Wow, 2010 was a fast year.....

... in all sorts of ways. It seemed to just fly by - mainly because it was so busy. Looking at my blog, I realised that I haven't done an update since March 2010 - and too damned busy...

OK, so let's summarised what's happened since then:

Nabil had a good 1st season in F-BMW, finishing 5th in the championship - exactly where I said a realistic target would be. Thanks to Lotus F1 (or Team lotus or ....???), he became the youngest ever driver to take part in an official F1 test.Other things weren't quite so good, promised sponsorship money didn't happen and too many other advisors meant that my involvement has become extremely limited.

The GP racing team continued to prosper, ending the season as one of the most successful teams and chassis. Terence won the Masters championship with 2 wins (should have been three but at the Pekan race his sidepod fell off because of the bumpy nature of the track!) and Syazwan and Zarul both performed very well in their 1st year in juniors. Syazwan was particularly impressive, taking wins in the Rotax Round 3, 2 race wins in the SL Cup and a senior win in KKS round 4 - his 1st senior race.

Towards the end of the year, James Pull rejoined the team, after his brief move to Axle and performed well in the end of season races - achieving the main target of taking 2nd in the AKOC cadet championship, beating his former team mate at Axle in the process.

The end of the year saw a big decision made - not to continue running the Plus team in 2011. The Plus team will have a different strategy in 2011, mainly concentrating on developing the drivers from their talent search program and so it's difficult to marry that to a team concentrating on the top level racing. I also wanted to concentrate on a smaller number of drivers so we've split the team up now.

So, for the last few races of the 2010 season (including one in Jan 2011) the team has effectively just been James and Syazwan - and it will stay like that for the rest of 2011 although we will run Syazwan's little brother Dzafran (who's just won the 2010 Plus Talent search) in the KKS races and might also help some of the GP Racing Singapore drivers in the KKS races as well. We should also have continued with Terence but he's emigrating to Australia.

So, we're nicely set up for the year. James in improving all the time and is already one of the top cadets in SE Asia - hopefully we'll see more improvements from him this year. He's going to do some European racing - we've linked up with 2006 world champion Oli Oakes and Oli will run James in the Europe races. Syazwan will be one of the favorites for junior race wins in all the series - his progress has been amazing and in the last couple of events - big international races for both Yamaha and Rotax, he's been outstanding.

This year I should be able to get time to do regular updates....

Some Basic Kart Driving Tips

Over the next few months, I'm going to publish a series of driving tips. This 1st set is some basic ones but after this, I'll do a more extensive article every couple of weeks about one specific topic:

Seating Position
In general terms, it’s always best to mount the seat in the position recommended by the manufacturer of the kart. Karts are designed with a specific centre of gravity in mind and moving the seat too much will impact this. So, mount the seat in the default position and adjust the steer wheel and pedal positions to suit the drivers size.

Hand Position

The wheel should always be held at something like the “10 to 2” position (so, if the wheel was a clock, your left hand would be at 10 and your right at 2). The reason for handing the wheel this way is that you get the best leverage on the wheel so you can react quickly to changes of direction is it helps shift you r weight to the front of the kart when you turn.

Your elbows should be slightly bent – a rough way of telling if the wheel is the right distance from you is to sit normally and straighten your arms, resting them on the top of the wheel. If you’re making contact with the wheel with your wrists, it’s about right.


Steering
Be as smooth and progressive when steering as possible. The best drivers make a single and relatively slow movement of the wheel turning into the corner, hold the same position for a while and then slowly release the turn as they exit the corner. The more movements on the steering wheel, the less grip will be obtained by the kart.


Throttle / Brakes

For beginners, it’s best to concentrate on using one at a time. As you get more experience, you’ll learn to “trail brake” a little – where you’re still braking slightly turning into a corner and applying a small amount of throttle at the same time to keep the engine at higher revs. But, master the basic progression of: Off the throttle, brake, turn, accelerate before you start merging the phases together.


