Despite the various mechanical difficulties in the 2014 sprint season I am pleased that I achieved 3rd place overall and a class win in the Speed League championship. I didn’t make first place due to the brake disc failure at Woodbridge that caused me to miss several events. I didn’t make second place (missed by just two points) due to the missed gear change at Curborough.
In addition I was awarded the PolkaCrest trophy for winning most points in Speed League championship rounds held in the South East of England.
I was also pleased to receive awards for a class win in the All Circuit Sprint championship as well as the Basil Elkington and Trenham Cresswell trophies for my work on motorsports journalism and contributions to modernising the Sevenoaks and District Motor Club.
The Regent Street Motor Show on the 1st of November 2014 commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Ford Mustang (also the 40th anniversary of the Porsche 911). To celebrate the event, Ben Davies took the Black Sun Racing car to the show to include it in the display.
The huge crowds were able to take a lot of pictures of the sponsor livery of the Mustang.
A visit to the show – Mustangs start at 2:17
Another great video showing the Mustangs form the start
Black Sun Racing are proud to announce MSAR as our latest sponsor. MSAR will be supplying Black Sun Racing with race equipment for the 2015 season, significantly increasing driver safety levels with HANS helmet protection and improved roll cage impact protection.
Additionally MSAR have been able to provide a wealth of experience on car setup which will prove invaluable in the 2015 season.
MSAR have a unique set of relationships with European Motorsports equipment manufacturers. This coupled with their agile and keen-to-please approach mean they are able to deliver items not available to other suppliers.
MSAR is dedicated to helping our customers pursue their passion for motorsport as safely as possible by using the latest safety equipment and highest quality products available. As a racewear supplier we are committed to understanding the products we sell, not just on paper, but on the race track, with most items tried and tested by a member of our team personally. We pride ourselves on excellent customer service and expert advice.
We have recently expanded to open a showroom in London, which will display a range of our products on offer for you to try. We hold a comprehensive amount of stock so we can satisfy your needs.
Alex Peters of Black Sun Racing (left) with Malcolm of MSAR (centre) and fellow racer Colin Spark.
MSAR is committed to providing expert advice about all the products that we offer and will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have. Motorsport is a dangerous sport and we take safety very seriously, which is why we feel it’s important that you know all the latest information from manufactures and sanctioning bodies.
We offer an excellent fast delivery service worldwide. Our next day service covers the whole of the UK so for those of you that leave things to the last minute – don’t panic MSAR can deliver on time!
The car performed fantastically at the final sprint of the 2014 season – I would say this was my best event of my sprint career to date. I hope this is a sign of better results for 2015 and would like to thank of my sponsors, suppliers and supporters who have enabled so much success this year. In particular I would like to thank Redline American Muscle, Steeda UK, Steeda US, KW suspension, Recaro, Toyo Tires, Sky Insurance, Eyesite and Personalised Planet for their support.
The elation of a class win, beating long term rivals !
Picture courtesy of Charlie Lower
Build
Unchanged from the Curborough sprint. Picture courtesy of Chris Berrisford
Performance
With the Steeda and Redline American Muscle modifications to the cars chassis made before the Curborough sprint, the Mustang handled amazingly well. I was able to slide it around the tight bends and cones with fantastic precision.
Picture courtesy of Charlie Lower
Results
I won my class with a very conservative run, using the power of the supercharger on the straights and its ability to slide very controllably around the twisty country lanes sections. For the second timed session the car in front of me tipped a load of oil over the track, as I had such a large margin over the next competitor I decided not to take the run and risk wrecking the car. Needless to say, the human crash test dummy, Kevin Lower did go out using laws of physics normally only seen in warner brothers cartoons, but kept it on the track. I feel that if I had pushed the car harder I could easily have been in the top five fastest of the day.
It gave me a particular satisfaction to beat my great rival over the last two seasons, Paul Braddock. Paul knew the track and was in the very capable and lighter supercharged mini, yet I was still able to beat him over a second. I think is a great indication of how the Mustang and myself have improved from when Paul beat me at Debden by a four second margin.
