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SPLIT SCREEN UPDATE ! Jimbocam kindly sent me some of his footage from the trackday from on board his honda powered 340r. This meant that I made some interesting split screen movies with one view from my car and one view from his. Despite a bit of dropout they are in near perfect synch.
First visit to snetterton. Wasn't expecting to enjoy it all that much but ive always wanted to go there and I was pleasantly surprised. The circuit is very fast, flowing for much of it and has lots of run off in places. Its also quite an easy circuit to learn and although there's no elevation, no camber and when all is said and done its just another converted airfield, it definitely won me over on the day. I went with a friend in his 230bhp Dunnel tuned Zetec Westfield and he knows the track well so we had some great laps together and some real fun battles.
The duranail felt very very good on the day, well balanced through the faster corners and the tail nice and loose on the throttle in bends like Sear. The brakes seemed to be working very well and the part-worn slicks were once again giving plenty of grip. One of my 7" front slicks was found to be flatspotted down to the canvas when i arrived at Snet so i used some 6" slicks instead on the front... just to say that although I was expecting possible understeer with too much grip at the rear this wasn't the case. Maybe this was because more heat was getting into the smaller tyre or maybe because they were not as destroyed (by heat cycles) as the 7" slicks I was using previously ???
The main challenge of the day was getting used to some of these high speed corners. Toward the end I had upped my speed in Riches, Coram and the Bombhole considerably but even still the car never felt on the limit so there's a fair bit more to come there. I could probably take more speed into Sear as well although powering out was always an exercise in gentle throttle application. The bottom of the Revett straight translated to 130mph, 6700rpm in 5th and the main straight was around 115-120mph if i remember correctly. Truth be told I never fully got the hang of the esses.... the first left hander is a strange and slightly daunting one and its very easy to turn in too early for the right hander.
A couple of issues on the day. First up, noise. The silencer needs repacking badly and i was recorded at 110.5db static at 5000rpm and 119db drive-by so after lunch I was forced to lift off down the main straight. I really do need to get a decent silencer ! Secondly, during the end of my afternoon sessions the car started to stutter again under load rather like a misfire. This happened before at Brands but it was even more pronounced at snetterton. You can hear it in some of the vids where I go to accelerate and the car just splutters and doesn't really do a lot.
Finally, a had a moment with one of the kerbs at the esses. Found out the hard way that you're not supposed to go over them. The car bounced violently and when i squeezed the throttle nothing happened, not even any revving. First thing I did was to look down at the stack and see the Los Oil Pressure warning so i immediately hit the power cut off on the dash (thats what i put it there for !) and steered onto the grass. I was convinced that i'd lunched the engine and that I was going home for an early bath but after getting a tow back, dipping the oil and checking the fuel and oil pressure it became clear that the fuel pump inertia switch had been activated by the violent thud on the kerbing. Shame because thats the first time i've ever been responsible for stopping a session on a trackday but having said that I wasn't the only one; at least 2 other cars did exactly the same during the morning.
MOVIES A nice dutch rear camera !
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