Cadwell Park 11/03/10 Opentrack

A2ON · Post by **A2ON** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:10 pm

What an amazing amazing amazing. amazing day .

Any one got any pictures of me on track ?

Gerry H · Post by **Gerry H** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:28 pm

Just home and pretty much knackered. Hope everyone got/gets home safely.

A great day and good to see and meet everyone. Well run track day with a few red flags but no-one hurt or any damaged cars, from what I saw or heard.

Glad you enjoyed popping your cherry Aaron. Good to meet you and your pal and glad you stayed off the armco

Dave will let everyone know when he's posted pics on his website, just be a little patient

russ979 · Post by **russ979** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 7:45 pm

Well Gerry- how did the Evo perform?

mikeb · Post by **mikeb** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 8:47 pm

Just got in had a excellent day learning the M3 it turned out better than i thought,

And cadwell carn't recommend this track enough (excellent)

Good to meet all the bp members.

full report after a nights sleep.

all the best mike

Gerry H · Post by **Gerry H** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 8:48 pm

russ979 wrote:Well Gerry- how did the Evo perform?

As usual with me, I have difficulty finding my way round to start and find it rather frustrating that most corners could be taken a lot quicker. Also interesting, there were two Imprezas on track, MikeyS and a pretty standard looking silver wagon, and I had the only Evo. What a turn around from previous days.

I started off with the Toyo T1Rs which have plenty of chunky tread, or did have. The intention was, once the track dried, to switch to the well worn Pirellis on the wheels I got from ebay. Unfortunately, when I went to swap wheels, it was pointed out that the tapered nuts I have are no good for the flat wheel nut hole of the later wheel. Scuppered, I need to investigate what a standard late Evo wheel nut looks like and get some.

Anyway, once I got the hang of following the track, the car seemed to perform pretty well and was very planted. The T1Rs seemed to go off after 3 or 4 laps and were squealing pretty loudly in places and on one occasion had be with two wheels on the grass coming out of Barn.

As the day went on, I was using 4th instead of 3rd for most corners so reckoned I was getting quicker.

On one occasion, I wanted to follow Stu round and watch his lines. After an age of crawling round, tring to keep out of everyones way, he appeared at the bottom of the gooseneck and looking very sideways. He flew past me and I ducked out from behind the car I was following. Up the Mountain, through Hall Bends, round the Hairpin and that's where I was caught out by Barn. Stu had pee'd off into the distance and I gave up trying to keep him in view, let alone keep up with the NATO reject.

After that, I had some good dices with gaggles of various cars and was pleased to get past some well prepped cars. Watching the rear view mirror was interesting as, where the Evo seemed planted and coping well, others following were getting very twitched up trying to stay with it. I found that using 4th and the car's torque, coming out of corners got me past cars that were getting through the corners quicker.

To answer your question Russ: Yeah, it's not bad.

Sunday will be good but the tyres will let the car down.

Gerry H · Post by **Gerry H** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 8:52 pm

Ha! Had a few pax laps with MikeB and felt quite ill. But then, so did he

Bloody quick car and he blamed me for over-cooking one corner

mikeb · Post by **mikeb** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 8:59 pm

it was your extra weight pushing the car wide. didnt compensate for angle of dangle and area mass

Went out in gerrys evo very nice car feels very solid and capable as gerry said with some better tyres.

just like to thank dave and the full trackday crew for a faultless day

thanks mike

Tommy · Post by **Tommy** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:01 pm

I had an absolutely fantastic day. The first track day of the year didn't disappoint

Thanks to Mike and Stuart for the dicing. My car did a lot better than I expected.

I'm a 'full on' proponent now of spending on suspension. Regardless of the fact that my M3 is a full 270 kgs heavier than the 328 (I managed to weigh the M3 on Cadwell's weighbridge - 1465 kgs with 3/4 tank) and I was running road tyres up front and (too) narrow track tyres on the rear, I was only one second off my best lap in the 328.

Here's a data log of the M3 (red) vs 328 (green). The corner speeds are pretty much the same and I'm only losing time because of the braking not being as good in the M3.

To get your bearings, the cross on the track is the start of the log:

Tk · Post by Tk » Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:06 pm

good to here there were no incidents

i was not jelous atall plastering a ceiling thinking what fun you were all having
see some of you chaps sunday

philwright63 · Post by **philwright63** » Thu Mar 11, 2010 9:22 pm

Today really was an awsome day, by far the most fun ive had on a track day! Was nice to see quite a few lads all at once! Cheers again to the organisers, another well run day!