Croft time baby!
First trackday since Spa which feels like a lifetime ago, it’s probably the biggest gap I’ve had between trackdays outside of the Winter months since ever!
Since Spa the brake setup had remained the same, with the big discs all around and the road intended RS42 Pagid pads in the rear to keep the balance drivable. I would be karting along a set of 288 (OE size) discs and hardware to allow me to try downsizing at the rear as another experiment.
Also since Spa, I had spent what felt like hundreds of hours cleaning CV grease out of the engine bay, and I had upsized the supercharger pulley from 2.9" to 3.0". This would drop my maximum boost and hence power in my ‘race mode’ map, but hopefully drop IATs in both maps. With my ultimate power potential now a bit lower (I calculate around 15bhp down in the race mode map) I now feel brave enough to run it all day on the track, so really I am up on power compared to the rest of this year where I was timidly sat in the lower powered road map.
15bhp (and the associated torque) doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re right on the bubble for the accepted limits of the gearbox - it’s a nice fluffy safety blanket.
The trackday was with Circuitdays, I think my first ever one. Some serious kit in attendance but a really good blend up and down the pitlane. From the trackday classics such as the Clio and the MX5 up to high end GT Porsches, race cars and everything in between. Special mention out to a pair of BMW cars, no idea what spec - but they were liveried up and seriously fast.
Sighting laps and first session underway, steady away really - reminding myself what the car felt like and where the track goes. Nothing exciting to report.
I was keeping half an eye on IATs, but just convinced myself to ignore them and review in the logs later. It can be misleading to watch stuff like that real time.
My passenger for the day would be short lived. Not literally, he didn’t die - but he did forget his travel sickness pills so that was that 
Brakes felt good, still the very occasional wobble at the rear as it locked up (or tried to lock up, triggering ABS) so the bias I think was still a smidge too far back, but it was certainly driveable and would have happily kept going all day. External witnesses reported that my braking was inconsistent though, sometimes braking way too early, sometimes very aggressively deep into corners which apparently made following me quite interesting. Perhaps I was second guessing the brakes more than I realised from within the cockpit.
Slowly built up speed through the morning, felt like I was a fair bit off the potential of the car but I was enjoying it having a fair bit of mixed-pace traffic meant a slightly different vibe to the usual LoT day. It was fun, even if clear/flowing laps were rare.
A few of the NYLOC gang came out wielding cameras, so thanks PT and Mark for your content. Complemented the Circuitdays photography nicely.
Circuitdays photographer didn’t seem to like the back of my car, luckily Paul stepped up.
Car felt really strong in the complex, and through the awkward Hawthorn into the chicane. The quicker stuff I felt like it struggled more than usual, wasn’t getting the bite from the front end that I’d been accustomed to in this car. You could normally just flick the wheel at almost any speed and the nose would dart in, but at Croft I had to ease it in, wait for it to connect and then load her up. Initially I just put this down to the ageing AR1 possibly being past their best… I’ve had them well over a year now, and they even did a few trackdays on my Exige too before transferring them.
After I got home, it dawned on me that we’d made a damper change at Spa in a desperate attempt to stop the rears locking. I stiffened the crap out of the front to try and stop it diving on the brakes, and in hindsight I’m not sure I ever reverted that! At time of writing I haven’t checked yet, as car is still in the trailer - but it’s something I’ll definitely check for.
In any case, it didn’t seem to spoil my day - and in all honesty taking a steady line through the faster stuff wasn’t all that upsetting - it’s scary when you’re on full attack through there anyway!!
At some time around midmorning I ran into Circuitdays Instructor, fellow 2-Eleven owner and PH poster Steve. Nice to meet you, I’ll make CD a bigger part of my TD calendar in future and definitely try to get some time booked in with you. I’ve really missed tuition since getting the 2-Eleven but it sounds like you have a system that we could adapt, and get some value out of it.
At lunch time I really wasn’t motivated to swap the rear discs over as I’d intended. The car was driving ‘fine’ and I was feeling pretty knackered from the morning excercise. Luckily though, I found somebody who WAS motivated, in stepped John from @seriouslylotus to kindly lend some tools, and hands, and expertise to get things swapped over sharpish.
