SBR Midnight Runners News and Announcements

The SBR Midnight Runners have officially announced that they will be running in the remaining rounds of the AG tuning BTCC series in a pair of 2007 Honda Civic Type-R's.

Meant as a Showcase for our main sponsors, Sam Billing Racing, and what the recently created tuning house can do, the BTCC programme will be contested using two Honda Civic Type-R 07's which should ensure a cutting edge look and hopefully a competitive basis for our racing cars.

As some of you may know we have already managed to secure two drivers for our team to pilot the Civic Type R's and to raise the profile and awareness of Sam Billing Racing.

The first of these drivers is Sam Billing1991. This highly experienced racer and tuner is also the owner and founder of Sam Billing Racing and is keen to demonstrate the potential of the Cars tuned by his racing preperation and tuning company. Sam Billing1991 has enjoyed sucess in a number of R2, R3 and R4 class events in the Forza Community as well as championship victory in the Renault Clio 197 cup. This Formidable and experianced racer will be at the sharp end of SBR Midnight Runners attack on the BTCC.

The second of these Drivers is young gun Slider S15. Although He's only been Racing in the Forza community for two months hes already started to build a reputation as a hard but fair racer, something which often leaves him out of favour with other drivers. This Fledgeling Paint work artist, who incidentally designed and implemented the SBR Midnight Runners Race Colours, has been steadily building upon his knowledge and skills with several successful campaigns within the forza community racing series including R2 and R4 victories. This hard charging young gun has the ability to surpprise and will certainly be a feature in many races, Not one to be Over Looked Slider S15 is a definate one to watch who may surpprise a few more experienced opponents.

So our Current driver Line Up stands as this:

Driver: Slider S15 , Number: 219 , Car: Honda Civic Type-R '07 (Gold Roof)
Driver: Sam Billing1991 , Number: 220 , Car: Honda Civic Type-R '07 (Silver Roof)

So a New team is born!

Updates and results will be posted here as well as pictures of our cars in competition.

Thank you for taking the time to read this

Nice report mate, gets some pics up of the car I am very interested to see it

As requested here are some pictures...

Sadly at the time of writing this the second SBR Midnight runners car is not yet finished so we will be showing the 219 car of Slider S15.







The Paintwork is still undergoing minor tweaks to get it to where we are happy but this is basically how it will look.

let us know what you think of it

very nice car buddy and good luck in the series

Cheers for the intro Slider =] Can't wait for our debut race

Just a Quick Update to let you all know whats going on and how we are doing.

Our first bit of news is that we have finally finalised our paintwork for the Season (or atleast for now) which will be posted up here tomorow once i can be bothered to take some pictures of the cars. The paintwork has been generally well recieved in the outer Forza community and so should hopefull go down well with people in the know such as yourselves.

Secondly we have finally finished building our two cars required for the race series itslef. This had been previously delayed by Turn 10 and forza itself as since the car is from the Download pack it cannot be gifted between us for me to paint and him to build resulting in the car having to be sold and bought between us a grand total of Six times! However both cars are now built and painted correctly.

Thirdly Sam Billing Racing have already made their First Step towards their product development by making the choice to run the Two cars in slightly different forms of build. This is to try and discover once and for all if the Forza brand Rear Bumper and Diffuser set up are noticably beneficial to a car or if they are just a waste of time and Index Points. (so now you know why the cars are rated differently and have different rear bumpers)

Finally there is the Frantic Build up towards our Racing Debut. A hectic Testing Schedule has seen the miles pound onto the Odometers and the laptimes start to fall. Although at this stage we do not know what the opposition will be doing or how our data compares to theirs, however what we do know is that we are gonna have alot of fun and some close racing (atleast between ourselves if no-one else lol) Which is what its all about!!

Race Results and report coming soon....

Livery Pictures coming quite a bit sooner....

