Crude News August
Back with a bang!
Last Saturday marked the return of racing for Anders after a quarter of a century (25 years) away, since the 2000 season in TVR Tuscans. The chosen event was the 4-hour FunCup race at Silverstone National in the #22 car, one of the earlier FunCup builds. Axel, Anders’ son, who also works in the business and competes in drifting, had not raced since he raced Junior Rotax 20 years earlier…. To help us, we brought in professional racer and old friend Phil Keen, who also won the Sunoco Whelen Challenge, and EDF ran the car for us.
After testing, Anders and Axel got up to speed quickly with Phil’s help. The race grid is drawn from a hat, and we were fortunate to line up sixth out of 26 cars. Our strategy was for Phil to start, Anders and Axel to do two stints each, and Phil to bring the car home.
As expected, Phil got into the lead within a couple of laps. Car #246, also run by EDF, and the #1 championship contender joined the fight, and the three of us pulled away. When Anders jumped in, we lost time with a slow driver change, but both Anders and Axel drove strongly and held position in the top five.
In Anders’ second stint, his pace was excellent. Despite losing time in the pits, we were still close to the lead group in fifth position. He was so excited to be back racing that he didn’t notice when the alternator belt came off twenty minutes into his stint and that the oil and water temperatures were rising fast, causing the engine to overheat and lose power (which Anders first thought was due to running out of fuel), before finally grounding to a spectacular halt in a massive cloud of smoke.
Despite the retirement, the team had a fantastic time in a very friendly but ultra-competitive championship. We’ll miss Donington due to the Goodwood Revival but will return for the Oulton Park finale at the end of October – with much faster driver changes!
n 2002, we noticed that British F3, to which we were supplying a control fuel, was using a lot of brake fluid. We decided to see if we could introduce a strong alternative to what they were using. As luck would have it, we discovered who made the brake fluid used in F1 and convinced the company that we could sell a lot of their product – hence the introduction of the R600+ later that year.
Immediately it was a success: most of the F3 grid switched to the R600+, as did many BTCC, British GT, and numerous other race teams. We also use this brake fluid in our own endurance FunCup race car.
The formulation remains the same as it was in 2002, and it is still our best-selling brake fluid – if’s not broken don’t fix it springs to mind!
Don’t forget, you get a 15% discount on this brake fluid when you buy race fuels from us.
