)Great weather all day meant the 6:30am start out to Northampton was worthwhile and more enjoyable. APT were mainly on-hand to support Logan (Blacky) and Ross in their efforts, whilst also assisting numerous other customers taking part. As you can see, there were a "few" cars running the refreshed Stowe circuit!-
Basic circuit layout was as below, running anticlockwise with some small changes to the displayed start (Red) and finish, (Yellow)-
Typical lastminute.com issues meant Logan's Evo 7 was getting mapped on the dyno at 7pm the night before, so he had little time to get used to the altered set-up and engine (down from a 2.3 to a 2.0 to meet class regulations). This meant a steady approach to the event, gradually finding the limits and making small adjustments to the rear roll bar and tyre pressures each time, along with some tweaks to the rev limit so Logan could make one less gearchange on the run to the finish.
Ross' Evo 10 had already been around a track, so the handling was less of an unknown quantity, though the springs and ride height had been altered to reduce understeer, along with another set of wheels with some stickier rubber and a Ralliart centre diff ECU. After the first run the rear suspension was raised slightly to give a nose-down stance to induce more oversteer to the set-up. Unfortunately the clutch was nearing its limit, and a couple of hard launches later, was slipping all the way through 1st and 2nd off the line. It recovered after some more gentle starts, but it's likely to be the next area we focus on. The tyres were being torn to shreds by the weight, but a switch to some borrowed R888's for one poor run quickly saw them being swapped back (with the reminder that he had nothing else to get home on!).
Results are here- http://www.lancerregister.com/sprint_results.php Click on "Ranking" at the top for a full list of the final results.
As you can see, Logan finished 9th overall and 3rd in class, only 0.33sec behind the top car in 'C'.
Ross managed a very repectable 23rd overall and 5th in class 'B' with the lardy '10.
I took some vids on my phone, but for some reason it wasn't storing the data smoothly, leaving crap footage (memory buffer issue?). Hopefully we'll get something better next time!
On a positive note, Stu- Gary's got the bug, so we'll be shaking down the APT Evo ASAP.
