Had a full day at Rockingham Motorsport circuit yesterday. Covered 145 miles in total on track

We got to do the International Long circuit (2.56miles) in the morning, then the supersport layout in the afternoon(1.94 miles)

Thought id post up my thoughts of the track itself as it was my first time at rockinham and how the car coped.

Firstly the international long track. Absolutely loved it, great mix of corners/bends with plenty of high and low speed mixes. Also being a long circuit meant it wasnt crowded which was handy as there were full on track/Race/rally cars on full slicks etc going around there at some rate of knots. Being a long lap as well, i only had to do one cool down lap to get the temperatures back down to a reasonable level before going back into the pits.

The international supersport layout though initially i thought was great, but quickly changed my mind. The left hand bend just went on for ever and was hacking on the tyres, id prefer a nice mix of directions to get some even wear on the tyres personnaly, but my biggest gripe was as its such a short circuit, either people were holding me up, or i was holding someone else up. Also it took 2 laps to cool the car down, not only because it was shorter, but as it was so crammed i couldnt slow down as much as i wanted without impeding everyman and his dog.

What i will say about rockingham, is that its hard on the tyres and brakes BIG TIME. my biggest issue with the car wasnt engine cooling or heatsoak etc, it was the tyres and brakes going off. my Vmax down the main straight was a smidgen shy of 120mph, but truthfully had the brakes been more up to the job i could have gone faster, but id never have stopped.

Anyway, THE CAR.

Performance

Obviously im stage 2 mapped, the temperature was around 23⁰C so i was wary of the potential for heatsoak etc, but i suffered very little notable performance loss. In fact I was easily keeping up with the caterhams on the straights (obviously who knows what engines they had, but still impressed), stripped out 230hp RX8 could not keep up with me except he caught me on the brakes everytime only for me to shoot off again. A OLD OLD volvo with an alleged 350Hp/900Kg couldnt keep with me, although i highly doubt his figures as he should have trounced me. Either way had loads of guys comment on how hard it was to catch out of the corner. So in a nutshell was happy with the performance.

DSG

I absolutely loved it. I used the paddles the whole time, and honest to good, couldnt praise it enough. Upshifting and dwonshifting in very fast corners doesnt upset the balance at all, if it were manual theres no way id change gear mid bend. And when braking hard, being able to downshift yourself on the paddles was awesome.

Its not all good news though, my brother, who was new to the car and track wasnt a big fan of the DSG. He was OK on the paddles, but tried to keep it in sport mode and let the car do the shifting as it was his first track day, and in a car he'd never driven. An example of the issues were when braking hard for a 2nd gear hairpin, the gearbox in sport mode was only dropping down to 4th gear normally, a couple of times it made 3rd, this resulted in almost coasting around the corner, then the DSG realising its not in the right gear as he hits the accelerator, thus dropping to second and causing a pain in the ass. In a nutshell, using the paddles, the DSG is awesome, but sport mode is crap.

Handling

You'll see in the pictures, the car suffers alot of body roll. Im pretty hard on a car on track and literally had it on its limits of handling every lap pushing as hard as i could. You could feel the back end coming out and all sorts in some of the bends but its so easy to control. In the fast corners you could adjust the car on the throttle quite well to nose in and out of the turn,it held its speed reasonably well and generally it was good, but were it got tight, it really showed the car up. It was just to soft and just wouldnt turn into the apex like i wanted it to, and would not allow me to put the power on when i wanted to. Obviously the traction issue isnt helped by the power hike in the midrange i have, but there is alot of improvement (for not alot of money as well) to be made in this respect. In a nutshell, i was generally happy with it, it did better than i expected it to by a fair amount.

Brakes

Basically....Crap. 3 laps in and already i could feel the brakes losing performance. From then i made the decision to do no more than 4 fast laps before a slow cool down to allow the brakes to work for the whole day. Any more and i think i would have just glazed the pads/discs and or boiled the fluid. The other guys on track commented on how they were catching me easily on the brakes as i was having to hit them early to get the speed down for the corner. Im also thinking i have an ABS issue as well as brake assistance activated. I locked the brakes on the first corner of the track, and it literally just skidded, initially i left my foot planted expecting the ABS to cut in, but it didnt, i had to pump it back myself. A question though. Does the Fabia have emergency brake assist? as once it felt like the pedal went further than i pressed it, and the car really anchored on more than i wanted which locked the brakes.