Basic Racing lines

Every corner is slightly different but there are really only 3 main types:

Single corner:

§  Approach the corner as wide as possible

§  Braking while still travelling in a straight line and slow down to the speed you can take the corner at without sliding

§  Start turning at a point where you can touch the inside of the corner at, or just past, the middle of the corner (the “Apex”). The turn-in point varies depending on the corner but in general terms for very fast corners you turn in at a point where the corner, both entry and exit are taken at the same turning degree and as the corner gets tighter you turn later to increase the turning degree at entry, apex later and make the exit as “straight” as possible.

§  At the Apex of the corner, you should be getting back on the throttle and staring to straighten the steering wheel.

Two corners in the same direction connected by a short straight:

§  If the straight between them is long anough, you take them as two individual turns as above.

§  If the straight is very short, you have to treat them as one corner and take a line which maximizes your exit speed from the second corner. This may mean taking the 1^st part wider to ensure you’re on the correct approach line for the 2^nd part. But, be careful if you do this and there’s a kart following you – a wide line could give him a chance to overtake!

Two or more corners in the different directions connected by a short straight (or immediately after each other):

§  The most important thing is almost always to ensure you get the maximum speed out of the 2^nd (or 3^rd) corner. This mean you may need to compromise you line or speed throught the 1^st corner. Normally, you’d approach it in the normal way but slow down enough so that you Apex very late in the 1^st corner and stay on the inside of the exit of the 1^st part, to get you onto the normal wide approach for the 2^nd part.

The absolute best way to see the right line for a corner is to follow (or just watch from outside the track) a fast driver and then copy his (or her) lines!


The Golden Rule

Fast lap times are achieved by exiting corners as quickly as possible, not by braking very late. On any corner, the braking area is probably no more than 10m in length - often much less. The acceleration part is most of the full length of the next straight. Where would you prefer to be fast?

If you go down to your local fun kart track and watch for a while, you’ll see this illustrated very clearly. Most people come streaming into a corner, lock up their brakes, yank the steering over as hard as possible, slide past the Apex (or spin), almost come to a halt then slowly accelerate away. Then you see someone that smoothly approaches a corner, brakes much earlier than the others, hits the apex perfectly and accelerates away. He looks slow when he's by himself but if they all start racing each other, put your money on him every time…


Summary of Basic driving techniques

• Always brake in a straight line
• When applying brakes, make sure your foot is off the throttle
• Make your turns smooth – do turn the wheel too hard or fast, it will unbalance the kart
• Accelerate at the apex of the turn
• It is important to be fast on the exit of a corner
• Try to use the whole width of the track to maintain speed
• Karting is a non contact sport, and in any case it’s much quicker and safer not to have any contact with other karts whilst passing

From nowhere to the top in 12 months

About this time last year, I place an order for the 1st GP Racing kart ever to be shipped into Malaysia. 3 weeks later I finished a close 2nd in round 2 of RMC 2009 and decided to build a team around the brand.
Last weekend, for Round 1 of the 2010 RMC series, there were 12 GP Racing karts on the grid and we won 2 of the 5 categories, finished 2nd in another and had 2 other podium places - easily the best result of any of the brands.
It's a weird situation, I didn't (and still don't) intend to try to sell lots of chassis - it's virtually impossible in Malaysia - and actually nearly all the chassis we've brought in over the last 12 months were on the grid so how have we become so successful so quickly?
1) A lucky colour scheme. The GP racing karts happen to be exactly the same colour as the Plus corporate colours. In the middle of last year, the Plus team were thinking about doing something different and everything fitted together nicely. The Plus team includes Nabil Jeffri...
2) A great driver. Nabil is simply amazing in a kart. Last year he did some Yamaha races in my GP10 and then the Sangari Rotax race in his own, new GP10 and has just started the 2010 RMC campaign. So for his record with the GP10 in the SL Cup and Rotax races is 12 races, 11 wins, 1 second place. He starts racing single seaters this year and has done well in testing in those as well - 1st race is two support events at the Malaysian F1 GP. If Malaysia is going to have a successful F1 driver in the next 10 years, there's only one person the country needs to support....
3) Team work and planning. Most kart teams in Malaysia are run by "talented amateurs" where pretty much everything is done based on the skills and experience of the mechanics. I'm trying to make the team run in a professional way with good planning, processes to follow and documenting everything. This is the way single seater teams have to run and is the right way for kart teams as well. It's a bumpy ride - a lot of people feel uncomfortable with it but most step changes are uncomfortable...
4) Emphasis on driver development. The GP karts are good but so are all the competition karts - there's probably only .1 sec between all the better brands and that varies on the track, conditions and set-up of the kart. Spending lots of money on preparing engines (like sending them to Europe for "blueprinting") is expensive and the gains are made for 1 or 2 races, then you need to spend the money again. Getting good drivers and developing them is by far the best and most sustainable way to success. It can take time but is worth it. Again, this is a short term challenge - many parents will get frustrated see their son (or daughter) passed by someone that doesn't drive as well but has a super fast engine...
I started writing this to celebrate the progress we've made, not a lecture on kart team management :-) Oh well, back to the processes....

