17/01/03 - Paul joins the team
Paul French joins the team, injecting valuable design and development resource. Initially, he'll be designing a new aero package for the front end, performing some remedial work on the front bodywork and developing a new rear diffuser to optimise the undercar air flow.
Some real progress at last.

7/01/02 - Pause
Adrian is going to stop procrastinating next year. Alledgedly.
Alternative arrangements for the bodywork are in hand.
In the meantime peruse the new Pics page which documents the development of the car.
We'll be testing as soon as we are happy with the new nose and front diffuser.

1/11/01 - Progress at last
Adrian has finally shown signs of progress after a Summer of procrastination.  The revised nose, front and rear diffusers will be ready mid-November.  This year!  Watch this space for pictures, as soon as the panels emerge from the moulds, and news of testing.

1/6/01 - Series is can'd
Not that we can blame them, the 750MC has cancelled the 2001 Sports/2000 series due to lack of support.  There simply weren't enough of us showing up to make it worth their while running the races.  Ho hum.  As soon as the nose job is complete we shall resume testing to gather data, before deciding whether to resume racing and, if yes, in which series.

14/5/01 - Nose Job
We'd been planning to remodel the front end but, perhaps, not with such urgency!  As a result, we're going to miss the next round - a double-header - at Cadwell but will be out in plenty of time for Snet.  Grant is dyno'ing the race engine. The re-profiled front end should improve the Paradigm's already-stunning good looks.

Sat 21st April - Oulton Race
A sick engine, a dodgy gearchange and the wrong diff caused Neil major grief in qualifying. An off in the race saw him finish well down the order with the nose in tatters.

Fri 20th April - Oulton test
Andy Holmes deputised for Neil in the morning, quickly learning the car and the circuit and providing some useful feedback on a major suspension tweak.

Neil got parked on the M6 at Birmingham so poor Andy had to deputise again in the afternoon. Shucks!

As well as mastering a vertical learning curve, Andy was testing one of our new limited slip diffs and the first of many suspension tweaks we'll be trying over the coming months.

Sun 18th March - Donington Race
One day soon, we'll have a dry race....

Having enjoyed an excellent Mallory last week, everything went a little bit pear-shaped in qualifying. Track was very wet and bitterly cold. Neil tried to change the brake bias and found it jammed to full-front. Just when he needed lots at the rear. Pirouette at Coppice. Qualified 4th, anyway.

An atrocious start (LSD for the next round would be good) saw him entering Redgate in 6th. Not impressed with everyone playing follow-my-leader through Craner, he made another place. Likewise into MacLeans. By lap 4 he was in 3rd, just in time to see Richard Atkinson cruise to a halt with an apparent electrical fault.

There was no catching Brian Simpson's Pro-Sport bodied Radical but, with a slipping clutch, Neil was happy to hang on to a comfortable 2nd.  A race engine and a limited slip diff should make life a bit more interesting for Oulton, next month.

Sun 11th March - Mallory Race
Using the wet-set-up from our test of the 28th, Neil, visibly quicker than everyone else out there, planted the car firmly on the front row of the grid with a 52.6s lap. The combination of his pace and a drying line overheated the tyres so he came in after 10 laps to let them cool off.

Unfortunately, he took his foot off the brake a moment too soon, at the start of the race; clutch drag (there's a bit at 8000 rpm) taking him a car's length forward before he braked again. As the lights went green he sensibly let a couple of cars by - hoping the stewards wouldn't penalise him.  A couple of additional opportunists capitalised on the slow start, too, so he finished lap 1 in 5th place.

A race long battle with a Radical was settled in our favour when Neil drove round the outside of it at Gerards for the 3rd time and was able to make the lead stick.

Another brilliant drive netted Neil the Sports/2000 Driver of the Day award.

Weds 28th February - Mallory Shakedown
We sent Neil out for an installation lap.  The cars he left the pits with all came back round. Twice. We let him push the car back to the pit garage and explain how it had run out of fuel. Then we turned the fuel pump on.
After a character-building 2000 season, for such a minor issue to be the only one to resolve, was a revelation.  We added front and rear wing, played with tyre pressures and, generally, made as much progress as we could.

2000 Winter Rebuild
We've changed the sidepods and repackaged cooling and electronics.  The car has been completely rewired, netting an unbelievable weight saving! The whole rear-end has been tidied to smooth the underbody air-flow. Looks like a proper racecar now.

2000 Winter Testing
Having struggled with ram-air all year, we took our engine man, 3 sets of carbs and a box of jets to Mallory for an engine test.  By the end of yet another Mallory (read: cold and wet) morning the car was 10mph quicker at the end of the straight than it had been at the start of the morning.  The plugs looked much healthier too, apparently.  Ram air rules!