and we will need to restrict the number of cars that each team keeps in the paddock during the race, so that there is enough space behind the pits for those that are really necessary. Non-essential cars will have plenty of secure parking in the outer paddock.
The practice day on the Friday will follow much the same routine as you saw at today’s test day. Signing on will be a long and time-consuming process if you have not fully completed your entry forms before you arrive. Entry forms for both the 3hr and 24hr races are available online. They will remain open until midnight on 29th April after which time no changes will be possible. So make sure that your club membership is valid and all driver details are correct in the next few days. If you need to renew your club membership, you will have been sent an email. Please follow the link in the email to renew the membership – it can’t be done by adding your credit card details into the ‘My Details’ form.
We will also be issuing all drivers with a Hutag for a £10 deposit, which you will need to wear all weekend; and then return at the end of the weekend. All drivers, pit wall crew and team managers will be breathalysed each day; with further spot checks during each day.
Scrutineering. Please remember that you need to come with a full fuel tank, so that we can see fuel in the filler spout. This is because when you are weighed, we can then deduct 28.5kg of fuel from the total, so that you can ballast the car to 910kg with the lightest driver. If the tank is half (or whatever) full, we cannot do so. We will then lock wire and seal the ballast in place, and that seal has to remain in place for the whole weekend.
We will also be fitting OBD reader / recorders to cars throughout the weekend, so that we can download and check your car’s engine, electronic and ECU behaviour. We have 10 of these rather trick little devices and will be fitting them at the end of the pit lane; and removing them at the beginning of the pit lane, so as to prevent any tampering.
The pit lane will not operate as it did on the test day. The entire hot pit lane (ie the wider section that is further from the garages) will be closed throughout both races; and we will only be using the cold pit lane nearest to the garages. All the cut-throughs will be closed and a 30 kph speed limit will apply to the entire cold pit lane. The Club has a radar gun, which will be in operation throughout the race: get caught speeding, and you will lose a lap. The pit wall will remain as it was for the test day.
The C1 Racing Team
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/447626a5-61b2-4e3e-ae4c-450729385313.jpg9461202coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2018-04-23 16:49:122018-10-21 00:15:21Rockingham I 24hr
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpg00coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2018-04-17 14:00:362018-10-21 00:16:04Alan Gow to make racing comeback in C1 Challenge 17th April 2018
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.
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpg00coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2017-11-09 14:41:382018-10-21 14:59:29iNews – Racing a Citroen C1 at Spa? 9th Nov 2017
How driving through the night opened Matt P’s eyes to the true potential of Citroen’s citycar
Driving coach Rob Wilson talks about racing “becoming a craft” when you get good at it. Once you understand the physics of driving, what will make a car fast and what won’t, you can work on this craft, patiently, to go quicker.Which is fine if, like Wilson, you’re a driver who’s competed in Nascar, at Le Mans or around Daytona, or you’re one of the drivers – up to and including those in F1 – who have called on his training. What happens in microseconds can become a craft if you’re equipped to deal with it.
And if you’re not quite up to speed? Welcome to the Citroen C1 Racing Club.
The C1 Racing Club was born, if not out of frustration with, then as a result of, the modern limitations of Citroen 2CV racing. It used to be one of the cheapest forms of motorsport around but even the newest 2CV is decades old these days, and running and maintaining a race example is getting – by hobby standards, if not by those of motor racing – expensive. So a few devotees decided they’d put a C1 together instead and see how it went as a racing car. Slowly, was the answer. But cheaply. So here we are.
You’ll know the C1. Or you’ll have seen it. Mechanically identical to the Peugoet 107 and Toyota Aygo (though the club only allows Citroens in for now), it’s a city car, built from 2005 onwards, which could be had with three or five doors. The Club uses the 3dr version and alterations to turn it into a bona fide race car are limited. The phrase “no modifications” features in the standard regulations no less than 15 times.
