Enjoy it!
Wooo meaningful thread update at last!
As 2025 so far has been dominated with Caterham activity, from completing the build over Christmas, IVA in January and over 20 track/test/race days so far the Lotus was semi-retired to the back of the garage.
After finishing the Croft race at the end of June, that opened up a two month summer break window where the Caterham could be shuffled to the back, and Lotus brought out to the staging area!
7 days following the Caterham race at Croft, I had a Lotus on Track trackday booked at the same circuit so wanted to get the Lotus checked over and signed off fit for action. I honestly can’t remember what state I left it in after its last trackday back in November24.
First problem popped up right away:
A row of dead pixels has appeared on my ADU 
(and within hours a second row appeared a few mm to the right of this one). I’ve already been in touch with ECUMaster via the UK Distributor RRR Engineering and it needs to go back to Poland to be fixed, which all just feels very awkward so for the moment I’ll just put up with it until it gets worse.
Second problem was the NSF Indicator bulb had gone. Nothing major yet, and if that was to be the extent of 8 months of neglect then happy days!
I did however want to change the oil and give it a good once over, and between the racing and tinkering on the Caterham I had just run out of energy - so I took the car over to see Dave and John at Seriously Lotus. Always nice to retain a regular check-in with a specialist on the car’s history regardless of my energy levels.
Oil and filter changed and everything given a good once over, which surfaced:
Minor coolant weep from the front radiator hose. Nipped up, hopefully that’s that.
Minor gearbox fluid weep, suspected from the input seal. Ugh. For now it’s a clean it up and keep an eye on it, but that might need to be box out again at some point.
I’m hoping it’s not a pattern part seal used when the box was rebuild earlier in 2024. That would be really annoying.
Indicator bulb swapped, and front pads identified as being a little close to gone.
Probably could have got Croft out of them, but whilst here it made sense to swap them out. My first pad swap on the big brake setup so got a good couple of years out of them!
Washed and ready for the trailer.
…which was very cosy compared to having a Caterham loaded!
Onto Croft and though the forecast advertised the chance of the odd sprinkle, we had glorious weather all day and missed the brutal wind of the race weekend the previous week.
Croft trackside photos big thanks to PT. Cracking job.
This would be the first time I’ve ever really had back to back experience on the same track in very different cars so close together so it would be quite an interesting experiment. Obviously the Lotus would be faster, for those not aware my Caterham is Academy spec, very low power, very low grip van tyres, no rear anti-roll bar or fancy suspension etc.
What was less clear would be “which is most fun” or “do I remember how to drive this one” or based on the fact I have good data from previous years… has half a season of racing made me any quicker on a track day?!
The car immediately felt broken in almost every aspect. Steering so light it felt like the steering boss had fell apart, brakes grabby and hard to modulate, heel and toe “impossible” with the pedal layout, gearshift felt floppy and weak. Eeeek, this car didn’t always feel like this did it?!
But then just a few laps in I start to get some warm fuzzy feelings returning (or is that nausea?!), and I remember that the 2-Eleven just doesn’t like going slowly. Start leaning on it, get some heat into the brakes and tyres and suddenly it came alive. OK the gearshift was still sloppy and the revmatching took almost all day to relearn (and even then I constantly cocked it up) but it didn’t take long for the chassis to come alive and have me grinning like an idiot.
Half way through the first session I had the car skipping and dancing through T2 and had a few lairy moments through Sunny Out as I relearned the mid-engine weight transfer, but reprogramming my brain to the new speeds didn’t take long at all. With the usual caveats about parsing laptimes from GoPro footage, I got within half a second of my best time of the day within the second session, then spent the rest of the day unscaring myself into putting some consistent laps together.
Reviewing my laps against my 2024 laps, I’d changed a few things in terms of line and approach as a result of my race week and the coaching that came with that, but I’d got no braver through the Jim Clark esses (still needed a lift, which I’m not sure is 100% needed in the 2-Eleven) but gained heaps of speed through Turn 2 and carried a lot more (20kph!) through Sunny In/Out compared to last year.