The AP 2 pot calipers were fitted with spacers and longer bolts to allow for the large discs, so all we had to do there was drop the spacers out and refit the original bolts. The handbrake caliper though would remain offset by too much, so is effectively hanging off the disc now. This can be fixed if I commit to this route full time by modifications to the bracket, but in the meantime it would still function just fine.
I wanted to go straight in and refit the aggressive pads to the rears, but I was talked out of it. Keep the RS42 in and change as few variables as possible.
Going out after lunch the car immediately felt more comforting on the brakes. No question it had lost some all-out stopping power, but I seemed to gain a load of feel through the pedal when braking on the limit which was lost before. The power assisted, ABS brakes in the S2 platform have never been known for their pedal feel compared to the unassisted setup in the S1/Rover cars - but I’d been missing a bit of feedback without realising.
I’m not sure why this is, maybe because the stopping power is slightly less intense now and I have a bit more time to compute what is happening, or maybe because the balance is now thrown forward enough that it’s the fronts reaching their limits first and the front circuit provided better feedback? Really don’t know, but it felt better.
The next logical step is to put the aggressive pad back in the back so I’m matching compounds - but that’s a job for the next trackday I think, I want to get used to my new baseline for now.
The afternoon continued being fun, didn’t really feel like I was picking up any pace and started stagnating. The red flags didn’t help, we seemed to have 5 or 6 within a couple of hours and always seemed to be as I was starting a session - but still got plenty of laps squeezed in.
Very late in the day a chap wandered up and asked for a passenger ride, to which I of course obliged. After getting him strapped in and out on track, the car felt really good for some reason. Normally you can really feel the penalty of a passenger in this car, but for whatever reason the stars aligned, we got nice flowing traffic and the car just felt great. Because of the sudden distraction of a passenger jumping in, I forgot to fire up the gopro but the ADU logs concur that it was my best, most consistent session by far. Very odd, as usually a passenger is worth a couple of seconds!
Eager to get out for one more ride solo, it dawned on me that I’d used the dregs of my fuel and that was me done for the day. I tried to sneak out for a couple of laps with Ishy (resident NYLOC driving instructor) but we barely made it round the outlap before the car cut out on a left hander.
Oh well, finished a bit early but the car finished without any niggles - pulled strong all day and we had some good science achieved on the brakes.
Rear tyres seem to be maximising their camber, and wear going down to the wear indicators. This may be because the front was too stiff after the Spa damper changes, but it may also mean I could benefit from a sliver more camber at the rear. Something to consider.
As for IATs, the logs showed a clear and consistent result of approx. 10C savings from stepping up a pulley size.
This is a snippet from a log from Donington earlier in the year, on 2.9":
And this is from Croft on 3.0":
Obviously different days, and different ambients - but the Donington IAT performance is consistent across all of my 2023 trackdays. Ambient has a very diminished effect on IATs when out on track IME, you need huge swings to see noticeable differences and it’s typically a case of heatsoaking the hardware when stationary which is the problem rather than on-the-move performance.
I’m not sure what this means yet. As a result of the lower temps, my ECU was only retarding 0.5 deg rather than the 1.0-1.5 it was pulling at Donny. Is that enough to reclaim the 15bhp we’ve dropped by lowering boost? No idea. But it feels good to be stressing the hardware a little less.
Oh, and I used ‘race mode’ all day and nowt’ blew up. That also felt good. Through capping my boost via DBW throttle in the road mode map, I’d been strangling the “vtec” lift gains more than I’d realised. A few times round Croft the car had really (pleasantly) surprised me once it was really singing. Felt great.
In terms of video, my ageing GoPro 6 has had a bit of a failure - the onboard GPS just doesn’t work anymore. It sounds like a non-issue, but it’s such a useful tool when buddied up with RaceRender software to just open up a clip, and instantly identify your ‘clear’ laps. You can turn a YT video round in minutes based on quickly picking out your quicker laps. Without it, you’re left trawling through an hour or two of footage to pick good bits out, and I just can’t be bothered anymore!
For that reason, I’ve just trimmed a full session and stuck that up.
Lotus 2-Eleven at Croft Circuit - YouTube
It was quite late in the day, I think it was the session just before the mythical passenger session that I did (and didn’t record). Not even watched it all myself yet, but from skimming through it seems a pretty fair representation of the day with regards to other cars on track.
Top day, not much to do on the car before the next one - but also quite a big gap in the calendar till’ my next one - so need to find something to do.
