Monday 26 September 2016

Llandow Track Day with Videos

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!
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!
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!

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