Rockingham Track Day - with Videos

With my previous escapade involving an 'estimated' increase of 40bhp, you can guess I was chomping at the bit to get out to sample this newly found performance.

I was left with two swimming pools of water underneath each seat due to the soaking I got on Monday, so towards the end of last week the car was partially stripped, cleaned, re-assembled and the suspension and tyres were put back to their base settings.

After the torrential rain, the weather turned into glorious sunshine, but I just couldn't get the time to get out in the car...  So, having investigated some local track days, Rockingham seemed like a good chance to blow the cobwebs out of the engine... However it was a pretty quiet noise limit at 98dp, so I called to see what would happen if I failed the noise test - to which I was told I would lose the entry fee... Not wanting to lose a couple hundred quid we agreed that I would 'reserve' my place, turn up, get noise tested and should I pass, I would then pay the entrance fee; fail and it was ok to leave without paying - so a no brainer... I donned the Raceco can, packed the carbon airbox and headed up to Rockingham early yesterday morning.

Needless to say, I passed the noise test with the Raceco exhaust fitted, (although I think I didn't pass, as they made me run half revs, not the usual three quarters), so I signed on, the briefing was given, sighting laps were completed and it was then onto the open pit lane sessions.

The driving standard was pretty poor, with cars not moving out of the way, not indicating, undertaking into corners, overtaking mid corner and as a result there were five red flag stoppages (in the morning alone!) due to cars in the kitty litter, engines letting go and so on... I've never seen anything like it, and was left thinking I'd made a mistake in attending.  The organiser held an emergency drivers bollocking just before lunch, and things seemed to calm down.

(an apt video from the afternoon session)

I think the organisers felt that lunch couldn't come quick enough and at 1pm we stopped for lunch, during which time the paddock seemed to empty somewhat.

After lunch I went out for a few runs, and when upping the pace the rear seemed a little too loose for my liking, but was quite good fun for a little bit of sideways action...

A nice bit of sideways at Rockingham International Super Sports Car Long Circuit

Some front and rear shock tweaks and a bit of tyre pressure adjustment later, the car was handling much better... The track seemed to have cleared a little too, so I took the opportunity to try and blast out some clean laps, but there were a few mistakes and a little traffic in most instances...  Below is a video of three consecutive laps which I'm reasonably happy with.

 

After taking the car to Track n Road, I'm confident that the car is running far better than it has been (for probably the most of this year), but there are a couple of things I'd like to clarify:-

• "they thought the throttle was never setup"
  >>> I think it setup was initially, it was just a long way out when I took the car to them.
• "you were down 40bhp"
  >>> quite possibly, but that was due to the throttle bodies being out of balance, and not additional power they found - it was more getting the power back.

In summary it was a good track 'afternoon' with he morning a bit of a write off, but as the weather was so good I once again had a thoroughly enjoyable experience!