Was a great day. Gutted I never got any track time apart from the siting lap. Oh well get new caliper tomorrow so will be ready for the next one.

Ray grimes was a nice guy. Seemed to get you all to fully use your brakes

Was a quilty day! Will bring a change of rubber in future though! The shoulders on mine are now looking very sorry for themselves :-/

Dinner time and everyone in one piece!

Tales broken records about to commence lol!

Too much energy drink got to me there!

Great to meet everyone ! Fab day out with some excellent tuition from Ray.

Hope everyone had s safe journey home.

Tuition was very good, although quite different from how you think you should drive on a track, I mean, using the brakes to help corner, worked though..

 

 I have just watched a few of my laps from the latter part of the day when we had ABS, ESP and the likes well and truly disabled as I had the fuse in my pocket and the dash had more lights on than a Christmas tree    anyway, using the crude timing on the in car camera I was lapping at about 2 minutes 18 seconds, not bad for a fat pink Golf.

 

Can't wait for the next one. 

Don't forget my smokey brakes and disintegrating alloy gator.

Thanks for the help I got from everyone, had a great day. Took so long to change my wheels that there was no jams on the M60 or M62. Bonus.


 

Yes smokey brakes, also Sharkriders shiny red callipers are now a nice liver brown after a cooking.

just going through a load of pics, 600 to be exact!!!!

 

i'll post some that have been uploaded to my photobucket account.

 

I haven't edited them at all so may look a bit crap

 

Thanks very much for being the photographer, pictures look great. 

Yer the photos look awesome some for the calendar pasty?

 

 I can report there were no major issues, the Mongrel has a bit of boost trouble but Jason is driving home.

 

Probably going to cost me around £1,000 to repair though. :(

 

Exhaust manifold from darkside, plus some bits, and alterations to my exhaust too.  Going to be fun!

 

My drive home was not entertaining, but I am back! [phew!]

 

I REALLY enjoyed the morning and the mongrel was going really well.  Track tyres performing very well, brakes really working well too.  Just a shame it all went belly up after lunch.  :(

Thumbs up for the pics !

Crikey Jason, £1000 for a manifold!!  Will you use this as an opportunity to try something different or will you go with the same one again?

 

 Good to hear you got home with no serious issues, I hope the fumes did not fill the car from the manifold leak.

my car with mismatched wheels looks even sillier in pictures than it did in the metal!

 

full debrief and hopefully video tomorrow

Crikey Jason, £1000 for a manifold!!  Will you use this as an opportunity to try something different or will you go with the same one again?

 

 Good to hear you got home with no serious issues, I hope the fumes did not fill the car from the manifold leak.

 

£750 + vat for manifold, then all labour and probably some other bits.  Looking a bit north of a grand sadly.

 

I am going for the Darkside one this time.  The one I have now is at the end I think.  Wish I had never bought it to be honest.

 

Fumes weren't too bad.  I left it on recirc which helped.

sounds like you lot had some fun, jammy gits. all good fun.

Any pics of mine Flanders?

yeah i've got some. have to wait till tomorrow thought! photobucket is annoying me!!! i'll stick them up in the morning and see what else i have

yeah i've got some. have to wait till tomorrow thought! photobucket is annoying me!!! i'll stick them up in the morning and see what else i have

Sweet, thanks!

On a side note that red fiesta crashed right in front of me, didn't any pics of it as my camera was in the car at the time!

Yeah he crashed right in front of me too.

I gave him time and space to pass between Druids and Lodge but he left it too late carried too much speed and went wide getting on to the astroturf stuff, losing grip, gaining oversteer, overcorrected, slid back on to track where it gripped and spat him off hard into the armco.

One of the risks i'm afraid.

 

Did have a top day myself. Was nice to get through a track event without something breaking (after the turbo at Bedford, and exhaust gasket at Combe) losing the locking wheel nut key not withstanding. 

Was an excellent day and the track is still brilliant. Being with a group and you all being top blokes just adds to the day.

Tuition from Ray was good, highlighted just how different track/race driving is from everything else.

Was a shame i left it so late to nab him for my session. Following a session of his yoda like teachings I took it all in and headed out for my final session where attempting to mirror what he'd taught me just 15 minutes before I over cooked it at Old Hall ending up over the kerb on to the grass and had my only off of the day

 

not much media from me as I was busy driving rather than taking photos but who says Jabbas maps are smokey

 

 

 

I was also disappointed that after the effort of borrowing a DIY in car camera mount my old pocket Samsung camera was either so heavy on juice or the batteries so ****e it won't stay on for much more than the pitlane! grrr

That was fine as i had my external bullet cam however Javelin say no suction mounts :(

time for a pikey fix then

 

I only realised i could sort the camera out early afternoon and obviously it was pointless when i was carrying a passenger but i did shoot a couple of sessions, although apologies for the wobble (the mount is hadly high tech!) and the sound is from the recording box which was in the centre console so plenty of vibration noise and not a lot else i'm afraid

 

 

second session is better from around 6:30 when i catch a Fiesta ST on tasty track wheels and tyres.

I spent the next 10 minutes chasing him around, if it wasn't my tyres and fuel I literally could have done it all afternoon!!

 

I know that timing aren't allowed on track days but a free GPS based timing app can't hurt.

I downloaded RaceChrono which seemed to do the gubbins when i tested it on the sighting laps (3:07 best lap)

 

I then timed a further 7 session with the best laps being a 

2:24

2:22

2:24

2:25

2:16

2:17

 

and a session passenger with Jason was also timed at a 2:13

 

I am however dubious of those figures as having check the track position data trace overlays in the software I'm not entirely sure on the accuracy of their GPS signal as demonstrated here at the hairpin!

 

Pretty sure i'd remember having gone through the gravel through the armco into a forest andback out again, and am sure it'd give a worse lap time than it showed

 

 

 

Or this one where apparently on almost all laps of the session i went into the field next to the circuit!

 

 

Might just have a watch of my videos with a stopwatch instead

 

A final thank you to ross for coming to say hi and for his encouragement from the marshalls post at Shell corner.

 

I also not don't believe a word the trip computer says. I left the circuit with the range reading 40 miles left, I managed to complete with 120 mile journey home without stopping for fuel. My car is a dirty liar!!

I am however a little scared to put the fuel figures into Fuelly when i do fill up :S

looks like you have been ploughing on that data      Like the timings, falling nicely 

 

 Here is PastyBoy and myself doing a little brake test in the Golf after removing the ABS fuse to stop the ESP kicking in on track, I wanted to make sure the fuse did not effect anything else!

 

Some in car footage, last session of the day and the ABS fuse was in my pocket too, car went well, just have a few little jobs to do now it is home, like coding out the ESP and seeing why we have an engine management light on, probably a lambda sensor.

 

 Federal 595 RS-R tyres were a great addition to the car and the GAZ suspension combined with the Eibach R32 FARB & RARB worked well, brakes were standard Pagid disks with Ferodo D2500 pads, these also worked very well and no fade at all.

 

This made me Chuckle