A Very Wet Return to Oulton Park

(This was originally posted to patreon.com/dannydc2 on 19th September 2025)

 Now then!

It's been a while since we had a race report, this being only the 3rd event I've entered this year making it the quietest season since I got into this stuff a few years ago. Today was a very last minute thing by any measure. I've been having a few delays and sad times working on the DC2/M3 over the past few weeks, and after seeing the MR2s were at Oulton Park this weekend man maths suggested that I should get an entry in. 

Fortunately Rogue Motorsport had a spare car, but this was Thursday, and the cars were leaving that night to go to the track. There wasn't a lot of time to prepare, or order new tyres etc, but it was going to be possible. I figured it'd be better to go and do something than spend another weekend moping about in the barn, even if it wasn't going to be perfect. 

When I arrived to track this morning it was wet, but my weather app was telling me it would dry up after the morning. That was very much incorrect. It was raining all day, so badly that towards the end of the day they actually cancelled the event, fortunately after both my races. 

We were the first cars out for qualifying, and I went out right at the back of the field due to having the lowest championship points. This was a gift though, I had tons of space and barely saw another soul whilst out there. The track was wet, but it didn't seem too bad. As you'll know I've been driving my MR2 a lot this year but building that car freed me from the shackles of the MR2 Championship regulations. To keep things fair and affordable, the regulated tyre is the Toyo R888r. A half decent tyre in the dry, but it is not your friend in the wet. I chose to go out with the rear roll bar disconnected, and relatively high tyre pressures, but I was feeling confident. Racing in the wet is always a good time.

I focused on wet lines, carried as much speed as I dared, and finished qualifying satisfied that I'd done my best. The timekeepers disagreed though. Similar to Brands Hatch at the start of the year, I was way off the pace. I qualified 9th from 22, 5 seconds from the front. 

5 seconds! That's a lot. I distinctly remember finishing qualifying thinking that I'd really driven well, quickly, and would be enjoying a race up near the front. I was in the top half, but barely even top 10. There were a few small issues with the car, the wipers broke half way through the session but luckily I wasn't following anyone so didn't really need them. The car had a bit of a vibration on the brakes but that seems to just be a feature of this as I've felt the same when driving it before, but there was nothing that suggested anything other than I was to blame for the lack of pace. Balls 

Assembling for race 1 only an hour or so after, it was still raining but not too heavily. Thankfully wipers had been fixed, but new problems popped up. I noticed in the assembly area that my ABS light was on. A very scary sight on the Mk3 MR2. They all have ABS, and when building my first race car I put the system on a switch so I could disable it at will. I never hit that switch once whilst racing the old car, the ABS always stayed on. The braking feels awful without the ABS. Simply disabling the ABS electronically without any mechanical changes, such as rerouting lines or fitting proportioning valves, is not a great feeling. When testing this on the old racecar I kept locking the rear brakes, the car seemed to have a bias that way when braking with the ABS disabled. It wasn't good.

So to see that light as you're waiting to go race in the rain. It's not ideal. I did the only thing I could, cycled the ignition and hoped with everything I had that this would solve the problem.

This was when the key snapped off in the barrel, in the off position too. The key snapped off, in the barrel. Can you believe that? 

Luckily one of the Rogue mechanics was nearby and managed to get the car online again, but the key was toast, so if I had a spin, or caused the rear wheels to lock and stalled the engine, I wouldn't be able to restart it. Great!

To add insult to injury after restarting the car, the ABS light stayed illuminated. Of course this didn't mean that I didn't have ABS, only that the car detected a problem with the system, and that I might not have it. On the formation lap I tested this by braking heavily into a corner (making sure nothing was in front of me!) and one of the wheels locked up without too much effort. We definitely didn't have any ABS. 

Anyway I've raced plenty of cars before without ABS since the o.g MR2 days so I figured I'd just drive and see what happened. I certainly wasn't going to be retiring anyway. Starting 9th I got a great launch, only to then experience a new problem! The car started to bog down at high RPM, intermittently, but exiting turn 1, and then turn 2, the car spluttered just enough to make sure that no progress would be made, and no initial battles were won. 

Race 1 went on like that for 15 minutes. I was behind a mk2 MR2, covering me in spray which my now functional wipers took care of, but I wasn't able to attack into corners with having little faith of my stopping power, and then any revs over around 6k were met with a splutter. I finished 8th, but only because one of the front runners had a spin. Compared to the front runners I was once again 5 seconds off the pace. 

It was still fun, I enjoyed it, but I was obviously a little bit annoyed that the car had developed 2x new problems. The cause of the splutter was a good one! Any guesses?

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If you guessed "water in the air filter", you are correct! It seems the duct from the air filter had been lost at some point. Other people have rented this car since I drove it at Brands Hatch in April, and with basically no real time to prepare the car, it seems this was missed. So the reason the car was choking up at high RPM was because it was unable to compress the water that firing into the air filter from the rear left tyre. Stay hydrated! The airfilter was dried out, and repositioned to avoid this, an easy fix in the end. Probably cleaned the valves up too!

The ABS was a bigger problem though. The scan tool showed activity from the rear left wheel speed sensor, but was also reporting a fault for that sensor. Very strange. Rogue changed the hub anyway to see if that fixed it, but no, same story. How can a wheel speed sensor both work and not work at the same time? Ask Toyota. Very strange to have the ECU seeing this data, but also not seeing it. 

In race 2 I'd be starting 9th again based on my race 1 lap time. 22 cars were still on the field, miraculously we'd not lost any cars in qualifying or race 1 despite the conditions. Race 2 was a lot wetter though. The weather had intensified in the afternoon and the skies were darker. 

Again I got a half decent launch, and this time no spluttering. I made a place up into turn 1 then spent most of the race battling with a couple of cars. The car felt a lot better with the air filter fixed. I had a lot more straight line speed and despite the weather being worse, I'd gotten used to the brakes. I was able to just about keep pace with a pair of fast drivers as you can see in the attached clip. I didn't have the best grip in the world overall, some fresher boots would have been nice, but I definitely had fun. 

I crossed the line in 8th, but this time I was only 2 seconds off the pace which was slightly heartwarming. Could more confidence on the brakes, fresher tyres, and some setup changes have got me 2s? Possibly. Was the air filter also holding me back in qualifying but I just didn't notice? I'd hope not. It was pretty obvious in race 1 what was happening, but the data would suggest something wasn't quite right. 

Today told me exactly what the race in this car at Croft year told me, and what the race earlier this year at Brands Hatch told me. If you want to be competitive in this series, you've got to take it seriously. Has it made me want to build another MR2 Championship car? That's undeniable. The event was live streamed today and if you're not up the front you're not getting on that. Not very good for content scraping the top 10. 

The car was against me today, but just turning up with no prep and hoping to be competitive wasn't realistic. I did feel good after qualifying though before reality kicked in. 

I'm not sure if this will be my last race of the year. There are opportunities to do some other stuff, but really want to get the DC2/M3 on the road, the ringtool MR2 to surpass 100 laps for the season, and maybe even some videos edited. 

Take it easy 

Dan