Daniel French's third season of Caterham Racing. Competing in the 2019 Motul 270R Championship. This blog shows my full Caterham Journey from the build of the awesome R500 Duratec, the Academy Car in 2017, track day information, videos and race results.
Well not quite the real deal, but I've 'taken ownership' of another Caterham! OK, OK, granted, yes it's a Lego Caterham 620R, and it's not in the blue and orange I hoped it'd be (as I don't think Lego are making them in that colour which is a bit of a shame), but it is another Caterham to add to my collection!
The original design is by Carl Greatrix, and as an avid Lego kit designer, he added the kit on the Lego community for review, where 10,000 supporting votes were required before Lego even considered it. He got the votes, Lego liked the idea, and a year or so later... here we go - they've made it into the product that's on the shelves today.
I'd seen it crop up on the John Lewis website yesterday, (as they're not supposed to be released for sale until 1st October 2016), so popped in a cheeky order, to see if it would turn up - low an behold, the email came through this morning to say it was ready for collection! Happy days, or at least I thought so.... As a couple of weeks ago Charlotte (my better half) asked me not to buy anything geeky / gadget related, but I'd totally forgotten, as it turns out she'd pre-ordered one for me, as she knew I was keen to get my hands on one... So I cancelled my order, and now have a Caterham that's been bought for me! Even better!
BUILD TIME LAPSE VIDEO
For those of you that just can't wait to get hold of one, and fancy seeing how it's built, please see the video below. I was going to do my own video, but wanted to just enjoy building the kit, so here's another video I've found on YouTube:-
It took around 2 hours to assemble all 771 parts, and was good fun too, but I was going as fast as I could to get it finished this evening, so I'm sure if you took your time you could get three or four hours of building pleasure out of the kit... And... all in typical Lego (certainly not Caterham :-)) fashion all the parts were there too!
Here are a couple of pictures of the finished article:-
Lego Caterham 620R with matting underneath just in case the gearbox leaks!
Lego Caterham 620R has removable bonnet, engine and nose cone
The only real disappointment for me, is the lack of colour choice - I really would've liked to have seen it in the 'press car' colours (blue and orange)... Anyway... I'm pleased the kit finally managed to make it's way to the shelves, and would highly recommend it to any car or Caterham enthusiast as a bit of good 'old skool' fun.
I'm sure they'll sell plenty - dare I say it, a perfect Christmas present!
Caterham ownership at times requires a bit of dedication, and dedication doesn't come much earlier than waking up at 4:15am to drive 200 miles to the south of Wales! Well it might do, but not by much!
I'd been booked up for the Llandow track day since May, but for various reasons (which I'll come onto in a few posts) I decided to cancel... Long story short, with the car just being re-delivered to me I absolutely HAD to get it on track ASAP! So I re-booked for the track day, and that was the plan for the weekend... We also had use of our T6 for the weekend (more info on this below) packed our bags, and set the alarm clock for 4:15am!
About to head off to Llanow in the R500 at 4:50am!
We arrived at the circuit around 8:15, met up with the group and had a decent fry-up at the Cafe on site. The briefing was a little later than I expected, so I guess we could've left a bit later, but I'll know for next time!
The On-Board Videos
The day wasn't without a technical 'glitch' on the car - (a short on the airbox airflow sensor), but I'll come onto that when I fix it!
With the problem 'kinda' solved, I went out for a few laps, and found myself behind Tony 'the cone' Whitley... Watch the video and towards the end you'll see why he's called 'the cone' :-) Even with some cone abuse, he is/was fast and helped me drag a bit more speed out of my car....
The next video below is of three laps around Llandow Circuit - the laps were fairly consistent in terms of times, but a bit of a lock-up at the start of lap two cost me half a second. Hope you enjoy the video's if you do, please like/thumbs up and subscribe to my channel for more R500 action!
Having reviewed my video footage, I think there's probably another 1sec to 1.5secs available with a bit less front tyre pressure (and some fresh rubber!), better use of third gear after the chicane and a bit more bravery to boot! At that sort of speed it'd be close to what the 'big boys' have logged on the fastest laps website.
Camping out for the night
I've put a deposit down on a VW T6 Campervan, and for some weird VW reason we can't take ownership of it until mid October - (it's for their dealership status, they need to keep a van available for rental on their books until their next rental camper comes into stock), so although the camper technically is 'ours' it's still on their books - anyway... We borrowed it from them / ourselves, for the event, and it was superb!
...Knowing that there was a camp site local to Llandow Circuit, I booked up a pitch there, and luckily enough a large proportion of the group were camping there too... Happy days... The only thing was I didn't realize there was a curry booked up, so we came with the BBQ, some beers and a bottle of bubbly, which of course we couldn't waste!
A picture of an awesome weekend - living the dream!
So we got set up (which took next to no time), put the tonneau on the car, fired up the BBQ, opened the bubbly, and enjoyed the night.
On a scale of 1-10 how good was the weekend?? Easily a 20! All I can say is I was as happy as pig in sh1t - living the dream!
Nearly two months on from it's collection for it's annual service - the R500 was delivered back to me yesterday morning...
The R500 being unloaded off the Caterham Van
It's been away for a while as I've been on holiday and had a lot on... However the car is now back, and looks as awesome as ever! Can't wait to have a drive of it again, seems like I've not driven it in months... Well, I guess that's because it has been months!
Unloading from the other side
There's a track day at Llandow tomorrow; which, if I'm lucky enough I'll be attending... Watch this space :-)