Sure, every car can be stripped of its interior trim and carpets, but mostly only so that safety equipment can be fitted. The dashboard, including a working radio and handbrake, must be retained. The wiring loom, engine, exhaust, gearbox, glass and even window winders have to be as standard, and each car must be MOT’d. There’s a minimum driver-aboard weight limit of 910kg, which most drivers will add ballast to get up to. Power, wait for it – and you’ll have to – is 68hp, delivered to the front wheels via a five-speed gearbox, the fifth gear of which you’ll probably never need on a race track. No, you can’t modify the engine. No, you can’t mod the intake. No, you can’t remove the catalyst.
What you can – and will – do, is make a few changes to the suspension, shimming the rear to adjust toe angle, fitting strut braces if you like, and adding a club-supplied lower front wishbone, which puts more rubber to the road; although again, the terms are relative.
Does it all sound suitably daft? It might, but the idea has struck an uncanny chord. The Club had its first races this year, and already there are more than 80 cars completed or in-build. Because, all-in, you could be looking at having a fully-prepped racing car for under £3,000. The Club recently announced a 24-hour race at Rockingham next May. A week later, the grid was full, after 70 cars had signed up.
Sounds like a lot, does it not, 70 cars around Rockingham? It probably is, but then, it is manageable. And I know this because last week I climbed into a racing C1 at Spa Francorchamps, alongside 107 other cars – around half of them 2CVs or curious derivatives thereof, another half or so C1s, and a couple of old Minis – and we all fitted. For 24 hours.
This remarkable feat is, I suspect, because the speed differentials are not that huge. Unlike classic endurance racing, where an LMP1 car may well be on circuit with GTE cars, or Britcar where a Ferrari F430 might be on track with a Volkswagen Beetle, the C1 and its ilk are all similarly, well, how to put it … slow. An F1 car will lap Spa in around 1m 46s, at an average speed of 147mph. A C1 can only dream of 147mph, and wants almost two minutes more to complete a lap. An average of 75mph, then, would have a C1 writing postcards home. So there is time to think about what you’re catching, or what is catching you, and that makes 108 cars fit into 4.3 miles quite easily.
And, now I read it again, an average of 75mph over a lap doesn’t sound so bad, does it? It sounds, dare I say it, exciting. Dear reader, it is.
It doesn’t matter how thrilling a road car is, racing at Spa in the dark, even with 68hp, is absolutely brilliant. At one point I was talking to two blokes, who between them have three Porsche Carrera GTs, and they thought it was pretty exciting too. I drove for two hours from dusk and it was – and I kid you not, here – one of the very best drives I’ve ever had in 20 years of writing about cars. What is the car like? It may not be very quick, but turning in to Eau Rouge at 90mph in the dark and the rain, with wipers smearing water relatively ineffectively across windscreen oil and filth, only a few inches from another car, it all felt real enough to me. Besides, the suspension changes mean that there’s some chassis adjustability to the C1, 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. There are places at Spa where you have to take a deep breath before turning in flat, places where you have to brake heavily, and places where – obviously – your foot is pressed so hard to the floor that you emerge from a stint with an aching right calf.
I shan’t bore you with how I got on, suffice it to say we finished mid-class and I didn’t put a dent on it, which I always count as a decent day’s work. But two things stand out for me: one, is that Rob Wilson was right, and that driving is a craft – you have a lot of time to consider how right or otherwise you’re getting it behind the wheel of a C1. The other is just how much fun this unlikely racing car is, to the extent that my old VW Baja Beetle will shortly be for sale, and that I intend to find myself part of a very large C1 racing grid next year.
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpg00coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2017-10-31 11:00:382018-10-21 23:34:21Pistonheads – Matt Prior – Racing a Citroen C1 at Spa
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpg00coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2016-12-21 14:13:422018-10-21 14:16:56Evo Magazine – The next small thing – Issue 229 Dec 2016
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…
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…
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…!
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!
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?”)
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…
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…
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
You can see below, the 2nd tread bar from the top is solid when they’re shaved.
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…
Like most teams our ABS refused to work, which made braking interesting. And braking in the wet very interesting indeed.
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.
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….
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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…
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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.
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
https://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpg00coxmhttps://c1racing.club/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Club_Logo_Red_Black_300x137-300x137.jpgcoxm2016-10-18 13:48:002018-10-21 13:52:26Bridge to Gantry – Spa 24 hour 2016 – 18th October 2016
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