Bigpower

Started with a drive in my mate's 7 litre Cobra from his house to Oulton whilst he drove my ATR. I gave up after about 20 minutes for fear of spinning off the road! I was in third gear doing about 1200 rpm when I applied about 1/4 throttle to catch my mate up. The rear end just span its wheels for fun. I flashed him over and we changed. He then proceeded to show me how you can spin it in literally any gear you like and that it will track straight and true up the private road!

When we got to Oulton the ground was still damp but there was no actual rain. There was a good mix of cars - Fisher Fury with a Hayabusa engine, S2000, few 911s, a Noble, various Caterfields, few Elises etc.

We went out on the sighting laps and that's when the rain started. It was light at first and no problem for the ATR. The confidence in the wet is as good as a Scoob.

As confidence grew, so did the rainfall. Going into Island Bend (a fast left sweeper that drops away downhill) in the upper end of third gear the back end stepped out over some patchy water. I caught my breath, and caught the back end too. Unfortunately I got too cocky as the rain started to create more and more standing water. On the braking for Old Hall corner (from about 90 mph) the bumpy surface upset the car and as I turned into the corner the rear end came around too quickly to be caught. Thankfully that is a corner with more run off than others and the only thing I hit was a cone which luckily didn't even put a mark on the car!

The rain finally stopped and the track started to dry. After each stint I came back to stinkier and stinkier front brakes. Indeed, they were smoking a little too. These drier sessions were great fun and I had some nice battles with an S2000, an Evo 6 (although he did leave me on the straights) and a Carrera (he just couldn't drive AT ALL). On what turned out to be my final session of the day (when I was battling with the Evo 6 again) I got black flagged. On returning to the pit lane I was advised of the reason - sparks were flying out from my front brakes!

Lookiing at the discs they are well scored. Not unlike a vinyl record. However I can't see the pads but you can't hear any grinding so I'm assuming I do have pad material left but that everything had become so hot that it was starting to ignite. On those last laps there was a lot of judder like warped discs but now that they are cool they are only very slightly warped. It seems the extreme heat had made them expand in different rates across the discs. Regardless, I didn't get much pedal sponginess nor brake fade - weird. Time to change the brakes.......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4uLcwmdTzM

EDIT:

New videos will be added here.

Second session of the day. A bit wet on the ground I think! (Cod, you feature on this one)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WiYQMsPP3U

Big understeer moment at Druids
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUhvxIhbZ_A

Maybe.

I've got this down in my diary along with Rockingham & Snetterton around the same time.

Depends on work as usual....

updated

Nice write up there.

Good vid also !!

Hi Tommy,

Mmm Oulton, my favourite of all circuits from my bike days. Must make the effort to get there in the STi next year!

Andy

nice report Tommy - it may just have been a good job you got black flagged :thumb:

Nice write up and video. Looks like it was fairly quiet out there. Never done Oulton myself may have to put it on the 'To Do' list for next year.

Well I can thoroughly recommend Oulton. It's a real track with dips and inclines, blind corners and crests, differing surfaces and cambers. A world away from a place like Bedford.

I attended this aswell so can vouch for the morning conditions being very wet. Plenty of peeps spun off towards the inside of Druids and there were a few red flags out. About 30 mins before the trackday ended the reds came out again and the fire truck and ambulance followed the breakdown truck out onto the circuit. I hope no-one was hurt. I'd just chased down and passed a 964 and he was in hot pursuit of me when the flags came out so probably a good thing really.

Lots of different 911's (including a bright green 57 reg GT3RS 8) ) there so i was in heaven plus i heard the Cobra start up in the car park and i was across in the pit garages at the time! Tried to imagine how many Db's it was putting out, lovely sound though.

Tommy, your ATR sounded very nice down the pit staight too, emitting quite a scream before you changed up each time. I don't think i was on track at the same time as you as my missus did quite a few laps. we wer in a silver Evo 8.

Had a very enjoyable day though i can't see how all those peeps who trailered very track oriented cars there could be classed as 'novices'. Oh well, i had fun - the missus first trackday and my third and the car performed faultlessly including 130 track miles and 480 road miles to get there and back to GY. My only complaint was understeer in the wet snapping into oversteer until the track dried out a bit then just the tail was letting go so felt much more confident exiting corners.

We had the full circuit to play with about 2.7 miles i think. Very up and down with a nice little semi banked curve that i was really nailing once the track dried out a bit and some challenging chicanes and other corners to keep the pulse up. will definitely be going there again.

Hopefully will get to do one more trackday when i get back to the UK in early December before everywhere turns into an ice rink til the spring

COD

Hi Cod. I remember your Evo well. You are on my video (the bits I haven't managed to upload yet because I need to sort out some editing software).

The Cobra did get noise metered in the day. Mostly out of curiosity since we knew it wouldn't pass the 105 db limit.

At 3500 rpm it measured 112 db and at 4000 rpm it was 114 db. That was measured at the exit of one of the sidepipes.

My least favourite corner was Druids. Mainly because I had a nasty 'turn wheel, keep on going straight' moment there in the morning rain

Best corner was Island Bend which should be flat out but I never quite managed it (also because of a 'moment' earlier in the day).