Receiving the class winners trophy from the clerk, Steve Castle
Investigation by Redline American Muscle showed that The Debden disastrous performance was caused by the design of the Whipple supercharger sitting so high that under heavy braking and cornering the body sank relative to the chassis and engine, causing the pulley to contact the inside of the bonnet. Steeda US and Steeda UK came to the rescue, providing new stiffer engine mounts, which absolutely transformed the Mustang! The Steeda kit comes with a choice of red rubber bushes (softer for street use) and black (stiffer for race use) to go on the side opposing engine rotation, on the other side red bushes are always used to dampen engine vibration. Kevin See at Redline American Muscle fitting the Steeda engine mounts
Engine mounts in place
The main point of fitting the Steeda engine bushes was not intended to improve performance, but to take advantage of the adjustable height washers in the kit, which allowed the engine to be lowered by nearly one inch, to gain increased underhood clearance for the supercharger pulley. A side benefit of this was to allow the Steeda strut brace to be refitted, which had originally been removed when the supercharger was fitted, again due to clearance issues.
Kev at Redline re-fitting the Steeda strut brace over the supercharger, now that the engine has been lowered.
Performance
The black stiffer rubber bushes meant that instead of energy being wasted twisting the engine, it was now going to the back wheels which felt like a 50BHP power upgrade. This also meant I was able to lower the engine by an inch, which in turn meant that I was able to refit the strut tower brace which had previously been removed as the supercharger was too tall. The lower centre of gravity and stiffer front end had transformed the car’s handling – it now turned like an old mini ! It is quit astounding that such a simple upgrade involving some bits of rubber and bent metal could have such an astounding improvement on both performance and handling – giving a huge increase in confidence in the cars abilities. I would strongly recommend this Steeda upgrade as the best value for money performance increase you can buy for your Mustang !
Results
I had expected to come flat last (fifth) against the impressive class of cars in the entry list, however, I got lucky as the BMW M3 didn’t turn up, while Bill McKenna in his Porsche 911 GT3 did attend, but was too ill to do a timed run. This left me against two drivers in a Porsche Cayman SV, which had wiped the floor with the rest of a fast class at Debden the week before. In the first runs in the wet on an unfamiliar track I was five seconds off the pace. However, when the track dried out, I had worked out different racing lines from everyone else and was confident in the cars handling thanks to the Steeda upgrades, based primarily on the Mustangs need to be lined up straight before I could apply power. At the chicane on the outbound straight, I stayed very wide with a late turn in, so I could be accelerating across the second apex. Everyone else was hugging the inside curb and having to wait until much later to get going. Similarly, at the hairpin all other cars hugged the inside edge of the track and then ran wide on the exit. Instead I went in faster, braking to the outer edge of the corner, then turned in sharply to make a straight line across the inside curb at the end of the corner. Therefore I was faster at both entrance and exit than other cars, already accelerating down the straight while they were still lining up. I put in a stunning final lap that was clearly faster than at least one of the Porsche drivers, however, on the last main straight (where my car has the biggest advantage), I couldn’t get the car into gear and so coasted across the line, 10mph slower than my wet time. In the end I was less than a second behind the Porsche – give my much better line out of the last corner, getting the power on considerably earlier, If the gearbox hadn’t let me down I think I could have been in second place. Considering I had expected to come fifth, miles behind the other cars, I felt a close third against the same type of car that had thrashed the field at Debden the week before, this was an excellent result and made me feel very confident ahead of the Eelmoor event the next day.
As regular readers of my blog will know, at each of the last three visits to Debden, the Mustang has had a very bad spin at the “dustbin” chicane. This has been caused by the rear end being very lightly loaded as the nose dived under heavy braking, then been bounced into the air as the car reached the crest of a hill just before the chicane. The result is always the same – the car flicks round instantly and uncontrollably. Working with engineers at KW suspension in the UK and Germany, they studied the videos and designed new valves for the dampers and provided new stiffer springs (800lbs / inch at the front).