Festive Spirit

When my children were young I loved Xmas - the secrecy around what presents they were getting, pretending that Santa really does exist and their excitement in the morning when they could finally open their presents. As they grew older I realised that Xmas has become to commercial and is about presents and shopping rather than a family/friends gathering and, of course, a serious regilious occasion for Christians. Although I'm officially Christian, I'm not particularly religious but it did make me think when there was a survey amongst teenagers in the UK a few years ago about Xmas and 15% said there was too much religion involved. !!!!!

Anyway, since I moved to Malaysia I've learnt to like Xmas again. Each year, I have a bunch of friends over for a traditional Xmas lunch and I get to cook properly and hunt thru cookbooks for new recipes to try - although my friends do complain if I change things too much - they've got very fond of a couple of the dishes :-).

What's particularly nice is it gives me the chance to return the privilege I have in sharing festive occasions with my Chinese and Muslim friends. One of the great things about Malaysia is the different religions and therefore ceremonies we have and so I get to celebrate Chinese New Year, Ramadan and a whole bunch of other occasions :-)

So, on Xmas day I'll be eating Roast Turkey and all the trimmings (halal ones only of course). I'll be the only (nearly) Christian in the house but we'll exchange gifts, play games and I've even got The Great Escape on DVD (sorry, only British people will understand this!) to watch. If we want to, we can wander outside in shorts and t-shirts and enjoy the sun - unlike the poor suckers in Europe who'll be lucky to get to wherever they're going without getting stuck in a snow drift :-)

Life is hard sometimes....

Rotax Grand Finals Diary

During the last week or so, I've been in Egypt helping my star driver and friend Nabil Jeffri at the Rotax Grand finals. Here's a diary of what happened each day.

Saturday 5th December: Late night flight to Cairo. Those of you that know me know that flying is a serious problem for me so getting onto a flight for 11 hours is no fun. Nabil's family and I (altogether Nabil had 18 supporters - more of this later) left tanam Tun in a mini bus and travelled to KLIA and met the rest of the Malaysian team for check-in. A quick McDonalds, last cigerette and then onto the plane for 11 hours of terror.

Sunday 6th December. Finally landed at Cairo airport. Got bus to terminal from the plane and then walked into the chaos that is Cairo Airport. People everywhere and hardly any signs of what we needed to do to catch the connecting flight to Sharm El Sheik. Luckily Nabil's grandfather had organised for us to be met by a man from the Malaysian consulate so he guided us thru. Then Nabil realised he'd left his helmet in the plane. We had to wait to get it back and I nearly missed the connecting flight - when I got to the gate (very late) I was told I needed to buy a visa so had to run back to get one.
An hour later we landed at Sharm and drove to the apartments. The "Nabil Support group" had 3 (later 4) apartments run by British guys and rented out for holidays. Very nice apartments - I was sharing one with Nabil and the mechanics.
Leaving the family to unpack the food brought from Malaysia (40kgs!), the technical part of the team headed for the track to register Nabil. Very nice track - a fast section around the perimeter and a very tight twisty infield section. Nabil had a run on the fun karts and liked the layout so we left to rest at the apartment where I discovered 2 new things about Nabil - 1) He turns the aircon in the bedroom to a temperature that Polar Bears would be happy in and 2) He snores as badly as I do - I dread to think what our room sounded like when we were both asleep :-)