Tyres

My Conti 2's had only 3800 mile son them, and now they are completely shagged. About half way though the morning you could feel them going off more and more. They were a huge weak point on the car for me. maybe more so than the brakes. Rockingham is quite hard on the tyres especially with the oval at full speed, but no word of a lie, when i was at shark performance this morning, we had a look on the ramps and it looks like id got the rear tyres that hot, that the tread pattern has deformed and there are blisters on the tyre, so you can imagine what the fronts are like. Up until this point, id not had much bad to say about the conti 2s on the road, but they are definitely not good for a trackday if you really push your car. FWIW they still have around 5mm tread now but the grip is so much lower than before the trackday, i can lock them with very little braking effort, and can light the wheels up easily. So ill be changing these for something more suitable, which was always the plan. In a nutshell, they are a road tyre, and do that pretty well, but they struggled at rockingham with my power output and being used very hard.

Basically i was pretty impressed with it, as was my brother and quite a few others. Always impressed when a caterham driver approaches you and complements the cars performance.

A few jobs needed.

Job #1- Tyres needed big style. Not sure weather to go to a top end road tyre, or instead go for semi slicks. Ive got plenty of time to decide though as im off to kenya for 8 weeks in september so the cars just parked up.

Job#2 - Brakes. Something assimple as a pad and fluid upgrade would suffice, but im going for some bigger discs, prob 312mm, matched to Boxter S brembo 4 pots, which opens up a huge array of race pad possibilities.

job#3 - Handling. I think some springs and a rear ARB and the handling would have been bang on for rockingham. Id have been alot faster thats for sure, and maybe the hairpin wouldnt have frustrated me so much. that bloody corner was my nemisis yesterday, id have been happy to do that corner repeatedly until i got it perfect, which i dont think i managed once.

Oh, i also ended up in the gravel trap on my last lap of the day On the shorter supersport track when it was rally busy i pulled over just before yentwood corner tolet a load of the caterhams past, pulled back out oly to notice id pulled right iout in frot of another caterham i hadnt seen coming up. he swerved inside to miss me, and i overshot the braking point bigstyle . was in the gravel rap for 3 laps before the marshalls noticed and red flagged the track

Will upload pics in a bit

Edited 4 April, 201313 yr by vRSy

nice .was fun to read !

anyway come to germany and i`ll pay you 10 rounds on the Nürburgring for some real fun

I lived in germany for the last 9 years mate. the last year i was living in monchonladback only 92 miles from the ring, have 57 laps under my belt

Edited 6 August, 201114 yr by janner_Sy

Some comedy body roll for you

And me in the gravel trap at Yentwood

This is about 10% of the gravel that was there. Had gravel inside the subframe, brakes, calipers, suspensipn, undertra etc etc. took ages to clean out

And a few randoms

Edited 6 August, 201114 yr by janner_Sy

Excellent pictures and review.

Indeed excellent. Thank you!

Nice write up. Interested to see what you do with the brakes and what options are available

love the old lotus sunbeam in one of those pics!

lol... at the tyres, guess you will be one of the few that doesn't go for rainsports then

Hi Sy what suspension were you using that day and how low, Can see the roll, Are you going to upgrade the suspension as well, but a good day and review mate.

Suspension and brakes were 100% standard. Interior was still in the csr as well. Will be doing everything in good time

Top review mate Totally agree with your thoughts on handling. Body roll feels quite bad and doesn't inspire you to push further even though it might not be the limit of the car.

Interested to see what you do with the brakes.

Nice write up, and good pictures.

I look forward to following your racing carrer

Nice write up, and good pictures.

I look forward to following your racing carrer

Brill write up and good pic's,sounded like you had a good day at rocky it is a bit hard on brakes and tyres,i didn't think it rolled that much in the corners but i found it pitched more front to rear on the brakes.

with race fluid you get a couple more laps before you lose the pedal,that thing you said at the hairpin when the abs didn't work for a mo and the pedal goes long iv'e had that i'm sure the car thinks your gona crash and is trying to stop the lock up :( plus the hazards come on for a few sec's to inform the driver behind your gonna die :S

My ttyres are absolutely shot. Thought id stick my foot down around my local round about which I drive god knows how many times a day, and tthe back just stepped out BIG style. Absolutely no grip at all almost span it lol. Driving slow now till new tyres arrive.