Thanks for reading

As Promised Here is the First installment of the Pictures of the New Livery For our race cars. This is the 219 car of Slider S15 the cars have small paint differences to help people (and us) to spot the difference between the drivers during a race or race replay. Pictures of Sam Billing1991's Car Will be posted up later tonight.

Left:


Top:


Right:


Front:


Rear:

Nice car guys, can't wait too see you boys on the grid

The SBR Midnight Runners hit a major snag today which could cause them problems for the remaining rounds of the Championship.

During unofficial testing with some other BTCC competitors running the new car it was discovered that the current SBR package is Hidiously uncompetitive leaving the team at a terrible crossroads. The decision will be made as soon as possible weather to soldier on with the development of the Civic's, try and register and develop a new car between now and the next Race and sacrifice all of the points we havnt won, to run the Civic's and concentrate on a replacement or to withdraw from the championship all together.

This has been coupled with both drivers still struggling to acclimatise to the stringent driver assist legislation which disables ABS. With both drivers suffering with the change of conditions from their normal racing and the package worked so long and hard upon proving so hidiously uncompetitive the mood is sombre at SBR Midnight Runners HQ tonight.

If anyone wishes to offer any advice to the team or just has any reaction to this news please let us know.

Thank you

Team Halfords ran two Civic Type R 2007s last year in the first season of the BTCC. We struggled as the car failed to compete on a level with the SEAT Leons every man and his dog were racing. We worked hard and constantly developed the car until we found a workable solution that at least kept us in the competition.

We could have dumped the car but we didn't. We stuck with it and I'm glad we did. We learnt a lot from that car to carry in to season 2. What we took from the Civic Type R 2007 has helped us develop the Civic Si, which has arguably the best straightline speed in the BTCC at the moment.

At the beginning of season two, we struck a deal with Austins Motorsport. We sold them the paints they currently have and traded the PI750 technology and data we ran the season before. And just look at how Dan2065 is making the car perform. It's probably the Muller effect - a great driver making a bad car look better than it is. But he frequently achieves Lobby A qualification times.

My biggest piece of advice is that you need to give the car as much torque as you can. The turboed engines of your competitors will always have a torque advantage, so you need to reduce that advantage as much as possible. You cannot upgrade the engine to a RWD or AWD drivetrain, but you CAN upgrade to the K series FWD engine. If you have not already done this, do it, as the rules permit it.

We found that the Civic Type R 2007 was more agile than many of the cars we competed against. It just lacked the pulling power out the corners. Work on this and you can have a competitive car. But you really need to work it hard to get the best out of it.

Good luck, and don't lose heart - we felt the same way after our initial test sessions, so I know how off-putting it can be. We're looking forward to seeing you on track.

It's the first race for SBR Midnight Runners tonight and the butterflies are starting to flutter here at Team HQ. With both Slider S15 and Sam Billing1991 on their TORA racing debut not much is known of what to expect and there are many elements which have not been experienced by the team before such as the Rolling starts and the General format and organisation of the evening.

Secondly there is the ever questionable performance of our car, getting faster but fears are rife that the car may still be quite off of the pace. But with concentration turning towards Product launches and the development of Slider S15's Leon cup car here at SBR, its time to stop thinking and start driving!

SBR has always been about fun and thats what we intend to have tonight. So good luck To our competitors and a Huge Good luck to our two drivers!!!

Race Report Coming soon.....

Good luck this evening!

AJtheButcher wrote:Good luck this evening!

thanks you too

!!!!NEWS FLASH!!!!

Meeting Initial results: Motegi East:

Slider S15 - Race 1: 6th Race 2: 5th Race 3: 6th
Sam Billing1991 - Race 1: 5th Race 2: 4th Race 3: 5th

Full Race Report to Follow....

