HRDC Finale Silverstone Race Report 2024

The 20th of October marked the final round in OUMF’s 14th year racing in the HRDC. Our Riley One Point Five competing in the ‘Jack Sears Trophy’ and the Austin Healey Seabring Sprite in the ‘Dunlop Allstars’. This event would be impossible without the support of the HRDC’s Race Director, Julius Thurgood; him being a key player into letting us race at some of the UK’s finest circuits. This weekend to many of the new freshers, including myself would be their debut race weekend, meaning Ding had his work cut out to pick out a team with the 92+ different members who had joined the club the month prior. The week of Silverstone a list was organized, being a team of 9 previous members to be supported by 10 freshers to ensure the weekend would run as smooth as possible, along with giving the opportunity to see how the freshers would fit in the team and compare to many professional race teams there that weekend.

The Team and cars in the Silverstone pits

Saturday starts with the final tweaks and spanner checking of both cars, ensuring that they were race ready and will pass scrutineering at 7:30 Sunday morning. The team started arriving at 11:00; freshers were paired up with existing members of the race team to pass on their knowledge of their respective corners. Arran and I attempted to have another crack at solving the horrible noise coming from the Riley’s clutch release bearing, by fabricating some lobed washers and adding a temporary spring to the solenoid to hopefully get the noise to stop. After spanner checking, Ding began handing out other pre-race day jobs such as; hoovering, sorting out the headshed and all the TVR engine parts within, prepping them and placing them into storage in the main barn. More tidbits on the T4 Camper were looked at, the washing machine was cleaned and it’s leaky plumbing fixed and even more hoovering was done!Even with our other random tasks and freshers being taught how to correctly load the cars and other equipment onto the trailers we were still ready to leave at 16:30 making the rest of the day look a whole lot easier. All 19 of us made it into Silverstone, using some unorthodox methods to do so... We even lucked out and found a vacant garage in the pits, swiftly taking it over and unloading our sleeping bags around the race cars. In Dings absence the whole team had a chance to practice our other important skills like pit bike stunts, designing beer can obstacle courses and seeing if we could reach a height greater than The Great Pyramids with the sheer number of members in the team.

6am arrived and the alarms rolled in, most of which were swiftly silenced due to us already being awoken by the cold garage floor. Fuelled by ‘More Than a Feeling’ by Boston, the packing away and the whole pigs worth of bacon were packed and cooked by 7 o’clock. Thanks to the wet conditions The Riley and Sprite were Rain-Xed to the walls and the Sprite was sent out for scrutineering. With qualifying quickly approaching Ding’s absence started to become a hot topic amongst the garage as he was expected at 8:00 for the drivers meeting but he was nowhere to be found.

Turns out he didn’t ditch us for some bridesmaids and arrived just in time for the drivers briefing, making the Sprite the first car to make it on the track for qualifying and the first one to make it off again. The pit board being at the end of the pit straight caused Ding to send it into the gravel at Copse, as he was too busy reading rather than braking. Ding kept the car going out of the gravel and ended qualifying with a P3 in class for the race later in the day with a time of 3:15. The moment the car came into the garage everyone ran to their corner and the bonnet and all the wheels were off for the necessary spanner checks to check the damage from the gravel. Luckily the only damage was cosmetic, so
the car was deemed safe to race later in the day.

Sprite on its way to the track

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​Just after 10am it was the Riley’s turn to get on track and this time it was kept on it, thanks to Seb moving down the pit wall and the slightly dryer track. Managing a time of 3:08, placing us P6 in class, Ding came in early with complaints about the troublesome clutch not engaging as well as he’d like. This leading Tom to fiddle with the height of the clutch pedal to allow more travel, seeming to fix the problem. With the race being at 17:00 that afternoon it gave us plenty of time to spanner check and clean the Riley until we ran out of metal polish!

Ding was found in the refreshments tent with a mouth full of sausage when the final race in the HRDC Dunlop Allstars was due to start earlier than expected. All in all, it was a trouble-free race with “Little BeWT” achieving P3 in class meaning we are keeping our podium streak! The end of the race also brought a small break in the clouds giving the
track a chance to dry out and hope for a good result with the Riley. It also gave Tom and James Biley a chance to practice their all-important driver change, even if it did mean using a less nimble and sluggish Ding substitute. Nevertheless, they managed to get their time down to a mid 18 seconds, very impressive when looking at the other teams in the paddock.

Earlier than expected at 16:30 the mighty Riley was let loose and was flying. Ding managed to pass a couple cars in our class on the opening laps, giving the team even more hope for another podium finish, but that wouldn’t last long. On the third lap, the Riley scampered into pits and stopped further down the pitlane. A group of us ran down to the car expecting the clutch release bearing to have flown out of the gearbox and into one of the very expensive D-types parked in the bottom garages. A quick word with Ding exposed a knocking noise when going round corners and stepping back from the car it was obvious that the rear left suspension was damaged in some way or another, probably from Ding trying to go 2 wheels around corners again. We chose to retire the car slowly pushed the car to the garage where we could jack it up and inspect the cause of the knocking. After doing so it was realised that the modified leaf spring had snapped.

Despite our retirement, the weekend didn’t end on a low. All the competitors and respective teams huddled around Julius as he held this years awards and acknowledgements. Medals were given out to those who had earned them throughout the season and t end we paid our respects to the late Rupert Keegan, who had been an HRDC ambassador for the past 14 years.

The Riley flying past the competition

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The whole team went to Julius after his speeches to say our thanks for his 14th year in a row of support, letting us compete in a professional race series and giving students the opportunity to get hands on race experience at this level. The team presented him with a nice bottle of whisky, and he was very enthusiastic about seeing us next season, egging Ding on to get another race car so we can enter even more races. We would also like to thank.... Their contributions are allowing students in Oxford the chance to have weekends like this, providing the engineers of the future with the hands-on experience that is so desperately needed in industry.

Luke Crutchley, 1st year Mechanical Engineering Design student, Oxford Brookes University.