Goodwood race report

Last weekend saw our first race of the season and the very first outing for our new car "Projectile". The car was only just ready and still has a lot of finishing to be done (including some paint!).

Tash and Ellie Pennick  (aka Crash and Panic) prepare Poppy for her first drive

Good luck Poppy, chocks away!

Nikhil prepares to push off from the Grid.

The day didn't get of to the best start, as during the first race we quickly realized that the batteries weren't fully charged for year 9's Darkside of the Plume forcing and early retirement from the race. Projectile's race went better but from the telemetry we could see that we were in much too high a gear causing us to retire near the end of the race in an attempt not to damage out batteries too severely!

With Darkside consigned to the paddock for the second race, we quickly changed plans and having changed to a lower gear ratio, we decided to try and give as many of our new drivers a stint behind the wheel as possible.

So as the final flag fell, we managed 16th place out of 45 cars. Very promising considering that we did twice as many pit stops for driver changes as necessary AND it transpires we overcompensated on the gear ratio and went too low, this time effectively finishing with half a tank left!!! A gear ratio somewhere in the middle next time I think!

To top off a rapidly improving day, the team walked away with the Siemens trophy for best engineered car and second prize for best portfolio (for this very blog!!) YAY!

So onto the next race (July 5th) which will be a year 9 special at Ford's Dunton Technical Centre in Basildon.