During testing with competitors today, it was found that the #220 car is more competitive than first thought, running a 1.15.6XX at the next venue on the calender, Sebring Short. Here's a few comments from the driver of the #220 car;
''The short ratio gearbox is working well for us, keeping the engine within the powerband in the corners, but providing enough speed to narrow ground lost to the Turbo cars in the long straights. We're still having trouble with the car in the last corner, it gets a third of the way round and starts to understeer, but we're working on it.''
When asked about rumours of a 'B Team' from SBR the answer was ''No Comment'' but our spies have seen unofficial testing of the SBR Midnight Runners with a third, unknown car, more on this as the story unfolds.

Motegi East Race Report BTCC:

Qualifying:

Being the first ever outing for the SBR Midnight Runners qualifying was a bit of a grey area and we had no idea what to expect. So we went blindly into battle with Sam Billing1991 starting off in Lobby B and Slider S15 in Lobby A. thats when it started going wrong for the Team with both drivers having problems in qualifying.


(Above: Slider S15 Warming Tires in Lobby A with a very "Tire Friendly" lock up)

Slider S15 had the lesser problems with a battery failure during the warmup lap causeing him to grind to a hault in the middle of the track and loose most of the temporature he'd managed to build up in his tires. However it Was Sam Billing1991 who had arguably the worst luck with an XBOX failure during lobby laoding which saw him miss Lobby B altogether, luckily the organisers allowed him a second chance to qualify alone in which he put in the fastest time of the two SBR Tuned machines With a Qualifying time of 1:27.365 which earned him a place in Lobby C. Slider S15 however managed to Qualify stone dead last with a time of 1:29.000 however this also meant he could race in Lobby C with his running mate.


(The Que to the finish line in Qualifying Lobby A waiting for the times to be colated)

Race 1:
And so to race one which saw Sam starting in fourth and Slider starting in seventh out of the seven competitors. Again being new to the series the rolling start system was something the team were very nervous about, luckily Sam kept formation well on the parade lap and upto the line, however Slider ran wide out of the last corner and so was further behind then he would have liked off of the start line.


(Lobby C First Race Rolling Grid)

However Slider was able to make up most of this gap underbreaking down into the first corner...


And Managed to pass John Canty's Astra VXR, as both him and the SBR Boys went three abreast under the Bridge....


Slider then made a lunge round the Outside of his teammate to pass him...


Which also saw him get up to the back of Jenson09's Civc Si Coupe...


And pass both him and Chaddy to get into third place with Sam in fifth before being caught by the misplaced Seat Leon of Chaddy on the Straight after an earler incident between chaddy and jenson saw them both go off and slow down. powerless to resist the hard charging Seat Slider was eventually passed to fall back to fourth...


However later that lap Slider took a trip into the gravel trap which saw him fall back down behind his team mate to sixth where he remained for the rest of the race...


After this the Race settled down with no other major incedents or moves taking place for the SBR Midnight Runners, Sam Billing1991 bought the car home in a very respectable fifth out of seven on his race debut...


And Slider S15 piloted the Second SBR Midnight runner car home in Sixth on his race debut just a short time after Sam Billing1991 after beating John Canty's Astra VXR in an on off battle for the whole race...


Race 1 Results for SBR Midnight Runners:

Sam Billing1991: 5th place

Slider S15: 6th place

Race 2:

Race two saw Everybody start off where they finished meaning fifth for Sam and Sixth for Slider, however again Sam got a clean getaway from the Rolling start and slider had problems out of the last corner, however this time it was from Jenson09's Civic Si Coupe exiting the last corner too slowly infront of him meaning Slider had to swerve to avoid him and slowdown too heavily to avoid passing the Halfords car before the line...


This meant that for the second time in as many races Slider had a gap to make up before he'd even started. Meanwhile Sam had managed to pass AJzero in the Seat Leon after AJzero took a trip into the gravel...


And battled hard with him for half a lap...


Before Eventually being passed again by the out of position Seat...


Meanwhile Slider was driving like a man possesed to try and close the gap to aid his team mate in his battle against the Seat Leon of AJzero...