Performance
The updated KW competition dampers were a great success – although the rear end went light, it was controllable. Similarly the new Toyo R888 tyres provided by our latest sponsor, Toyo, worked fantastically – mechanical grip on the very uneven surface at Debden was not an issue.
A lap of the Debden track…
I launch up the straight with a fairly conservative granny start due to the broken track surface, otherwise it takes a long time to get the wheelspin under control. First gear, wheel spin stops, second, third…. I then keep the car to the right to avoid tramlining on grooves in the track and align myself for the gap in the barrier. As I get the position exactly right, a last moment twist of the wheel flicks the car through the gap without having to lift off the throttle. Keeping the power on I drift to the left to align myself with the cones on the entry to the bus stop. Judging the braking to the last moment and hoping that trail braking will give me more steering control as I weave through the bus stop chicane, I hear the grinding sound which at the time I through was contact with the wheel arches, but later transpired to be the Whipple Supercharge pulley eating its way through the bonnet.
I drop into second under braking and then put the power on coming out of the bus stop, but the rear end lights up and the thought of the potential body contact means that I am less committed than I should be. I feather the throttle a couple of times until the wheel grip, but by then I am already into the hairpin. On previous events I have always had massive understeer on this corner, with the nose of the car snowploughing on and running wide before the apex. However, this time the changes made by the Steeda engine mounts and strut brace, combined with the modified KW competition suspension and the grippy Toyo R888 tyres mean that the cars goes exactly where I ask it to, so that I can balance the power around the corner, although the grinding noise again prevents me from fully committing to push the car as hard as it could go.
Coming out of the hairpin I am still a little hesitant and wind gently around the complex series of obstacles around the next left hander, placed there to avoid holes in the track. Once I am past this I ease the power down around the long curving right hand bend and brake really hard coming to the wall of cones marking the next left, to the point where all four wheels lock and the ABS kicks in momentarily. I am pleased that I have completed this last section about as fast as it is possible to go.
Going round the left hand bend I feed the power on and then drift to the right of the track to line up for the dustbin chicane. In the back of my mind I remember the last there events at Debden where each time the car has spun off the track. This has been down to the nose of the car being heavily depressed under braking so that the rear end goes light. As I reach the crest of the small hill just before the chicane on previous occasions, the rear shocks would extend slightly and lift the rear of the car off the track, the angular momentum of the car going round the bend on the approach being sufficient to spin the car back to front and slide it off the track backwards up a service road, narrowly missing the banks and ditches that are all round this track.
However, this time I put my faith in the KW suspension engineers who had change the valves on the rear shocks to provide additional damping specifically to deal with the problem on this corner on this track. It worked ! I concentrated on keeping the car as straight as the approach to the chicane would allow and braked hard, I then weaved right on the exit of the chicane as I put the power down and breathed a sigh of relief – thanks to KW !
I rev the engine as I pass the exit of the chicane and then put the power down on the next short right hander, taking care not to over do it, having learned the car and track limits during practice when I nearly ran too wide into the bushes under a power slide at this point. Coming round the next 90 degree right hander into the go kart track I keep in second gear and stamp on the power to take advantage of the short straight into the first chicane. Right – left – right I feather the throttle to keep the supercharger on the boil whilst twisting through the very narrow go-kart chicanes which no ordinary Mustang could hope to negotiate. Finally I put the power down as I line up for the final finishing straight. I change up to third just before the finish line, which has been shortened due to a massive skip that has been parked there by the army. I tried staying in second in practice but found I was faster sacrificing the time for another gear change rather than bouncing off the rev limiter in second.
