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A great sunny day. Its been over 3 years and I forgot just how daunting this circuit is. Took me several outings to refamiliarise and get up to speed. The car needs a fair bit of attention. Beforehand I removed the damper spacers on the front bilsteins (they will only make your car run on the bumpstops !) but this has meant a change in the front ride height to about 10cm. At the same time, the rear is running at around 17cm so with 7cm of rake the car was very twitchy and I didn't want to take the piss or anything. I did try adjusting the platforms a little on the day but it really is a damper off job and the sleeve needs moving downwards to afford more adjustment of the platforms. Also, although the tyres still have good tread they are 4 trackdays old now in my posession and were pretty shagged used slicks when I got them middle of last year so they just have sod all grip, way less than a fresh set of ACB10's I'd say. I also took the opportunity at cadwell to remove some of the toe out on the car. It really had an excessive amount and was feeling far too pointy.
The above Hayabusa powered car which runs in the britsports race series came along. Interesting checking out the installation there and I had some great fun laps with it later in the day. Although my speedo is still under-reading a bit the datalogging is now working since the mychron unit went back to AIM to get its memory fixed. Looking at the logs is very interesting and highlights so much. Looking at a sample lap below, apart from the obvious 'trackdayesque' slow gearchanges and general twitchy speed curve, both down the main straight and up towards Park a change to 5th actually costs me lots of speed (had i held the gear) and I never actually overcome the speed loss due to changing and fail to achieve any higher speed than where I was when I changed up from 4th. I would have been much better off holding 4th to the redline. CLICK PIC OF LOG FOR LARGER VERSION
Also of note is the lack of G force in some of the high speed bends. Going into Coppice i'm backing off (very early at that) and only pulling 1.14G and also only about 1.25 through charlies2 whereas I should be around the 1.35 mark. Short shifting into 4th out of park is costing me and i'm losing way too much speed in the opening of the hall bends. Tons left in the car and I'd love to come back here when it is setup properly again and has some decent rubber.
The Manta in full effect !
Lotus were there putting some miles on the development 240r cars. I had a couple of laps right behind mr. Kershaw and he was ragging the car, sideways in every single bend. Abslutely hilarious stuff and I kept very clsoe to get a good view but it was only when I turned off circuit that I remembered that I had my camera set for a rear facing view.... shame.
MOVIES A few movies, nothing that exciting.... my extrenal micrphone with Rycote windshield oviously didnt work too well so that gets put back in the boot from now on.
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