Monday 7th Kart Ballot day

A pretty boring day - we balloted the kart and then the mechanics got to work getting everything ready. Nabil and I wandered around chatting to people.
In the evening, we went to the old town part of Sharm and had dinner. A serious rip-off - want should have been a rm500 bill based on the menu prices turned into rm1200 (for 9 people!) after they added on service and cover charges. Presumably there's a "rich tourist" charge as well. :-)

Tuesday 8th - 1st practice day

Practice finally got underway with 2 sessions for all the drivers. No transponders on the karts so we had to hand time as many people as possible to see where Nabil stood. It looked pretty good - on the stopwatches he was running in the top ten.

Wednesday 9th - Qualifying

One warm-up session then qualifying in the afternoon. Nabil ends 19th - .4 behind pole and only .1 off a top 10 place. 19th means 5th row on the grid for the heats - dangerous because of the potential for 1st corner incidents.

Thursday 10 - Heats 1 & 2

After making sure everything was OK in the paddock, I joined the family in the grandstand for the race. I was incredibly nervous - I think it's harder watching someone than racing yourself. In heat 1, Nabil made a brilliant start and immediately got up to 7th place. He had a good dice for the rest of the race with a little group battling for 5th place but he eventually grabbed 5th place on the final lap - a great start. In heat 2 he again made a great start and worked his way up to 6th and 5th again. But, it was clear now that we didn't have quite the same gearing as others - Nabil was gaining in the slow corners but didn't have enough top-end speed so kept getting passed down the straight. Going onto the last lap in 5th, the boy behind him dived down the inside into turn 1 and forced Nabil wide. He lost 4 places and although he regained 1 place, ended up 9th.

Overall a great day and 2 excellent drives from Nabil and put him in a good position for qualifying for the final. At this stage he was ranked 11th overall.

Friday 10th - Heat 3

Warm-up looked good - Nabil was 2nd fastest in his group so the changes we made to the kart overnight seemed to work. But, disaster in Heat 3 at the 1st corner - Nabil got pushed into another kart and spun off at the exit. Fortunately no damage so he drove along the grass backwards and turned around and rejoined - in 26th place. The heats are only 8 laps so I hoped he could get back up to 15-18th place. But he was even better than that and stormed back up to 12th and was right with the pack battling for 4th place on the last lap but too late to progress anymore.

The slightly poor result meant a 14th place start for the pre-final - not too bad and at least safely thru directly without having to go into the last chance race.

We had a major panic when Nabil was called to the Stewards office about the 1st corner incident but they decided that although he did hit someone he couldn't avoid it (on the basis he was being pushed from behind!) so he was let off with a warning. A DQ would have been a real disaster.

Saturday 11th - Finals day

Everyone got a new set of tyres so warm-up was just to check the kart was OK.

The 1st few laps of the pre-final were very tough. Nabil got stuck on the outside line for most of lap 1 and then got involved in a major fight in the mid field pack. He eventually got out of it (back to 14th place) and quickly closed in on the group ahead but ran out of time and finished exactly where he started.

Lunchtime was confused by the drivers parade. This is always nice to watch - all the drivers with country flags, team suits etc make it a colourful occasion. There's always some nice looking girls as well :-)

The final was awesome. Nabil made a great start and was 10th at the end of lap 1. After 3 laps, he briefly took 6th place but then got rammed and dropped back to 10th. He fought back to 6th but by that time the leaders had quite a big gap and although he closed the gap a bit there was no chance of making any more progress. But, a great result - the best ever by a Malaysian driver.

Then the boring job of packing up the kart (and paying USD 125 for a new nose cone to replace the one he'd used which was slightly damaged), a McDonalds to celebrate and back to the apartment to collapse.


