Team Chicken win again

Posted: 26/06/2019

Team Chicken were out again last weekend at the Castle Combe race track. The latest report from Mr Broadbent is below:

The team travelled to the outskirts of Wiltshire with high hopes, especially after our last race, as we had now sorted all wheel issues, added the new more efficient motor and sorted a few aspects of the car that had come up because of the previous MOT.

This time around, it was nice to see that the weather conditions were perfect with no wind, little cloud cover and a reasonable temperature. Practice saw all new drivers take to the circuit for one lap to gauge where the pit entry was and to experience the highs and lows of a very technical track.

The first race saw us on the third row of the grid with nearly fifty cars behind waiting to pounce on our newly fixed car, however this was not to be. The usual high-powered scratch built cars left fast but so did we…worryingly! Experience tells you that we may have over geared but we remained hopeful that this was not the case. Freya led the car out and after the first lap, we were in 8th place and 1st Kitcar, with arch rivals now 20 seconds behind.



As the laps piled on, we moved another 20 seconds in front per lap pulling away as the miles accumulated. We came in for the first pit stop and made an easy transition with our second driver Harrison, who kept us in first place kit car and way up overall. The next pit stop was not as easy, as another school had broken down in the pit lane and we needed to wait for their removal from the area. This cost us just over 60 seconds. However, even with this set back, Ollie continued to pull away and eventually ended up 5th overall and fastest Kitcar with a record (for us and possibly all Kitcars) of 38.51 miles. We were getting ever closer to that 40-mile mark, a target we never thought possible. Last year’s Castle Combe distance was 36.4. Marginal gains!



Due to us slowing down a little during the last handful of laps, we decided to gear down, and with other teams asking our strategy, thought it was better to be consistent and reasonably quick as opposed to fast and risky - besides we were very happy with our first race result. The other teams would then surely gear up in an attempt to catch us and so this should have been a close race. This time Callum started, powered his way into 8th place and tucked in behind some of the scratch built cars. The pit stops for Howard and Morgan were uneventful but fast. During the last five laps, our arch rival had a bad accident (no-one was hurt), which put them out of the final third and JRB over egged their car and it too started to fall off the pace after 60 minutes of the race. This left us to cruise for the rest of the race and after a slow finish on the last lap, we finished in 8th overall and top kit car. We added yet more silverware to the cabinet for fastest in our category and this win made it four trophies in two races. Not bad for a small team from Bromsgrove.



Our overall world ranking for the final now moves us from 29th to a truly outstanding 10th (at this stage last year we were 16th) and with 0.90 miles between us and 5th, this could end very well for Team Chicken at the world finals in October at Silverstone, which by the way, we have now qualified for.

I would like to thank all team members for their commitment: Polly D, Aggie W, Ollie W, Noah R, Howard G, Callum W, Morgan B, Harrison P and Freya T. We would also like to thank our fantastic assistant for the day, Mr Martin Heard who helped looked after our students and copious amounts of chicken-based equipment, before driving us back, thank you Martin.

As usual, I would also like to thank our fantastic sponsors for helping us this season, which includes NS Optimum, Classic Team Lotus, 4QD, PSW printing, Washford Finishing’s, Paul Mullan and The Arkwright Scholarship team.

Mr Broadbent