Spencer Pigot – Another Great Day of Testing!

Brands Hatch, England (October 13, 2010) – We just finished our second day at Brands Hatch getting prepared for the Formula Ford Festival this weekend. The first day I was lapping in the low 50-second range, which we think is a fast time compared to the races that have been run recently.

In the first session this morning I was determined to break into the 49s. At the beginning of the session I was doing low 50-second times and thought we might need to do a few changes to the car to make it that much better. Then I saw a 49.9 on my dash. I knew it was a good lap but I wasn’t sure it would be that fast. The following lap I did a 48.8! After doing a few laps in the 49s the tires started to get a bit hot which made the car slide around so I pitted for the rest of the session. The team thinks that these times will put us right at the front so it’s very encouraging.

It seemed like we had hit a bit of a wall in terms of improving the time so for the second session we decided to try changing the tire pressures just to see how the car reacted. It was good for the first few laps but the tires overheated much quicker and I started to slow down. I came in and we dropped the tire pressures to what we had set them at in the first session and continued to do low 50-second times, but no 49s. For the final session my mechanic and I decided just to try something extreme so we went really stiff on the front and rear anti-roll bars, just to see what would happen. The car generally lost grip so I came in within a few laps. When I was in the pits I asked to go back to where we had it on the rear bar and to full soft in the front. The car felt much better instantly; the changes gave it a bit more balance and a lot more front grip and I was able to get back down to a 49.8-second lap. We didn’t go out for the last session because we put in a different engine that will hopefully be a bit quicker.

Overall the day went very well. The car was handling great at the end of the day. I’m looking forward to trying out the new engine; hopefully it will give us a few tenths. Tomorrow is another full day of practice. We get four sessions on track and they are each about 40 minutes long, which gives us plenty of laps. Quick thanks to everyone that supports the Team USA Scholarship and the Cliff Dempsey Racing Team; it’s a great experience to be here racing in England.