Abingdon Track Day
Finally, my first track day. My preperation had consisted of chucking a bit more air in the tyres and cleaning the windscreen, but as soon as I arrived it was clear a lot of folk take it much, much more seriously. Trailers, slick tyres, 500bhp race car replicas, hugely powerful Caterham 7s, and a Ferrari F40 combined to make me feel a little out of my depth, but it was great fun and unlike most I was able to rag it around the track all day (for 120 miles), then drive it home listening to Radio 4.
The track had 3 narrow chicanes which were great fun, and handed the advantage to the small and the light (the F40 never looked quick). There were also a number of high speed turns, and I struggled with understeer all day on these. I had 20 minutes with an instructor (until his demands for F1-style braking cooked the brakes), that was useful and stressed the importance of more speed, less haste. Haste is fun though, and the 5 is easy to handle even way past the limit. I enjoyed getting it very, very sideways with no real fear of spinning (I left that to the Elises), and only had a few 'moments' coming out of the long bends when I thought I was going onto the grass at 90mph. That would have been VERY BAD so a Hard Dog roll bar is next on the shopping list.
I spent much of my track time keeping out of the way of the Caterhams. Where there wasn't a great deal of difference in the road cars around the track, these things were in a different class. They were like hyenas running through a herd of elephants! I did manage to pass a couple of them though, but only on straight-line speed.
Going to have to spend the weekend getting the brakes back in order now, they work but no longer bite. Hopefully new fluid/pads will fix.