Sunday 12th

We drove to Dahab (about 150km away) and explored there with ATV's and some shopping in the market. We also drove for miles trying to find a place called the Blue Hole but when we got there we discovered it was a diving spot and couldn't see anything :-) Then back to Sharm for a proper celebration dinner.

Monday 13th

Flight to Cairo in the morning, then straight to the Cairo Musuem for a quick tour. Tutankhamen's mask in amazing! Back to the hotel briefly then a Nile cruise with the obligatory belly dancer - good dancer but not particularly pretty :-)


Tuesday 14th

Drove to Alexandria (250km!) for an explore there. The drive back was long and involved a 30min ++ stop on the motorway due to an accident up ahead. At one stage, I thought I was going to miss my flight. But, got back in time for a quick dinner, goodbyes to everyone (the rest of the gang where staying for another 4 days) and then to the airport for another 10 hours of hell on an aeroplane.

Wednesday 15th

Back in KL. Yeah!!! It's raining!!!

Two weeks of hell and unreal success....

What a crazy couple of weeks I've had. Most of it has felt like hell while it was happening but the endings have been great so I guess it was worth it. It's probably easier to explain it in three different groups of activities:

John vs Malaysian Immigration

As most of you know, I'm in the middle of applying for the Malaysian "silver hair" programme - called Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H for short). On the face of it, it's a simple simple process for someone in my position and shouldn't take long. However, it's taking forever - maybe because I've got a crap agent. Anyway, I made a very big mistake a few weeks ago and allowed my 90 day visitors visa to lapse so I was in Malaysia "illegally". My agent told me it was no problem and he'd sorted it out with immigration and all I had to do was go down to their offices, pay a small fine and they'd give me an extension.

So, last Tuesday I happily went off to Malaysian Immigration with the expectation everytthing would be sorted out within an hour or two. What I discovered was 1) My agent is crap (see above) and 2) Malaysian immigration have taken British bureaucracy and perfected it to ensure everything happens as slowly as possible. To cut an extremely long and frustrating story short, at 4:30pm (having been there since 8:00am!) my agent told me that I'd need to go back the next day (but everything was sorted out this time and it would be OK).

Wednesday morning bright and early (7:30am) I was at the offices again. It actually wasn't so bad - the process only took just over 2 hours but the results was a rm1000 fine and a 7 day extension to my visa and a warning that I must leave the country and return to the UK before I'd be allowed back!

At this stage I decided that I needed to play the game properly and brought some friends in on the act. So, the following monday Jeff (Nabil's dad) and I went to Immigration together - Jeff armed with a name of someone high up in Immigration that he got from the Sports Minister. We went to the top floor offices (much nicer than the ones I hung about at the previous week) and meet "the man". He was pretty helpful - he said as long as we got a note from the Sports ministry about the work I do with them in karting then I could go to Singapore and come straight back without a problem and get another 90 days.

A quick trip to KBS (the Sports ministry) later I had the letter and on Wednesday made a quick trip to Singapore so I'm legal again.

So, the moral of the stroy is:

1) My MM2H agent is crap
2) If you know someone, use their knowledge and influence

