What an absolutely superb day
Weather - perfect (check)
Car - perfect (check) ... apart from a small oil leak that I knew about
Company - perfect (check) ... great to chat with pablo, stuart, dill, patsy, bladey, stormy, terryb
The other cars - perfect (check) ... well, as good as you will get on a marques track day
The Track - perfect (check).. what a cracker !!!
First time at Donington and having heard so much about it from Stuart, Pablo, Zak and lots of other people I must admit to being more than a little nervous about the size of my bollocks for the craner curves. The morning track time was punctuated by a few red flag moments for evos that couldnt stay on the track and a poor scooby that blew its head gasket, but that was quite nice for me as it allowed me time to review the car, check oil at every opportunity, check water, check tyre pressures and generally get into the right frame of mind.
The mapping on the car had been fine tuned since the disappointment of wednesday and was now stable at 1.5 bar with very limited spiking in the early part of the revs even in 6th which I needed on the back straight. Why couldnt I have got it to that stage on wednesday
I couldnt get the lines sorted in the morning although was getting closer on each outing. The afternoon started what I hope will be a long standing love affair with the track, getting the lines seems to work and meant having to go a gear higher at all corners from the morning until I thought I was doing ok.
Then I out braked myself coming into the chicane at the end of the back straight from 135mph trying to find the ideal braking point. For what are essentially still OE brakes albeit with excellent discs and pads they were still able to lock track rubber at the end of the session. :notworthy: ok lesson learnt.
Another cool down lap then back on it for a few more culminating with a superb drift all the way through redgate having agressively turned in and unweighted the rear, I floored it and for the first time ever, I had the power to hold a drift in fourth gear. Thank you Mike and Jase - i was giggling for the rest of that lap
Objective acheived for me though, I feel much more comfortable having got some knowledge of the track now and the car performing so well.
It has confirmed a couple of things that are going to be moved up the to-do list though.
As for the other bigpower guys there on track, shane (hockey-boy) was going very quickly from what I am told, kevin atkins in the evo is warp speed
Dill was also lapping very well but had some minor coolant issues. Thanks to Terryb for organising it :thumb:
time for a drink 8)
