Proxy Report -Bruce

The first and probably last ever Caterham proxy was conducted after the latest round at the Bat Florio Hill Climb. 

The majority of drivers are still coming to terms with the tricky layout so Bruce offered to run a proxy to see how the cars performed at the hands of an experienced maestro.
Kicking off the event was Bruce who was the previous round winner no doubt thanks to the home track advantage. Unfortunately the front tyres decided to delaminate and in typical fashion Bruce patched them up with some good old super glue.  The wonky tyres didn’t help the handling and then the motor decided to slow up a fair bit resulting in an average sort of run. 

Next up Callan’s yellow beastie with the noisy Hollinger gearbox improved on Bruce’s time with a good run. 

Dave Bantoft’s thing was next and turned out to be reasonably swift despite feeling sluggish – most of the herbs are at high throttle making it a little tricky to drive – but the good handling off-set this. 

JB’s car was as usual very well sorted – just a little tricky to handle. 

Phil’s Caterham was very nice to drive and the first car to get close to the magic (for these cars) 13 second mark.  No surprise that Phil ended up on the podium.

Next up was Rhys’s spare car. This turned out to be very lively and superior to Rhys’s usual entry.  The car is fairly heavy and has very narrow tyres but was a pleasant surprise.

Rob followed Rhys in his “rattler”.  Rob’s car is fairly quick but is lacking in a little finesse. 

First car to dip into the 13’s was Dave Gray – what a nice car.  Dave would have won except for the car struggling on one of the corners near the top.  But what a nice car – first to dip into the 13’s. 

Adrian’s car was a little slow to start with but improved as the heat went on.  It doesn’t “free wheel” as well as some of the others so maybe the better times in the latter part was due more to Bruce having a bit more of a go. 

Rhys’s usual entry was next up and was quite difficult to drive – it just felt tight although having said that it is a reasonably quick car. 

And to top off this momentous event was Thomas.  What a sweet handling car – we should all send our cars to Tom for tuning – he has got it nailed!  It was fairly easy to dip into the 13’s and then cruise around in the low 14’s – we’ll be watching Tom next time round at the Bat Florio!  All in all an interesting experience with the results being fairly close.