Results
Debden is a very tricky circuit with extremely rough and broken surfaces that don’t allow the application of power as well as extremely tight bends, particularly the go-kart section, so it has always been a challenge for the Mustang where it has performed poorly. This coupled with concerns over the noise coming from the car on bends (which I had supposed to be the wheel arch rubbing problem that I had previously experienced), but turned out to be a supercharger problem had really dented my confidence and so I was unable to push the car.
Unfortunately I didn’t do very well as I had to retire after the first timed run as the noise turned out to be my supercharger pulley eating its way through my bonnet. This was caused by the body diving relative to the wheels end engine mounts, causing the bonnet to come into contact with the supercharger pulley. The clearance issue had been noted when the supercharger was installed and a cut was made in the inner skin of the bonnet. However, the issue with the body movement relative to the engine was not forseen.
After the event Redline American Muscle and Steeda were able to make modifications to the car that would transform performance and handling beyond belief – it would become a whole new car.
I did at least manage to beat the time of Frank Trueman in his Porsche 944 turbo, who has always beaten me in the past. I would like to think if I hadn’t had problems I might have been able to beat my old nemesis of Brian Winstone in his Porsche 911 GT3 who was only two seconds faster.
1st 25 Howard Dawson HCAAC
Porsche Cayman 64.97 secs
2nd 725 Graham Scarborough HCA&AC
Porsche Cayman 66.38 secs
3rd 28 Bill McKenna B19
Porsche 996 66.87 secs
4th 34 Andrew Innocent B19
Nissan 350Z 68.52 secs
5th 33 Paul Braddock WSMC
BMW Mini Cooper S Works 68.60 secs
6th 35 Jonathan Dawson HCA&AC
Ford Focus 69.17 secs
7th 30 Anthony Prickler HCA&AC
BMW Z4 M 69.80 secs
8th 31 Jim Giddings SDMC
Triumph TR8 69.91 secs
9th 27 Brian Winstone B19
Porsche GT3 RS 70.87 secs
10th 32 Alex Peters 7Oaks
Ford Mustang GT 72.54 secs
11th 26 Frank Trueman GBMC
Porsche 944 Turbo 73.96 secs
Following the disintegration of my brake disk at the Woodbridge sprint, I had a lot of work to do to get the car ready. With the help of Steeda in the UK and US, Wilwood very kindly supplied new front brake discs and pads, whilst I purchased a new set of rears. I also fitted new wheel hubs just in case they had been damaged. Steeda provided new front Lower Control Arms which are much more robust than the OEM parts and give me a great deal of confidence.
Toyo Tires very kindly agreed to sponsor the Mustang just before the Brighton event and supplied a new set of Proxes R888 just in time for the race. I have only been able to get one event out of my previous (worn) set of R888s this year and that produced two class wins at Blyton (and a better time than most of the field including TVRs, Lotus 340Rs and Ferrari 430s !), so I am confident they will help provide more good results this season.
All of the parts only turned up in the week before Brighton Event, so Mike and Kev at Redline American Muscle of Aylesford had to work very hard to get the car ready (also including an MOT and Service). Other complications included changing the exhaust back to the free flowing SLP Loudmouth to get the full 573BHP, compared with the more restrictive and quieter BBK varitune adjustable exhaust which I had been using to get past the noise restrictions at Goodwood and Crystal Palace. However, part of the exhaust hanger bracket had failed, but Redline were able to fabricate a new part with some welding.
Disaster nearly struck at the end of the week when an electrical connector on the Mass Airflow Sensor failed due to rubbing against the Supercharger’s intercooler header tank. A new plug was ordered but it would not arrive in time – I was panicking that despite getting so much fixed, for a small piece of plastic I was going miss the event. However, Redline came to the rescue again by dismantling the plug and fabricating something that worked. Redline also noticed that an engine oil breather pipe attached to the Supercharger plenum chamber was not made of sufficiently strong rubber, so collapsed under the Supercharger vacuum. Replacing this pipe made a noticeable difference to the power output! (Previously measured at 573BHP on the rolling road).