The car certainly had some handling issues that I’m not sure I was facing last year, perhaps as not leaning quite so hard on the car previously. Turning into T2 on the brakes, my front suspension was really struggling and I ended up hopping across the track a little bit and had to be quite patient before powering on. It feels like maybe the rebound is too stiff, and was preventing the shock from fully expanding on each compression, eventually jacking itself down to effectively being maxed out on the front left.
The Caterham is very soft, and has tonnes of body roll so I’m maybe being overly picky - but if I had the motivation to spend time adjusting the dampers I think I could have dialled some of this out, but I was too busy chatting and being unusually social for that.
Struggling with heel and toe was hurting my entry speed into Sunny In and the first left hander into the complex, but I can’t really blame the car for that.
The sensation of losing grip and sliding the car was a lot less communicative than I’ve grown used to in the Caterham, so the first few slides were a little unnerving but nothing I couldn’t cope with.
The car remained utterly incredible on the brakes, with splitter clearance judged to perfection!
The ADU captured a few longitudinal G readings of 1.7 which is about the most I’ve seen in this car.
I was probably trailing the brakes more than I have done previously, definitely a Caterham habit as it’s the only way you can get that thing to turn, but was a little harder to judge right in the Lotus.
More front wheel hopping:
In terms of mechanical reliability, the car remained faultless all day. Not so much as a stumble or a stall in the pits. Pulled like a train (which I would probably say the same for if I took the Volvo on track after being used to the Caterhams power delivery) seemed to tolerate the temperatures just fine as the day got hotter and hotter.
I did find the Tillet B6 XL seat woefully inadequate at holding me into place after being used to the bespoke bagseat that I have in the Caterham. That’s being very unfair to Tillet as they make excellent seats, but I could maybe benefit from some of the padded inserts to add a bit of grip and/or some sort of padding to take up the slack that my new slender race driver physique has created.
Going from 6pt and full cage to 4pt and… well, the sky was also quite unnerving!
I finished the day on a high, putting in a couple of fairly clean laps but they did feel a bit clumsy due to the aforementioned issue with heel and toe etc. Another trackday and I’ll be back on form, but despite that the figures produced from the day were quite eye opening.
The Caterham Academy pole lap last week was a 1.38.2 (I was P2 with a 1.38.5)
My previous best Croft lap taken from video footage was a 1.32.0 achieved last year.
This week I did a best time of a 1.29.3, and was consistently in the 1.30s. Even my very first session whilst still remembering where the pedals were was better than my previous best.
So a significant improvement, and quite satisfying to know that I’ve gotten a little quicker even despite the clubfooted clumsiness of my feet on the brakes and throttle for much of the day.
In other Caterham terms, the pole lap for the 310R race (the pinnacle Sigma variety) was a 1.31.5, but the slick shod 420R sequential cars did a 1.24.0 which is just a little bit terrifying to think about!
A couple of clear laps in the final session:
As ever the LoT day was brilliantly run, and the driving standards across the board were fantastic. The Porsche contingent is slowly getting more and more numerous on LoT days but I personally don’t have any issues with that, people move on and try other cars - typically people move from Lotus into GT Porsches or Caterhams, so I think it’s great to keep these people in the family because the other alternative is that the LoT days probably can’t operate anymore with just Lotus’.
In terms of how I approached the day, I definitely had a lot less track time than I would have done this time last year. I think this was both just a bit of exhaustion but also was really relishing in the social aspect of trackdaying after the seriousness of testing and racing etc. It’s good to be back just having fun.
And speaking of fun… which is the most funnerist? Caterham or 2-Eleven.
Not sure, need to drive more of both!
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Excellent write up. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to say hello! I nearly lost mine not lifting through the JC esses on one run but I was on trailer tyres (my excuse anyway) 