CAE 

CAE Racing – This Is How It Can Work!

I’ve been driving several Kadett C Coupé in daily traffic since 1987.

After ongoing problems with the TÜV (Technical Inspection Authority) and an enormous points account, it was an easy decision when Rainer Lorbiecki – whose group had already been providing technical support for H Kadett I for a long time – invited me in 1997 to do slalom racing with him.

This meant, first of all, that I would need an international license!

The beginnings – amazing years in slalom racing!

I took part in three national slalom events in group G. Since my boss would not have been delighted if I had used my company car for this :-) I drove vehicles borrowed from my Daddy and my girlfriend.
After I had crossed this hurdle, I applied for my I-license in 1997 and in March drove in my first group H Slalom on the cart track in Hagen.
In 1998 I then had to decide to either sell my own street Kadett or to use it for racing. There simply wasn’t any time to move the car on the street, and the idea of trundling through the city at 50 km/h wasn’t particularly appealing to me.

And so in May of 1998 I first drove my 2.5 l limo at the airport slalom in Meschede.
This was followed by two brilliant years in slalom racing, which was made unforgettable by a super community of group H drivers. I should mention some highlights, such as Friedel’s 50th birthday, the championship party at Georg’s or social evenings in the pubs in Jever and surrounding area. I also won’t forget the sports drivers’ meetings at Duffy’s in the "Schöne Aussicht" pub in the Black Forest that take place to this day. Everybody who has been "named correctly" here will never forget this time.

On the track, the events were marked by a great spirit of sportsmanship. Where else would you see competitors helping each other fine-tuning their cars before the race, only to then beat each other on the track with one record after another? Unlike many of my opponents, however, I preferred not to leave any maintenance, repairs and inspections until I had arrived at the racetrack. The fact that the engine always started and the ignition didn’t need to be tuned right before the race made the whole experience a lot more relaxing for me :-)

Of course my racing car kept growing and developing, since the competitors weren’t resting either. The mounting of plastic covers and windows and the installation ballast optimised the centre of gravity (because if the vehicle is going to weigh 875 kg, then it should at least be as close to the ground as possible). To increase stability a cell was added that was completely screwed in, because a complete coat of lacquer was not what I wanted. After this, the undercarriage had to be adjusted again because the car body now no longer existed as an unwanted spring element. And after my ZF transmission was reduced to sawdust in Diepholz, I finally had a reason to implement a 2.33 transmission. Unfortunately I couldn’t obtain any Opel parts, so I used BMW parts. The new construction of the cardan shaft was no problem thanks to excellent customer contacts. I carved the gearshifting gate incl. the shift lever myself. With this outfit, I placed among the best overall again and again, and some group and overall victories sweetened the weekends as well.

But of course all good things must come to an end. Over time we were lacking participants in the "over 1 litre class" – partly due to changes in class, partly due to people moving to the Youngtimer sector, others dropped out entirely. Being first in the class under these circumstances wasn’t really an amazing accomplishment. Extensive correspondence with the ONS/DMSB in the Slalom DM in an attempt to change the class to over 1600 cc remained fruitless. (The supposed performance advantage to the 2 litre cars is made up for by a minimum weight of 70 kg more.) The enormous travel times of, in some cases, 1,000 km and the low total driving times per event that are part and parcel of slalom events contributed to depressing motivation even more. The idea of building a circular track Kadett came up around this time.

The "Youngtimer" Era

In May of 2000, I was able to find a generous buyer for my car. With a heavy heart I said goodbye to my Kadett, which had been my loyal companion for over 12 years and which had grown and prospered during that time. That was the end of my slalom time. The purchase of an almost virginal Coupé body in June of 2000 marked the beginning of the "circular track Kadett" project.
After plenty of visits to Youngtimer races, however, my desire to take part in them quickly dwindled. I didn’t 100% approve of the limitations imposed due to regulations. I had a different idea: I was dreaming of a pure-bred group H Kadett.

When the construction phase came to an end after approx. four years, it became clear to me that I’d forgotten one small detail: which racing series was it supposed to be? I didn’t want to return to slalom racing under any circumstances, and at the same time there was a series missing in Germany in which the group H cars could compete among themselves and are not dominated by the turbo monsters. In collaboration with the Youngtimer Trophy, the group H Sprint was brought to life in 2004. But the racing series was not off to a good start. The founding members turned their backs on the series even before the first event (thank you very much, but with participation like this of course it can’t amount to anything), the big publicity drum remained silent (!?!?) and, last but not least, all participants kept being hammered by defects, so that the series was unsustainable for participants, spectators and organisers and was suspended at the end of 2005.

The two years of Group H Sprint were very instructive, however, for the CAE Racing Team. We had to learn that it wasn’t necessary to remove faulty delivered parts because that was something that technical support generally handled themselves. In addition we learned that Wilwood also builds brake callipers that can only be used for sand track racing (original quote from the US), that Wössner piston tops can only be as thick as the blank allows (and not as required). We learned that there are so-called tuners (Fa Kamann Wuppertal) that are kind enough to grind two different strokes to a crankshaft, and we learned how fuel pumps are arranged.

The CAE Racing Team Returns!

A break from racing was certainly in the cards. The explosive development of CAE Shifting Technology made sure we had no time to get bored, and in addition there was a company move to new premises at the end of 2005.

In the background "the Silver One" was always on our agenda, since we wanted to get our company logo back onto the track soon. We will be well-prepared when we return to the racetrack: plenty of new material has flowed into the Silver One and when the last components are finished, we will have the first test drives in 2010.

And we also created a Group 2 Rally Kadett, which we will introduce in 2010 at one rally event or another… // The CAEbra