My toyo T1R's did a similar thing at the ring although they had about8k on them, ambient temp was above 35 degrees and they were on a 1500kg car with good brakes and 280hp, however same conditions, driving style and track and the vredestein ultra sessantas that I replaced them with soaked up everything I threw at them, and managed a good 30+ laps and a further track day at brands before replacing with 11500 miles usage.

Biggest problem for meat rockingham were the tyres. The brakes can be managed, but the tyres can only be managed by going slower through the bends, and i never paid £200 to coast around the track. That said these are the lowest variant of the continental sport range. No doubt conti5's will be much more capable of handling a few heat cycles.

One on fuel economy. From kent to leicester i mmanaged 46mpg. The next day between leicester and rockingham (24 miles) 135 miles on track then the return journey back to leicester i averaged 20.2 mpg which I was impressed with.

I've not tripped my second mpg readout in 2900 miles and my overall average economt for that distance is 33.3 mpg. That includes 25 1/4 mile runs, 135 miles track day driving, mostly town driving andsome motoway. I don't cane in on'public roads and use cruise control alot, but i still don't mince about. Im pretty happy with that tbh

Bloody he'll sounds like alot of cars couldn't touch you.

I reckon my Mountune Ficus RS I had wouldn't be able to touch your car either you must be an awesome driver. You should try your hand at real race driving. Touring car?

Ha

Love a bit of sarcasm, im thinking formula 1......cheers though appreciate the good credit

No when near the quickest, the car doesn't brake or corner, more of a straight line warrior at the moment. Performance wise I've had an mapped ST, I've had a stage 2+ octavia and up to 100mph i think the fabia has it, after that its no contest though. Rolling start and id say the fabia is in between a stage 2 TFSI and a stage 2+ TFSI.

Top review mate Totally agree with your thoughts on handling. Body roll feels quite bad and doesn't inspire you to push further even though it might not be the limit of the car.

Interested to see what you do with the brakes.

Fitting porsche Boxter S 4 pot brembo calipers and probably mk4 R32 334mm discs. Adapters are readily availableon ebay for less than £80

Great review and it looks like you are getting back into the thick of it with the VRS.

I'll probably go down the TAROX route again for brakes on the Polo GTI, but this time just 6 pots and 2 piece 330mm discs should be more than enough :yes:

Edited 8 August, 201114 yr by Hurdy

nice .was fun to read !

anyway come to germany and i`ll pay you 10 rounds on the Nürburgring for some real fun

i'm going over to the ring in early sept i would love to except your ten lap free ticket

Great review and it looks like you are getting back into the thick of it with the VRS.

:

Looks like it mate. As you know i was almost at the point of selling it as it wasnt ticking all the boxes for me, but the missus blew her top when i mentioned it especially as i bought it without asking her.

Ill just modify out the issues i have with the car instead, it was only meant to be an interim car tbh as im away alot this year, but tbh its more than big enough for us and pretty good allrounder

Hello Janner

I'm sure the VRS's do have break assist which is probably going to be a bit of a limiting factor on the track but sounds like your managing to turn it into quite a car.

Looks like it mate. As you know i was almost at the point of selling it as it wasnt ticking all the boxes for me, but the missus blew her top when i mentioned it especially as i bought it without asking her.

Ill just modify out the issues i have with the car instead, it was only meant to be an interim car tbh as im away alot this year, but tbh its more than big enough for us and pretty good allrounder

Same here, the Polo is more than big enough for us and at least the missis may drive this one more than the Golf

Any more track-days planned?

I move to Nottingham on friday, so busy for the minute, but am thinking of Donington or Mallary Park at the end of the month

Hello Janner

I'm sure the VRS's do have break assist which is probably going to be a bit of a limiting factor on the track but sounds like your managing to turn it into quite a car.

Hopefully i will in time, but its not there yet. Lots of potential though.