The Narconon(R) UK Race Team just had a race meeting at Brands Hatch last weekend (23-24th April) and it turned out to be extremely successful!

It all started on Friday lunch time while testing at Brands Hatch UK when the cam belt slipped on car number 140 (Niki’s car). The engine wouldn’t start again, and the weekend was looking critical. The engine had NO compression what so ever. On the other hand, car number 139 (JJ’s car) was running quite well and managed to get through a whole day of testing.

On Saturday Hans (his father) and Niki went to Colin Stancombe (a very experienced engineer who himself raced Fords for over 20 years) to get the engine sorted out. This took 8 hours and the outcome was a smooth running engine. This included grinding valves, replacing the head gasket, and making sure the cam belt is connected in the correct way. This was highly educational and great practise in mechanical engineering. Meanwhile, JJ was busy at Brands Hatch’s Paddock fixing his own car. It needed a new exhaust piece, new fire extinguisher and some other vital parts, so that it could pass scrutineering.

Sunday…
Signing-in at 7:45am.
Srutineering at 8:30am (making sure the all the cars are complying with the regulations).
Practice/Qualifying session 10:00am-10:45am.
This went quite successful. JJ qualified 10th in the grid for Heat B (out of 32 entries), and Niki qualified 7th for Heat B (also out of 32 entries). By the way, there was a staggering amount of 92 entries for our series!

While JJ and Niki were on the grid, the commentator talked about Narconon(R) UK and about the “two young boys” which “DRIVE-AGAINST-DRUGS”. This was infront of hundreds maybe 1000 people. This was very successful, and the Narconon(R) Race Team fans loved it!

The race was extreme… very extreme indeed…
JJ, starting 10th, passed various cars through-out the race to place 7th. He also had a brilliant start! Unfortunately JJ was running the wrong gearbox set-up.
Niki started off 7th and had a horribly start and dropped back to 10th. Nevertheless, one lap later he was 7th (by passing a silver XR2 and JJ). Then on the next lap he overtook 2 Suzuki Swifts at once by braking very very late. Niki was then into 5th. There was a 5 second gap between him and 4th. No one thought he could make. 3 laps later Niki overtook a Puegot 205 GTi to get into 4th place. 2 laps later he overtakes a Volkswagen Lupo GTi to get into 3rd place. 2 laps later he overtook a Puegot 106 to get into 2nd place. By now the commentator was going absolutely crazy “Lanik this, and Lanik that, and here is Lanik again the young 17 year old…” and so on. The Narconon(R) Race Team fans went crazy! 3 laps later, while Niki was still putting pressure on the driver infront, the driver made a mistake. He went into an uncontrolled slide and went off the track. Niki took the opportunity to overtake and went into 1st place, but suddenly disaster struck. The Puegot 106 (who had just been overtaken) suddenly swung back on the track with 70mph and hit Niki’s car on the front right; Niki was forced to retire from the race; the steering was useless. Nevertheless, the commentator was going crazy about everything that had just happened. Niki Lanik had the fastest lap in the race and also got awarded for “Driver of the Day”.

5 minutes later the race was over. It turned out, that the driver you had driven into Niki got a 10 second penalty, and thus only placed 5th in the race instead of first. Niki and JJ then got an interview with the world’s leading motorsport magazine, Autosport. This should be out in the beginning of May. Also, the Narconon(R) UK Race Team is getting a press release in the East Grinstead Courier and the East Grinstead Observer.

Our next race meeting is at Donington on the 14th and 15th of May. If any one would like to come, please e-mail us on narcononraceteam@hotmail.co.uk

On Sunday the 19th of June there will be a big race meeting at Brands Hatch again, and we are expecting many many fans! Aleast 50! The more support the team, the more successful and fun it will be!!!

The Team would like to thank all the sponsors and and companies for their great contribution:
Narconon(R) Hastings UK
hr:Watches
doompedPC
Japan Management
Inscape Productions
Greenfields School
Luxury Sign Design

If you would like to contribute to this good cause and to this Race Team in any way, just e-mail us!

Thanks.

Sincerely,
-Narconon(R) UK Race Team

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 2nd, 2005 at 9:32 pm and is filed under Race News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.