Redline also repaired the rear brake cooling ducts and electric fans which had been dmagaed during an off track excursion at Goodwood. The new design is much more robust.
Performance
I compared my performance figures at Brighton with the summary of all members on the Mustang Owners Club GB website and was interested to see that although my Elapsed Time (ET) of 13.27 seconds put in the lowest 25% of cars, the finishing speed of 114mph puts me in the top 25%. I conclude that this is due to the very poor potholed surface gave me little grip and a lot of wheelspin of the line compared with custom build drag strips like Santa Pod, whilst the Mustang is a capable race car – once I was able to get the power down it performed very well.
Results
On race day I was parked alongside my old friend and on track rival, Graham Pryme. I have found Graham to be a great benchmark of performance; last year at MIRA I lead him by a fraction of a second up until the last session, when he made an aerodynamic adjustment to the rear wing of his Porsche GT3 and beat me.
At Graham’s suggestion I had softened up my suspension settings (Compression/Rebound front -3/-3 and rear -9/-9). However, I left my tyres at their normal race setting of 32PSI. I had learned a lesson at Debden in 2013 that although lower tyre pressures increased grip (and in that case significantly reduced understeer), the penalty in increased drag meant that I was slower overall. The spring heights of the new KW competition suspension had been adjusted. I had found that lowering the rear springs as far as possible almost completely eliminated understeer, however, the front wheels were rubbing against the wheel arch liners under heavy braking. Therefore, the front springs were raised by an inch, which I am pleased to say improved handling even further.
It was great to see my friend and mentor Jason Andrews at the event in his 66 Mustang, the first time I had seen the car on track, it made a fantastic sound! I have to thank Jason for all of the success I have had to date in sprinting. His coaching to “drive the car like a bank robbery getaway” has really suited my driving style and made me much quicker than before.
On the first practice run, Graham put down a time of 13.26 seconds against my 13.37. I had never done a drag race before, only circuits and sprints and realised the massive importance of getting a good start, whereas I had significant wheelspin. On the second run (which was important as it decided the placings for the speed league) I managed a 13.27 while Graham didn’t do so well with a 13.75. I was pleased as this gave me a good chance at points – tenth in the Brighton and Hove MC class listings, but higher up when Jason Andrews and Russ Giddings eliminate the cars from the “non-SDMC class”. This makes me fifth in class by my calculations.
Graham Pryme had softened his tyres and suspension settings on his Porsche GT3
I have compared my times with other drag racing Mustangs on the Mustang owners club web site, there are a large number of members doing this so it is a good statistical guide. I was surprised to find that my Elapsed time was in the bottom 25%, but my terminal speed was in the top 25%. I guess this is down to inexperience, cold tyres and a rough track affecting the launch, but shows that the power is good to pick up speed despite a poor start.
I similarly noted despite our best Elapsed Times only being one hundredth of a second apart, Graham Pryme had a much better 60 foot time (2.21 secs v 2.55 secs, but with a much lower terminal speed (104mph v 114mph). Ultimately though Graham has earned the right to look smug by beating me again! Talking of smugness, I had great personal satisfaction in beating Joe Eagle in his Lamborghini Aventador – he made a right mess of the highly complex launch control and stuttered off the line to record the slowest time in the class!
Overall, beating benchmark cars like the Ferrari 430 and Porsche 911 GT3, I feel it was a good performance.
I would like to be the first to offer my congratulations to Jeff Wiltshire who clinched the Speed League championship win from me in second place with his result at Brighton (first in class).
Black Sun Racing are very pleased to announce a technical partnership with AP racing and BG developments to development a high performance brake system for the S197 Mustang. This will use Black Sun Racings’s race experience with high specification AP Racing brake components and BG developments race engineering expertise to build a highly effective race and road brake system that will overcome all of the issues seen in the many other brake systems that Black Sun Racing has worked with over several years.
It is intended that the finished product will be available for S197 Mustang owners to buy in the UK at a price lower than it is possible to import any of the other (lower performance) big brake systems from the US.
