I have had a TVR car club track day booked up for many months now and was looking forward to thrashing around Rockingham in my TVR.

Unfortunately, about two months ago the crankshaft snapped!

 Due to the crankshaft being a bit of a one off special, (longer stroke as it is a 5.5 L) I had to get a new crank machined up which has taken some time and therefore impossible to rebuild the engine in time for the track day. 

 

Step back about six weeks and I bought a very nice 2001 low mileage immaculate vRS.  As the date neared, I decided with agreement from the club to use the Skoda as a stand in.

 

I had a set of lightweight Wolfrace wheels shod with a new set of Federal RSR 595 tyres left over from a previous vRS.  I bought a set of competition Hawke track pads for the front,  fitted these, changed the cam belt and waterpump, serviced the car and gave the car a good check over.

 While I was at my local garage last Wednesday, I noticed that they are an agent for a mapping company, (Impact Remaps) who do generic maps. At a cost of £200 plus VAT, I thought it was worth it and as it was only two days to the track day I asked them to go ahead which they did.

 

The car became more responsive as I expected and I trailered  the car to Rockingham and pressed the car into service last Friday.

 

There were about 20+ Cerberas there and at least another 30 other mixed TVRs.

 

The car performed faultlessly. If I wasn't braking, the accelerator was buried in the carpet for all the remaining time.  I kept up with pretty much most of the fastest cars there and passed at least a third. There were many who did not let me pass either due to limited trick etiquette or they preferred to see the Skoda in their rear view mirror!  I am not saying the Skoda is the fastest car in the world but I'm sure there was a lot of inexperienced drivers there which made more progress that much easier! 

 

 I kept the traction control switched on for the first few laps but switched this off due to the throttle cutting on full powe acceleration out of bends. It was better to put up with the inside wheelspinning on every bend with it off modulating the throttle as necessary . If you haven't done Rockingham, there is a banked bend at the end of the straight and whereas many people in admittedly faster cars backed of the throttle, I kept the power on and often hit 115mph on the bend allowing me to always reel in the faster cars.

 

 The brakes were absolutely superb and did not have any trouble at all in slowing the car down from high-speed continuously.  You really do not need bigger and stronger brakes on these cars, just a good choice of pads.

 

 Will  I track it again? If the opportunity arose, I certainly will but having now just received my crankshaft and I will be in the process of rebuilding my engine and hopefully getting my TVR back on the road and track again.

 

 Excuse the ramblings but hopefully some of you may take this  as a bit of a prod to get out there on track. You really cannot go fast on our roads but, you can really go flat-out in these cars on a track! 

 

 A screen snatch from someone's limited video. 

 

 

I took mine on track for the first time at Brands Hatch a couple of months ago and it performed faultlessly.

I didn't push it as hard as I could as I didn't want to break it and I was looking after the tyres but I still had lots of people in higher powered machinery coming up and asking what's been done to it as I was keeping up with and overtaking a lot of them. It's only running 215bhp so I just told them all that I was driving it properly

 

I might take it out on track again but my MG ZS is nearly built so that'll be my primary track toy.

1 hour ago, niceyellow vrs said:

I took mine on track for the first time at Brands Hatch a couple of months ago and it performed faultlessly.

 

True story, I saw it!

Bmw m3's no problem at all

 Even though my Skoda performed really well for what it is, it is no track car in its existing state.

 

It's weakest point is the fact that it only has a very long legged five speed gearbox, you are for ever playing catch up with the long ratios .  The next thing that would benefit would be better suspension as it rolled like a very roly-poly thing! 

 

It performed well mainly due to the better brakes,  a good set of track tyres and the fact that I have done 50+ track days . Also a lot of the TVRs were driven by track inexperienced road drivers. That said it's still performed very well.

 

If you compare my Skoda to my TVR for instance then they are like chalk and cheese. The Skoda needs to have the speed kept up in the bends and otherwise drive it completely flat out with no mechanical sympathy allowed!  My TVR has 400 bhp, 450 foot pound of torque, track biased brakes, suspension,  larger anti-rollbars, decent seats and a four point harness and weighs just one ton. It would wipe the floor with the Skoda.

 

Regarding M3s, just remember how they are driven on track by the likes of Jason Plato and company on fifth gear, they really are a force to be reckoned with in the right hands which is why no matter how great some cars are on track, it is all down to the bloke behind the wheel to make the best of what he has! 

 

Curborough sprint course.