First outing before the 2013 Season

General Owners Cars
1

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on track; we’ve left it a week until the first Lotus Cup UK round at Snett next weekend. Funds have been limited over winter, but in reality we’ve had to go backwards, rather than forwards in order to meet stricter regs. Nevertheless, it was stripped back to down to chassis and has had a thorough going over and tidy up.

The biggest change is the tyres; we no longer use Yokos in the series and have moved to Avon ZZRs for dry and their wet race tyre (the idea is to progress to slicks the year after). Thoughts? Well, having been to the LoTRDC get together at Brands recently feedback has been that they take a long time to come up to temperature, but that could have been down to the horrible, cold weather lately. Today, at Snett it was dry and I found the ZZRs to be more or less the same; better if anything. What we did find is that the Elise seems to be kinder and more predictable in tyre temperatures compared to a 2-11 my team run last week.

Having raised ride height and trimmed aero pieces, I was pleased to find the car’s balance was not discernibly different. The smaller rear brake caliper we must now run took a while to fine tune with the brake balance, but braking is now back to normal.

Confident, I got my head down and set some good lap times. However, I’d have to wait till after lunch for the full beans (the map was set to a conservative 7krpm from the Lotus 6HR last year). Full of lasagne, I went out again and immediately the time came down, but then I noticed the throttle felt like it was sticking. Lots of scratching of heads and fiddling for an hour or so resulted in the team diagnosing the diff having an issue (i.e. fooked). With not a huge amount of time left, we packed up. I was kind of pleased there was something wrong though, I had been driving my tits off and yet only managed to match earlier times! :laughing:

I’m not sure who will be reading, so won’t mention times just yet, but with a big grid and people investing in a lot over a Winter, I can’t wait until the first race; it should be VERY competitive! Here’s a few pics from the phone in it’s pre-season clothes…

2

Good luck for the new season, Rob :thumbup:

3

Thanks for the feed back on the tyres, good luck :thumbup:

4

Looking good guys,… LoL with hiding the times!

You’ll have me back out a little later in the year running in the open class alongside you in a modified 111R. The car hasnt even been started on yet but im basically bolting a supercharger on to an already converted production spec car and thengoing to rip as much weight out as I can. Not going to bother with any wings or fancies or even bother changing supension settings from the production class single ways for this year (ive only just paid to set it all up!)

Ill also be having a differemt Co pilot out with me for each round i hope, couple already commited - Skegg’s, Treasure, Kershaw, Donnelly, Fullalove. Just out for a laugh this year and to enjoy it with as little cost as possible.

5

Lush :smiley:

6

Looking good!!

7

No one we know then :laughing:

8

How good does that look with the single centre seat. :clap:

9

Looking fantastic! Is it staying black or having another wrap?

10

Top job, thanks for the update. Lovely colour. Keep it plain and simple!

11

Thanks guys.

Rather than the matt black wrap again, the vinyl guys are just covering it in stickers. Whenever we needed a repair the matt finish was pretty costly, and it was a nightmare keeping it looking good!

One day it’ll go back to its original Azure Blue.

Hope to see out there TT. Not sure i’d want half of those people in my car though :laughing: