Apart from myself in the scoob, Nigel's Celica, the odd Caterfield and a couple of Clios it was mostly MX5s and RX8s. The latter two were mostly steady paced (apart from the race-prepped ones) and I felt like I had to be on best behaviour with it being their day, as it were.
The morning was bitter cold and first lap out showed how cold the tyres were with a lairy slide out of Graham Hill bend. Nigel's GT4 and I in the scoob kept similar pace in that session. Traffic was a bit of an issue, with 78 cars there (according to Dave on the other Brands thread), but the marshals were using blue flags and people mostly kept an eye out and moved over. Even so it was difficult to get a clean lap! It felt unusual to be one of the quicker cars out there too!!
Here are a few pics of the Mazdas. Couldn't help smiling at this one:
This RX7 was well tarted up but I didn't get to find out what was underneath the bonnet:
This other one was just parked in the paddock but lovely and clean, ripe for a bit of modifying:
No pics of me, but here's one from Oulton in December:
Track was dry all day on Monday, and sunny even in the afteroon. The compression after paddock hill bend proved a bit much for my road-biased springs and the 225 RE070s wore a neat oval hole in each front arch liner, oops! I eased back on that corner and then popped on the 215 Federal RS-Rs which solved the problem. Funnily enough I preferred the wet conditions of Oulton in December to the dry on Monday, perhaps that's just my circuit preference though - this is my second time at Brands (Indy) in a car and I have to say I much prefer the complexity and character of Cadwell, Oulton or Donington. Or perhaps it's down to spring rates - the car feels really well set-up in the wet (and on the road) but a bit too soft on a dry track.
Apparently there are two race series for MX5s, one with lots of paint swapping and one with more polite distances being kept. Guess which of these belonged to which series ...
That last one was an interesting car to share a few laps with. Driven by the organiser, he passed me on my out-lap and I had to work properly hard to stay with him. He was clearly trying and the car went well. Chatting afterwards, they run a standard engine (160-170bhp, almost exactly half that of my scoob), and aren't much lighter than standard once stripped and caged. They run coilovers of some description and Federal RS-Rs, the control tyre for the race series. The comparison would be different on more of a power-circuit, but the car was well handy round the Brands short circuit.
It was interesting to do Brands once again, but I'd have to be in a different car to be tempted back there another time. Something much lighter and focussed perhaps...
Andy