The race began to settle with Slider giving it his all trying to cath the back of his team mate and Sam begining to loose touch with the Seat Leon and its ferocious straight line pace. However due to some brave cornering work in the closing stages of the race Sam caught and passed the Leon once more...


Sam managed to hold the place and a last corner last second mistake by AJzero meant that Slider could end his relitively quiet race on a high with both the SBR boys scoreing their highest finishes to date...


This left Sam to bring his car home in a SBR Record 4th place...


And Slider to bring the Second SBR Midnight runner car home in a personal best 5th place...


Race 2 Results For SBR Midnight Runners:

Sam Billing1991: 4th Plcae

Slider S15: 5th Place

Race 3:

Race 3 was the final race of the day and so a reverse grid system was used to mix things up abit. This meant that Slider started on the front row in second and Sam started on row two in third...


Slider held his second place until a tap from Chaddy's Leon saw him pitched sideways and out of contention (And saw many things yelled out which cannot be repeated here due to terms of use.. lol)...


And saw a misplaced Sam, who had lost ground from a bad start, have to take emergency actions to avoid a collision with his stricken team mate...


Which put both of the SBR boys well off the back of the pack and put Slider from second to sixth. This left the Team in the same position as race one with Sam trying to chase down a Seat Leon, this time driven by Chaddy, and Slider desperately trying to chase down his team mate still reeling from his snatched opportunity.

However Slider Started to reel in Sam's Civic Type R driving as hard as he could...


A small mistake by Sam on the last lap let Slider catch up right onto his back bumper...


Where he stayed for the rest of the Race meaning Sam piloted his car home in fifth place...


And Slider came home in a respectable sixth place in a race which was eventful for him in all the wrong ways...


Race 3 Results for SBR Midnight Runners:

Sam Billing1991: 5th Place

Slider S15: 6th Place

Championship Standings after Motegi East:

Sam Billing1991: 24th Place

Slider S15: 25th Place

Very good report lads

Its all Slider there Jenson! The only input from me was my quali time! =] Cheers for that Slider

Following Tuesday 17th's race meeting, SBR have movved up 2 places in the team standings, aided especially by a random lobby upgrade for #219 Slider S15.
The 3rd race in lobby C marked SBR's best placing with a 2nd from #220 Sam Billing1991, after a chance crash. SBR would have liked to have gained the place by being faster than the other racers, but when we get a beak like this we can't pass it up!

News has been a bit sparse lately so before the next round of the TTCC i will try and get things back up to speed.

Laguna Seca was a round SBR would rather forget with the gods doing their best to neuter Sam's attempts and Slider unable to make an appearance as he was stuck away from his race seat in Finland.

This left Sam to hold the fort for SBR however luck was against him and some "less than legitimate" moves saw Sam taken off several times, once even during a safety car demolishing the back of Sams car and so too his chances of a high placing.

However the focus for the next round of the TTCC is changing a bit here at SBR. Firstly Slider is back from Finland and able to compete which will help to boost SBR's hopes. Secondly there is the fact that since Slider missed the Whole of the Laguna Seca round he has slipped dramatically in the drivers championship which means his focus is now shifted towards SBR's attack on the Team championship and helping his Team mate Sam climb higher through the championship standings.

Next there is the news that SBR aims to run under completely new colours on the Civic's which the Team are really upbeat about. Slider said earlier today, "That new car looks hot! Even standing in the Workshop it looks alot faster and alot meaner."

In Similar News Slider will tonight be running a completely new Shell. Slider said this afternoon after testing "The old car was good but this fels so much more taught and composed in the corners." It's Rumoured that Slider's new shell was built due to the mass of testing completed with his oldcar taking its toll on the shell making setups more difficult.

Finally it was rumoured that SBR would debut its new more powerful engine tonight however this has been dispelled by Slider saying, "Yes a new engine is in development and yes it is more powerful in every respect, however there are some teething problems which cannot be sorted before tonights round." Slider also added "the way its behaving the new engine may be shelved with development on hold for the forseeable future". This is rumoured to be linked with handeling problems, reported by industry spies, seen on the SBR development car during seacret testing at SBR's private track.