Red/White Rotax Invitational Race

Spanning the Immigration saga, we've also had the small matter of the Rotax invitational to deal with. We started the week discovering that 2 engines our customers had which were supplied by their previous team were illegal so we had to buy 2 new engines for them. As the engine we'd bought for Nabil also came from the same source, we decided to not take any chances and also scrap that one and buy a new engine for Nabil as well. Much running around later, we arrived at Sepang on Thursday with 6 karts, 3 partially run-in engines and 2 drivers missing because of schooling.
Just to make things a bit more fun, our Australian guest driver - Macauley Jones - seized his engine in the afternoon so we had a buy another one and run it in at Elite during the night (the mechanics went home at 1am!)
Friday was a tricky day. Apart from Nabil - who was flying and easily the fastest - everyone in the team was struggling for various reasons. We got 2 of cadets - Daim and James - going pretty well only to discover that we'd miscalculated their weights and they had been running underweight and so their times weren't really representative.
The racedays of Saturday and Sunday were really stressful for all sorts of reasons. Our main customers struggled. Daim and James were both reasonably fast but Daim in particularly seemed to get hit by almost every kart on the track and both ended up with pretty mediocre results. Macauley had similar experiences but suddenly found extremely good pace at the start of the final on a damp track and zoomed up from 12th to 3rd after about 5 laps. But, he was pushing a bit too hard and crashed when he really looked capable of winning. Ron had one of the new engines and I don't think it got run in properly until the pre-final. But, he drove a great race in the final to finish 9th and 3rd Malaysian - a truly awesome results considering his experience and the fact we'd done 5 or so engine changes for him in a week!
Now the good news. Zarul qualified 23rd in the cadets with a kart that was build from bits and pieces of other peoples equipment. He moved up into the top 10 in both the heats and then drove a great pre-final to finish 3rd. In the final he chased and harried the 2 Brazialian boys (in much faster karts than his) and got a fantastic 2nd place on the road. This later became 1st when the boy who won was disqualified for using coolant (which is strictly against the regulations).
Nabil had a near perfect weekend. He qualifed on pole and won both heats and the pre-final convincingly.  The final was tricky - the track was wet but it had stopped raining. So Nabil and everyone apart from one Australian boy used slick tyres. In the early stages Nabil really struggled, dropping back to 6th place. As the track dried, the kart started to perform better and Nabil flew past all the other slick runners but the boy on wets was too far ahead (at one stage a 35 sec lead which Nabil cut to 12 secs at the end) so Nabil had to settle for 2nd. But, that ALSO turned into 1st when the Australian boy was disqualified for having a modifed engine (using home made rather than original gaskets).

So, GP Racing Asia takes 2 wins from 3 races in the biggest kart event in Asia for 5 years - a totally awesome result.

The moral of this story:
1) With the right drivers, standard but well prepared engines are good enough to win.
2) Cheats get caught

Nabil tries out F-BMW

Not much stress on this one apart from trying to get it organised and, in particular, sorting out the financial part. It's no secret that we're trying to get Nabil into the F-BMW Pacific series next year. This week he tested for one of the top teams at Sepang and came through with flying colours. We expected the team to be reasonably none committal in their report to us and the (potential) sponsor but they were extremely happy with his performance. The most telling part of the report is that with a decent amount of pre-season testing, they expect him to challenge for the championship next year - an amazing statement about someone who had never even sat in a single seater until 4 days ago.

What to do on Sunday evenings?

For the next few months, I'm going to be at a loose end on Sunday evenings. The Grand Prix season is finished and I just get depressed/frustrated/angry watching Liverpool play football now.

On the bright side, it's been a good season for Formula 1 (apart from all the politics of course). A "new" team wins (I'd love to have heard the conversation at Honda after the 1st GP!), a new world champion and lots of different cars/drivers competitive at different races. Next year should be good as well - new combinations at most of the teams, 3 new teams (Go Lotus! and make Jim Clark proud) and new drivers on the grid.

What does worry me is what's going to happen with the new "no-refuelling" rule. I suspect that at the beginning of the races, everyone will just trundle around burning off fuel. Cars with a heavy fuel load don't handle so well and so the overtaking problem is going to be even worse than ever. It seems weird to me that nothing serious is being done to resolve that problem - each rule change supposedly to reduce aerodynamics just makes the designers work harder to get the downforce back and makes the cars even more dependent on a clean airflow. I have a simple solution - start each GP in reverse championship order. That will force the faster cars to pass the slower ones and change the design parameters - instead of building cars that go like bullets in qualifying so that they don't need to overtake anyone, the designers would need to build something that was capable of overtaking. They are EXTREMELY clever people and would find a way. Virtually all the best GPs over the last few years have been ones where the starting positions got mixed up in some way so let's do it every race :-)

Anyway, enough of that, I need to get back to the TV guide to see if there's anything on to watch on sunday....