Silver Ring Rally July 2007

John Burton Reports.

The day started off at 4 am for me, and many others travelling to Silverstone instead of staying at nearby travel lodges. First, mini magazine writer Jeff Ruggles had to find my house before picking up Daryl, then on to Newmarket to meet up with a Bury mini club member called Simon and his friend. Apart from Jeff missing a turning to my house due to road works on the A14 there were no problems. Once we arrived at the Silverstone circuit we took the opportunity to refuel and fit a CB radio borrowed from another runner, and to have a cheeky breakfast from Maccy D's much to the disgust of many other runners that didn't have chance for breakfast.

The two laps of Silverstone was pretty much uneventful apart from the sports pack cooper facing me with his high beams on after he spun out in the wet conditions. There was so many minis on the track it could have been very dangerous to do a quick lap so most took it easy. When we had all parked up the run packs were given out and stickers applied to cars. Before the stickers were properly smoothed down we were off to our next stop, Eastern docks, at Dover to catch the ferry to Dunkirk. We had a pleasant crossing, but with hardly any time to adjust to solid ground we were back in the minis to drive to our hotel for the night, this was a Etap hotel (very basic) after a night of drinking cheep ferry booze and a dodgy pizza everyone tried to get some sleep.

Everyone was up early the next morning to drive to the Nurburg camp site many Kilometres away. People set up their tents and gazebos and either spent the rest of the day at the site or like us driving to various look out spots around the nurburgring. Up early again, this time to listen to another drivers briefing before heading to the ring for what turned out to be another wet lap. There were a lot more spins this time including the only ERA turbo in the group (going slower than I was!) Due to the weather many people took the opportunity to look around the museum. Whilst we looked for more entertaining corners to watch yet more spins. The evening was opened with a BBQ and a BAR plus lots of drinking with many people gathering around the camp fire until going to bed at silly O'clock (3/4am)

Today we could all have a bit of a lay in, but many people headed off to have a few more laps of the ring (19 euros a lap) as I was so excited by having a dry lap we totally forgot about timing it, but it felt good. As Daryl was my CO-driver we decided that it was a good time for him to have a drive. I couldn't watch so went out in someone else's mini while Simon went as passenger in mine. Daryl and Simon decided to play a trick on me at this point. There was a down hill slope from the car park to where all the minis were parked. Daryl was still in the driver's seat but Simon was behind the car pushing it. I'm sure you can imagine the thoughts in my head, as I walked towards them Daryl seemed to look nervous, then as I got to my car he started it and drove off laughing! I got my own back on him very soon afterwards. I had taken the grill off to allow more air into the engine bay, but Daryl didn't know this. As I walked around the car I asked him if he had seen or heard the grill fall off, he didn't understand as he looked at the front of the car he went very white, started to apologise A LOT and started to worry about the grill causing a crash on the ring. The police get involved and it can become very expensive and they would have tried to track down the car the grill it had fallen off of. It was at this time that I picked the grill off the grass hidden behind another mini and Daryl called me names unprintable on this website. That will teach him!

This time not many people went onto the ring, the ones that did ended up with Ring Rash! Hitting the Armco or getting damaged through spinning out. 16 of the runners including Daryl and myself went go carting in an indoor arena. Once again there was more drinking this evening around the camp fire that I had organised. This morning we had to be leaving the site to head back to the Etap hotel we had stayed at previously, so nothing to do apart from drive around, although one mini that we picked up in our group developed problems. It was running badly and losing power. His problem was he had a standard 998 trying to keep up to the rest of the group the one that had the smallest engine was me, a stage 1, 1275cc that was running brilliantly, keeping up and sometimes over taking 1380's. Many miles later his journey seemed to be over, his engine had died. He was towed to the Etap which by this point was 30 km away. Once there the many mini enthusiasts had diagnosed the problem as a head gasket failure, on closer inspection the block and head had burnt away. Leaving a hole between them of around 7 mm. luckily some one had quick steel and a spare head gasket from the spares pack supplied by mini mine. The steel was moulded into shape left to harden a little and the head torqued down.

Next morning we had a trip to the SPA circuit, this was a bit of a let down as we were bunched by several pace cars for the two laps the most I saw on my speedo was 40 mph. after this slightly disappointing section it was back in the minis to head back to Dunkirk for group photos and good byes on the ferry.

Still wondering about the blown head gasket fixed with quick steel? He drove it all the way to the ferry and all the way home with no problems.......John

Thank's for your report John. For you folks out there another batch of piccies as promised...........Editor

Two movie clips to start off with - 1.6Mb & 1.9Mb - more to follow soon."Enjoy"