So goodluck to everyone competeing tonight,

and a special goodluck to the SBR boys!

Silverstone Aftermath...

It was a bad night again for SBR boys through and through.

it started with Sam missing qualifying by about 30 seconds which lead to dicussions by team boss Slider to try and get Sam racing that night. After some persuading Sam was allowed to race however could not connect to the lobby thus ending his racing for the night. Sam has released a statement saying he does not wish to talk about it at this time.

with sam gone it was up to slider to defend SBR honour. after qualifying last as usual slider was fighting hard in race one, before being tapped round and loosing alot of ground, however he started to catch up again before his Xbox live decided to disonect for unknown reasons thus ending Sliders first race.

Race two and due to his DNF Slider started at the back of grid however he managed to work his way out of last before he ran wide and spun the car looing a place again. slider finished race 2 sixth after CK Brenneke had some technical problems and had to pit.

Race three saw slider on the front row of the grid in second place, a place which he valieantly defended before being simaltaniously attacked from both side of the car. with his attention split he lost both places. then under breaking the seat's slowed more than anticipated leading slider to nudge the Seat of Ianmr thus unsettling his own Civic and loosing two more places in the process. however slider kept up the speed and had some close battles with the two Ford Focus ST's before an accident upfront left Slider in third with one corner to go!

However Slider's Civic was then tagged from behind by the Focus ST of Y22DJH sending him sideways and loosing him the place. Y22DJH then proceeded to not yeild the place as he should have done having taken the place illegally, thus religating Slider to fourth.

Slider was obviously gutted having been so close to a personal best finish. We tried to catch up with him after the race however his interview was too explicit to be repeated here and its been reported that several pieces of expensive equipment were broken in the SBR garage by the obviously fustrated Slider on his return to the pits.

An official complaint about the last corner incident has been lodged with the race stewards and is currently under investigation. The results of which will be posted here as soon as we are informed.

We would also just like to take this opportunity to wish good luck to Slider as he embarks on his first ever endurance race this weekend with the Petit Le Mans in an SBR prepared GT2 Class Audi R8.

Good to race with you again. Sorry to hear about your last lap shinanigans but hey your time will come

thanks i was really enjoying it until that point too. was having some good battles and the car has come a long way and is getting to the point i want it at now. hade some great battles with the Focus ST's.

just my dissconnection in race one and my shunt in race 3 that put a dampener on things.

As the season draws to and end with just 3 rounds left to go, we can safely say that the debut season for SBR has been eventful to say the least! Despite several dissapointing races, the SBR boys were fairly upbeat when we interviewed them;
Reporter - So tell us, what can you say about your debut season?
Sam - Yeah, overall I think we did well, even though the car wasn't as fast as the others it was almost definately the most entertaining drive I've had for a long time, not to mention it's habit of sticking to some of the other cars!

Reporter - Do you have any intentions of returning next season then?
Slider - Definately, I mean, there's always on-track tips we can pick up to make us better racers, and theres never a dull moment in the TTCC!

Reporter - Will you be running the afforementioned '07 Civic?
Sam - I'm afraid we can't tell you that
Reporter - Go on, give us a hint at least!
Sam - No, I really can't tell you! We don't even know what we are going to use! There's going to be new regulations on the building of the cars, which we have to wait for, AND there's several other cars available to us that we need to test first.

Reporter - Well can you give a short list of the top candidates?
Slider - Well , we will be bringing back our trusty Civic for sure, just to see if it can cut it, we have been considering the Ford Focus, Vauxhall Astra VXR and the Seat Leon as our first choices, but the Integra Type R may also get a look in.

Reporter - Thanks for talking to us, and good luck in the last 3 rounds!
Sam - thanks, but I won't be competing, Slider is going to continue to do us proud though, I'm sure of it!