Mamba Motorsport - Donington Race Report Page

750MC Race Meeting - Donington Park

the Mamba C23R finishes strongly

Author: Dave
Editor: Dave
Date: 18 September 2006

This was a return to the Donington circuit that had seen several successes for the Mamba C23R.

Donington Park held a full 750MC meeting on Sunday 17th September including round 9 of the Sports Racing and GT Challenge. This was a double-length race being 28 minutes duration plus one lap.

The Mamba C23R, that enduring Lotus 23 replica, was returning to the circuit that favoured the power cars but also offers something for the the more nimble cars such as the C23R.

The day began with one of the first fogs of autumn but this did not inconvenience things, as practice was not until 11:00, by which time it had lifted. The only inconvenience of the morning being the lengthy queues caused by a delayed start to srutineering. As usual the car had been prepared in advance of arriving at the circuit and so the pre-race activities were limited to the normal series of cursory checks.

For this event we were trying a slightly different tyre set-up as the weather was promising to be hot and the duration of the race was long.

Picture Copyright Mamba Motorsport 2006

Due to the late scrutineering the qualifying session was crowded from the start and as the set-up had been changed the initial laps were of necessity more conservative than usual. The combination of these factors resulted in the C23R qualifying in 9th position, in amongst its main class B rivals, the Crossles.

Ideally we would have loved to be further up the grid but were relatively happy with this position.

The weather turned out to be a real 'belter' in the afternoon and so the race started under clear blue skies, although the cars had been held for an extended period in the collecting area as the previous race had been red-flagged and subsequently re-run.
As usual the start and first corner are always likely to be more risky than the rest of the race and this one turned out to be no exception, with the Mamba C23 being nudged off the inside of the circuit into the first corner.
Fortunately Ken's vast experience came to the rescue and enabled him to recover and carry on racing beyond the first lap, the damage to the car was slight and only involved one corner!
The old adage that 'no race is won on the first corner' really should be more to the fore in some driver's minds.

The race settled down with Ken and the C23 competing strongly at the head of Class B and exchanging places with a couple of Crossles - once again this series providing really competitive and enjoyable racing.
Midway through the race, an incident occurred that cost Ken 3 places, the C23 span on the exit of Coppice onto the Dunlop straight either on some oil or debris from a previous incident.
Having confirmed that the incident was caused by external forces, Ken picked up the pace again and proceeded to move back up the field again to finish in 7th place overall and 4th in Class, only about 20 seconds behind the 3rd placed man.

after a quick line through Goddard's Chicane . . .

. . . C23 makes up places into Redgate

At the end of the day Ken and the Mamba C23 finished off the podium in 4th place after a very competitive meeting complete with a racing incident on the first corner, a spin mid-way through the race and a storming finish with Ken posting his fastest lap at the end of the race.

All in all not on the podium, but highly competitive and enjoyable.