Last Sunday, the 4th round of Time Attack took place on the Cadwell Park full circuit. Since round 3 at Brands I�ve been moved up a class into Club Pro due to being consistently within 5% of the times of the top Club Pro cars. Having never been to Cadwell, I arrived at the circuit very late on the Friday night hoping that I�d get a slot on the track day on the Saturday, which I had forgotten to book and which was sold out.
Anyway, at around 2 o�clock on Saturday some of us were allowed on for the remainder of the day. After re-mounting the ECU which had decided to fall off, out I went with a friend to see what the hype was all about. What can I say!!! Awesome track. Lots of camber changes, big drops, steep hills, blind corners, longish straight and a tight wooded and quite greasy section with a beautifully flowing layout. However, the fun didn�t last long and on about the fourth lap I started to feel very, very sick and pulled in. This year I�ve somehow managed to develop some sort of motion sickness which reared its ugly head with real vigour during these few laps. Apart from a couple more half-hearted laps, that was pretty much all the practise I got, as the sickly feeling kept coming. As usual, a few beers and a lovely Barbie followed in order to round off the day nicely.
Sunday. 6.30am and a motion sickness tablet was washed down with a bacon/sausage/egg sandwich in the hope that it would fend away any more near vomiting experiences. 9.45. Feeling a little worried about being out at the same time as all the Pro cars, i.e with Steve G in his Audi turbo Exige and a host of other very fast machinery with equally impressive drivers, I made my way down to the pit lane for the warm up session. I managed to roughly suss out the circuit this time getting in at least 10 laps without r-decorating my cockpit. This gave me a bit of a boost as I found it quite easy to get the hang of and now all I had to do was try and work out how to go lots faster. I was doing 1.45�s ish I think.
Practise followed a little later and the times came down to 1.42. BTCC cars apparently do 1.38-39�s.
After a bit of lunch I was due out for qually. We were split up here in order to give us some space out on track with it being very difficult to get a clear lap in without being held up at some point. This worked well and I got down to a late 1.39. Meanwhile the Steve G was down in the 1.33�s!!! My only �moment� of the day was in this session, gunning it down to the gooseneck without braking. I now know this isn�t possible, as it took me at least 6 or 7 attempts to catch the slide going down to the hairpin, using both the grass to the left and to the right of the track in the process. Eventually I caught it and with a little round of applause from one of the marshals and with a change of underwear required, I made my way back to my paddock.
As three of us had been put up a class and were all rear wheel drive, the organisers had decided to give us our own group in order that we could still compete against each other for the rest of the year without mucking things up for the others in our class. These being the 2 Supras. One was ahead of me by half a second and the other had a hole in his bottom end as big as my fist, so I would be on the podium regardless which was a little boring. However, my aim of course was still to be competitive in Club Pro as a whole, as next year I imagine the format will be back to normal.
The final arrived and with some slightly newer rubber, we all left for the holding area. After a long wait due to a large oil spill we eventually got down to the pit lane ready to go out. It seems Cadwell is an engine/gearbox killer due to all the circuit changes and we were now about an hour behind time. Again, I was a little nervous about getting in the way of the Pro cars as the straight line speed differential is unbelievable. Put it this way, it isn�t often that you don�t even have to lift off the throttle in a chargecooled SC Honda in order for another car to get past like your standing still, on a relatively small straight and without upsetting their line into the next corner!!! Anyway, after a couple of hot lap and cool down lap attempts I got down to a 1.37. I reckon with a few more goes I could have been down to a late 1.35, as I could still see lots more potential around the back section and was also being very cautious due to rather a lot of cement down the long straight and corner . Regardless, this was enough to give me the win in my RWD class and by over 2 seconds. I think overall, I would have been 5th in Club Pro which I find quite acceptable for a newbie.
So, an excellent day and a real treat to be at such a stunning circuit. My car performed faultlessly as usual and was an absolute joy to drive. Steve G got down to an almost unbelievable late 1.31 in the final, smashing the opposition. As far as Jonny in his NA S2 Exige and Jeff in his NA Honda are concerned, I really lost track of how they got on, as I was busy crapping myself most of the day.
O.K, this is enough writing for now, but here are a couple of Vimeo links. One from the Cadwell final and one from Brands back in June. Enjoy.
