It's been a while since the Pegasus Sprint now, but that 2nd place has really got me fired up for the new season. I think it's been more motivational than if I'd won! II've made the step up and entered the 2009 Association of South-West Motor Clubs (ASWMC) Sprint Championship, the first event of which is the Great Western Sprint at Castle Combe, organised by my home club, Bristol MC. The regs were published over the valentines day weekend and I'm intending to send them today, so I'm hoping that I'll get an entry and a good start to the season. The Great Western isn't one of the events I did last year, but it's very unusual in that the course is nearly 2 whole laps of the Castle Combe circuit, and so it is well over 3 miles long! The weather last year was apparently absolutely awful, but as always at 'Combe the speeds were high, the A3 class winner coming in at 188.97seconds in a Renault Clio 182 - an average speed of about 63mph, not bad considering the weather! My car has passed it's 2009 MOT, so is physically capable of competing, but there are some upgrades to go on first, as I promised last year.

I still think that the car, with it's individual throttle bodies, has enough power to get close to the front of the class standings at most circuits, and in my opinion the standard brakes are sufficient for sprints, as they never really get hot enough over the space of a couple of laps to require uprating. The EBC Yellow Pads from last year have more than 50% remaining on them and still feel at the top of their game, so that has at least saved me a pre-season expense. I would like to change them for a pad which requires a little less heat to be at optimum, such as a mintex 1144, but because of the exceptionally long nature of the Great Western sprint which starts the season (a run is nearly three and a half miles!), I'll be keeping with the yellows for this event at least for their longevity.

So with the power issue taken care of by the previous owner, and the brakes looking ok, I turned towards the 'missing link' - the tyres and suspension. This was actually a difficult choice, because the VX220 is such a sweet handling car in it's standard trim, that I almost didn't want to make changes. I really think that the standard tyre/suspension setup is very good for road use and takes some beating, but in terms of the ultimate grip levels that are so important in sprinting, there was a lot of room for improvement. With this in mind I took the first step of upgrading the wheels to 16in. front and 17in. rear Team-Dynamics pro-race 1.2's. These wheel sizes match the standard fit of the track-biased VXR220, and allow the fitment of list 1B (semi-slick trackday spec.) tyres - I've chosen Toyo R888's as I feel they offer better valuse than Yokohama AO48's. I'd also heard that R888's were a better tyre in damp conditions to the Yoko's, and from initial road-driving, even in water from melted snow in very cold conditions, the 888's seem to be perfectly tractable as long as there is no deep standing water. On track I would think that this will allow me to use them from full dry conditions right through to probably 90% wet weather conditions - the guys who switched to 1B tyres for the last run at the 2008 Llandow sprint improved by nearly 5 seconds despite it still being very wet. The good thing about having the 888's on a new set of wheels is that I still have my old set, complete with Bridgestones, which I intend to take to any sprint where the weather looks anything other than fully dry all day, so that I can make the most of the cars proven wet-weather handling on these tyres.

The MAJOR upgrade of the car though is going to be the fitment of GAZ adjustable dampers, which allow for damper and ride-height adjustment. I've already bought these, and intend on fitting them this week, allowing about 6 weeks road use to get the set-up correct. The dampers have pretty stiff springs on them but there's still the option of changing them to harder, or softer as I go on, depending on what the set up of the car is like. Unlike some of the cars at the sprints, I am perhaps at a slight disadvantage because I want to keep the car useable on the road, whereas some people trailer their car to and from events and some of the cars just look like full on race-cars!! Pics and reports will be posted after the new suspensions on and before the next event.