Morning,
Yesterday saw the 3rd round of Time Attack take place at my home circuit, which I’ve been looking forward to for ages.
With no test day near to the event I booked up a trackday a couple of weeks prior, as I hadn’t been to the circuit since rebuilding the car. Unfortunately it ended up being a busy day with lots of slowish cars, so I didn’t get much space to see what was possible without anoying the usual Metro owners. Looking at the datalogger when I got home showed me my fast laps averaging at around the 52-53 second mark. However, at the end of the day when the track cleared, I managed a 50.7 with an 18 stone passenger and very worn tyres which showed promise. What also impressed me was the fact that my engine performed faultlessly after buzzing it to well over 11,000 rpm at Knockhill. Tough little buggers!!!
No improvements/changes as such were made to the car after Knockhill apart from replacing a few broken bolts, exhaust mounts, wheel arch liners etc, etc and doing a general check. Knockhill is a bit of a car killer it seems.
Anyway, we went to Brands on Saturday night and enjoyed a few beers in the Thistle and got up nice and relaxed on Sunday morning ready for a gut busting full English in the Kentagon. The normal sickly feeling of this lot sitting on top of lager reared its ugly head as we made out way down to the pits to get ready.
So, we fitted some new tyres and went out for warm up in the morning to scrub them in. These then came off to cool down ready for the final.
Practise. By this time it was 12.30 ish, the temperature was about 31 and my rapidly balding head had already taken a pounding. Went out on my worn tyres and did a 53 something. At this point I realised that it was going to be too hot to set any properly fast times as the tyres just died after only a few laps. Furthermore, the drift cars had left tonnes and tonnes of marbles all over Surtees and Clearways making quick progress very difficult. I could literally scoop handfulls and handfulls of rubber out of my wheels arches after every session!!
Qually. Again on the same tyres I did a late 52 second lap. This put me in 1st for qually points with the Supra boys hot on my heels along with the 4-wheel drive cars.
Final. After a bit of a pause watching the superb sounding and looking World FIA GT1 Skylines tesing we slapped on my now scrubbed in new tyres ready for the final. Out I went with loads of space to get a clean run and struggled a bit. Maybe because I had been made to sit in the pitlane for 25 minutes waiting to go out. Anyway, I came in thinking I’d done enough to take 1st to be greeted by my friend shouting at my to get back out. I’d only done a 53 with the Supra doing a 52.5 and there was only time for one more flying lap. Luckily I managed to find some grip with my now baking tyres and managed a 52.1 with the Supra not having enough time to better me. Coming down the pit straight on this last lap I heard a tyre noise I’ve never heard before which was something like a screaming/groaning child. Quite disconcerting really!!
So another 1st for the little Lotus although the lap times were nothing special. However along with the Supra, I’m now being moved up to the club/pro class because I’m less than 5% off their fastest times. In fact, yesterday my time would have put me 2nd on the podium in the class above.
Jonny in his NA S2 Exige also gave it a good bash but ran out of time to improve his times having never done Brands before.
Jeff Milelham in his NA Honda came a very repectable 3rd in class, pipping a Porsche by 4x100’s of a second.
And Steve G in his Pro Class Audi Turbo Exige came out top of the board again this year but didn’t manage to better last years time, again probably due to the massive heat out on track. Hopefully he can continue to dominate at the next event at Cadwell.
That’s it for now. Ta