Black Sun Racing are extremely pleased to Welcome Toyo Tyres as our latest sponsor. During 2013 we saw some great race results with Toyo tyres fitted, however, during 2014 due to funding issue lower quality tires from other manufacturers have been used, with correspondingly disappointing results. The only event this year using Toyo was the Blyton Sprint in which the Mustang not only won its class, but also beat most of the field of 100 cars entered that day. Now with factory support from Toyo, we can look forward to some exciting future results.
The TOYO Tire & Rubber – group is one of the leading tire manufacturers worldwide and is represented in more than 100 countries and regions. Established in 1945, the headquarters of the business is in Osaka, Japan. The global activities of the group are based on the three core competencies tires, chemicals and materials. Toyo Tires has been present in Europe for over thirty years and in 2005 established the company Toyo Tire Europe GmbH. The location of the business is in Neuss (Nord Rhine-Westphalia), Germany. From here, all business activities for Europe are managed. Core business of TOYO TIRES is the development, manufacture and marketing of high-value, High Performance tires. TOYO offer a range of tire patterns and dimensions for cars (summer and winter), vans, trucks and Offroad vehicles.
This was the greatest performance of my race career to date. Whilst I won my class on both days, on the second day I beat most of the cars at the meeting, including a number of expensive supercars. I was really pleased to show the full potential performance of both myself and the car.
Build
Semi slick Toyo Proxes R888 used for the first time this season. However, these were last years tyres and worn to the end of their lives so grip wasn’t great.
Performance
For the first time this year with some dry running on both days of this two day event, with the KW suspension upgrades, the supercharger and the right tyres, car and driver could demonstrate the winning performance they were capable of.
There was still an issue with the wheel arch lining rubbing against the front tyre under heavy braking, which had first been seen at Abingdon, fortunately no serious problems were seen with this until after the race. KW have kindly supplied stiffer springs that should help reduce dive under braking and solve this issue.
Results
Jeff Wiltshire was the only other SDMC member at the meeting and had some very bad luck with fuel pump failure in the first practice, so was unable to compete.
On the first day I pushed faster and faster, to the point where I came into the chicane too quickly and ran out of braking space, hitting a kerb on the chicane quite hard and sliding over the mud on the exit. However, no harm was done and I had now learned the limit of how fast I could take that corner.
I was up against my close rival Brian Marshall in my class again. Every previous meeting we had swapped fastest times throughout the event, with the final result being hundredths of a second apart. Although I beat Brian on the first day of the competition, I was not happy with my own performance, feeling that I should have gone faster.
On the second day, after the second practice I was low on fuel, but had to make a long drive to Scunthorpe to get the correct high octane fuel required for the supercharger. As a result I had to rush back to the track with no time to prepare for the first official time run. I made the startline queue as the final car, pumped up with adrenalin. As a result, I tore around the track and got a much better time. This help me focus for the afternoon and really feel how to drive the car quickly on this course.
In the final session of the day, I drove a tremendous lap, sliding the car through each of the complex bends like Gilles Villeneuve, absolutely on the ragged edge. My time was two and a half seconds faster than my best time the day before. Most amazingly I beat the times for all but two of the TVRs, all but two of the Ferraris (including tieing with a 430) and all but two of the Lotuses.
However, I still have a mountain to climb to beat Jeff Wiltshire in the championship, I need at least three wins over a large class to have a chance.
I beat all but two of the TVRs….
I beat twelve out of thirteen Lotuses including Elises and 350Rs…
I beat nine out of eleven Ferraris including 360s and 430s…
Following the disintegration of my brake disk at the Woodbridge sprint, I had a lot of work to do to get the car ready. With the help of 
All of the parts only turned up in the week before Brighton Event, so Mike and Kev at 
1st Alex Peters – Mustang GT – secs
2nd Brian Marshall – 944 Turbo – secs
Black Sun Racing 