Hi and firstly I may introduce myself to everyone reading this. My name is William Kellett and this season I'm competing in the MicksGarage Future Classics Series in a Nissan Micra. Probably should include some background to how I ended up building a car for this series in the first place.
Having grown up in a motorsport family with my father, uncle and great uncle all competing successfully in various forms of circuit racing it was always inevitable I would join in the fun some day. After building a Micra for the Junior Rallycross series and competing in sprints to gain experience of driving, I made my debut at the end of 2014 and had a mixed set of results with a 2nd 3rd and the embarrassment of ending up on my side at Rallycross 3 in one heat. 2015 was meant to be an assault on the championship but after several date clashes with my dad's U.K Fiesta Championship it left me missing 3 rounds and ending up 3rd in the championship.
Around the end of October a decision had to be made on the plans for 2016. The two options was to either stay in Rallycross or move into circuit racing as I would turn 16 in March. The somewhat physical nature of Rallycross and the crisis of entrys sort of made my mind up to move away from it as the last thing you want in the week before a race is whether the event would run or not.
With part 1 of the plan sorted, Part 2 was to pick a championship. Fiesta racing was out straight away too much blatant cheating and panel bashing to be worthwhile. ITCC needed a budget far in excess of ours and then we decided on the Future Classics. With my car being first built in 1993 it fits in perfect with the regs. Every rule is there to make it low cost and affordable to everyone.
With that done it was time to look at the car itself and what needed to be changed. First to go would be the engine as 998cc would simply not cut it at all. In future classics there is basically two ways to get near the time. 1: Go for power and hope the handling of your car is just enough to keep you from breaking it. 2: Go for handling and lightweight and with the car flying through the twisty bits the engine needs limited power to make it competitive. Option 2 was much less time consuming and a lot better for the budget.
After the final Rallycross the car was stripped to a shell with everything taken out and sorted through. Then we went in search of a better engine. After a scout on DoneDeal a 1300 Micra was found and 700 quid later it was sitting in the garage. It looked a state but had the right engine plus a racing flywheel and racing manifold so it was money well spent. The 1300 unit was stripped and the head sent to KGP in Donegal to work their magic.
Initially we were going to keep the Rallycross suspension but they are very rare and went out of production years ago. A phone call from a guy in Galway building a car who needed them ended up owning them and the money was used to buy a set of Gaz Coilovers for the car. The next thing to do was to lighten the shell as much as possible so any excess metal, plastic or rubber was coming out. After many angle grinder discs and a few hours work everything was out and the car a few kilos lighter. The gearbox was sent off to Mr Gearbox Mr Clutch to have different ratios more suited to Mondello fitted so that the car could use all of its power as it will need it all to be up the front.
The shell was then sent to the bodyshop to be fixed up and repainted in its new colours which brings us back to the time of writing this blog. It's a long story to get this far but with 32 days to go and the car coming back from paint in the next 5 days it's time for the long awaited rebuild.
William.
Image credit James Foley & Brian Walsh
