Nicole In Action

Although I have been able to find some photos of Nicole during her racing career I was never able to find any video. However, when trawling the Renault Sport forum recently I found a thread from one of the Renault Sport media guys who was keen to sell off some of the old Clio Cup DVDs that are produced every season but usually reserved for competitors and their sponsors.


I quickly ordered two of the disks. Deep within the several hours of coverage I found the clip I was looking for.

Unfortunately, Nicole was never a front runner so there is not much coverage of her, but finding just some of her in action was fantastic. Thanks to Renault Sport for allowing me to place this short clip on my blog.

Getting behind myself

I was originally hoping to keep this blog up to date as the year progressed, but due to other commitments and generally spending a lot of time working on Nicole (and driving her) I have gotten behind myself with the updates.

I hope to correct this and update the blog over the next few weeks, as I have lots of photos and videos from the trackdays I have attended this year.

I plan to place the trackday reports in other pages and link to them from the Trackday Reports links on the right hand side of this blog. This will keep the main page less cluttered for some of the other posts that I have planned.

Keep coming back to see how well I progress with the updates over the next few weeks.

Why "Nicole"?

You may have noticed that I refer to my Clio Cup as "Nicole", and you may wonder why.

Well, when the first Clio was introduced in the early 90s, the Renault TV advertising campaign featured a beautiful young French woman and her father. This mademoiselle was called "Nicole" and her long suffering father she referred to a "papa".

The campaign followed the ups and downs of the their various romances over the years, and culminated in Nicole finally getting married in 1998, at which point the adverts ended.

In memory of these ads, and many of you will remember them, my mate Carl decided to name the car Nicole. The name has stuck ever since, and how she wears the name on her bonnet.

Information on the Renault Ad campaign can be found here - http://www.jyanet.com/cap/1999/0601fe2a.htm

First Trackday - Oulton Park Jan 2007

The anticipation for the arrival of this day was immense. What I did not know was the set of circumstances that cruel fate would throw my way barely a few hours into the event which would turn the dream into a nightmare.

When I arrived at the circuit, I unloaded Nichole and warmed her up with a couple of laps up and down the carpark. I had never used the sequential gearbox previously so wanted to get some confidence in it before hitting the track.

With the car warmed, I parked her in the garage and went off for sign-on and the briefing session. On my return I decided to go out for a couple of sighting laps at the back of the group. Nothing fast, just a slow pace to let me get used to the car and to check that all was well.

This went OK, so I decided to get noise checked and head back out onto the track. All was going well, then on what was only my second ever lap it all started going horribly wrong.

Coming into the Knickerbrook chicane half way around the track, I pulled to the right to let a faster car pass. As I changed down the gearbox it started making a noise that did not sound very good, so I decided to slowly head back to the pits to check it over. Then, as I arrived into the pit lane, I changed into 1st gear - in which it decide to stick totally.

Thus ended my day after just two slow laps.

I was gutted, so put the car back on the trailer and left it there for the rest of the day, while I went and video'd some of my mates who had joined me on the day.

Tales of 2k repairs bills were ringing in my head for weeks after this while I worked out how/where to get this problem fixed. Some mates removed the box for me and one recommended a Hewland gearbox guy (John Pickford) to take a look at the box.

So, I take the box down to his base at Silverstone and a week later I get the diagnosis. A couple of bolts had (somehow) fallen out of the crownwheel in the box and rattled around in there till they managed to lock the mechanism. You can see the bolts in this picture.

Luckily (very luckily indeed) they had not damaged any other parts of the gearbox, and so after some new bolts, a good clean and a thorough check over, the box was ready to be re-fitted.

The car and gearbox were re-united at a local Clio specialist - YozzaSport. I wanted a company to maintain the car going forward, and after visiting their facility in Eccleshall near Stoke on Trent, I thought they were ideal.

So, Nicole was soon back to full fitness and ready for her next Trackday, at the new Angelsey circuit in June 2007.

Where "Nichole" Lives

I collected Nichole on a very wet and windy January day from SRE's base in Glasgow, with the assistance of a SMACS mate. This was the second time I had completed the journey, the first was to view and secure the car the previous November.

Between the November and the collection date I spend a great deal of time trying to find some storage for the Clio, but this turned out to be much harder than I had originally expected.

The priority was somewhere local and ideally where I could store the car and trailer together, but I found this type of storage almost impossible to find. Those I did find were either for outdoor storage or were very oversubscribed.

At the point of collecting the car I was still without dry storage, so a SMACS mate offered use of his garage for the interim.

So I continued to search and I finally found a local company that offered dry storage in ex-shipping containers.

The hope was that a large container would take both the car and trailer, but when we sized it up there was no way of get the trailer into the container with the car in place.

The comprimise was to go for a smaller box to store the car only, which means putting it on and off the trailer each time I need it but that turned out not so bad. By a bit of luck, the container that was available has a floor height that is exactly the same as the trailer, so it is a simple case of reversing up to the front of the box and pushing/pulling the car on/off.

Luckily this is a one man operation, and reasonably straight forward without the need for a winch etc. Unfortunately the trailer has to live on my driveway, much to the annoyance of my wife, but this is a small price that she has to pay.

Race History of the car

I purchased the car from S.R.E. Motorsport in Paisley, Glasgow in January 2007. SRE is a father/son outfit running a number of Clio's in the championship, including one for Barry Sime who is the son part of SRE.

The car I purchased was that used by Barry in the 2004 series, giving him some good result and several visits to the podium. I believe the car was then used in the Clio Winter series, and then in 2005 but only at the Oulton Park round where it was used as a substitute car for Neil Waterworth.

I received the car as shown in the photo on the right below with full Waterworth livery. The photo on the left is of the car in 2004 with Barry Sime at the wheel.

Due to the lack of a paying driver the car did not race in 2006, so instead SRE rented out to various Renault dealers in the Glasgow area for display in their showrooms.

New Clio Cup Experience Blog

Welcome to the new Clio Cup Experience blog.

Back at the begining of January I purchased an ex-Clio Cup race car to use as a trackday car. This blog is intended to describe my experiences with the car and also provide some information of the car and how it performs on the track.

Unfortunately I am a little behind on the blog, this being June, but I hope to catch up over next few weeks and also provide some information and photos of the car itself.

As a taster, here is a shot of the car during a recent trackday at the newly re-developed Ty Croes Circuit in Anglesey.

Thanks
Dai