***TRACKDAY, Croft (N. Yorks), Tues 5th May***

[lennycarloff]

A mixed bag on the weather, just the way I like it

[C J R]

Well, bit of drama today as I got ready to travel to the hotel before Croft tomorrow.

Finished changing the brake fluid and bolting other bits back on the FD, went for a test drive, (private road), reached about 130mph and the new front splitter folded under the front of the car !!! that made a loud scraping noise 

Managed to unfold it enough to get the FD home, spent the last few hours removing the mangled mess and fitting an old splitter/under tray for tomorrow. Couldn't fit any canards, so I'll have lots of understeer to contend with. Oh well another track day season wouldn't be the same without some drama !!

[shaunwil]

Hope you all have a good day. Fingers crossed with the weather too.

I keep saying it but soon I will be out on track again !

Shaun

[clive]

Arrgggggggg, sorry to hear that Chris, I was looking forward to seeing your Mercedes F1 style  front wing.

[neil_jdmr]

Great day with testing times in the wet for the first half and full throttle laps for the second half once the sun dried up the track.

Was lovely to meet everyone and ogle some cars.

[boosted]

Sweet...any vids and did Clive have a trouble free day ?

[neil_jdmr]

There was plenty people with cameras and camcorders so hopefully some will appear soon.

[Casey]

^^ Neil, I have a short bit of video footage of me following you and C J R in the afternoon, just before my camera stopped working - so I'll lost that up later. Stewart got a few great shots too, including this one of my car;



Well, I'm now back at home, but very tired after yesterday, plus the 5 hour journey back today. Goodness knows what Ian.M must be like as he left the hotel at 4am to get back to work at 9am this morning   

Firstly, huge thanks again to everyone who came along to make this an exceptionally enjoyable day, both on track and around the garages. Really great to see the usual “addicts” plus quite a few new faces too. I hope some of new faces might come along again to future Trackdays with the club.

I'm so glad I booked the garages (given the weather, and the need for work on several cars). Apologies it was a tight fit. When I realised the numbers of us were increasing I tried to get an extra garage, but they were sold out. I hadn't realised there are only 22 garages at Croft, so we had 27% of them to our group! At least it was cosy!

I really enjoyed the pre-event meal and company at Fratello’s on Monday evening. Thanks to stoupaduck (John) for recommending it, especially as it was only a short walk from the Travelodge.

I really felt for tractorboy (Bob); having sorted out his diff oil leak issue and driven all the way from Ipswich to be with us, only to suffer an engine issue which he could not solve on the day, meaning he wasn’t even able to get a single lap of the circuit before driving home…..I was glad to hear he’s got home safely at least and can do further work to figure out the root cause of the “no revving over 6,500” issue.

Also, Ranjan maintained his smile and sense of humour throughout the day â€" after rushing back from France overnight, collecting and trailering the Locoblade all the way from Birmingham to Croft, only to find it would not steer in the straight line! He was great though - going out as a passenger and helping out from his racing experience with sevral of us (mantra, "must brake later..."  ).

Wasn’t it a day of two halves â€" heavy rain overnight had left standing water around the circuit such that some apexes and a few feet of adjacent track were just huge puddles. The rain continued throughout the morning and made the track very interesting. I don’t usually bother with instruction on Trackdays now (getting too old to change my ways..) BUT when I saw;

1.   Instruction was FREE
2.   The very wet conditions
3.   One of the two instructors was Adam Morgan (currently 8th in the 2015 BTCC championship)

I thought, why not. He was great, advising on experimenting with “wet” lines through corners that carried far more grip than the “classic” lines, which I’d initially tried and resulted in huge understeer.

We suffered the inevitable Red Flags, mostly due to the conditions being underestimated by drivers, but the marshals did an excellent job of clearing these quickly 

The afternoon saw high winds to start with, which helped to clear the clouds, brought out the sun and the track dried out incredibly quickly (apart from one apex puddle!). This enabled everyone to really push their cars harder and faster, back onto (most of) the dry lines and much quicker times.

I was ready to go out for a final session around 4.30pm when there was an enormous “thud” to be heard from behind the garages. On taking a look we could see from the paddock that a race-prepped black/pink MR2 (which was in a garage next to me) had ploughed in an armco barrier at some speed. The driver was OK, although she had a slight limp on getting out and it took a while for the marshals to clear that incident, which involved much bashing of the Armco! The track was re-opened at about 4.45, so time for one last session! I was out having fun with loads of other cars when the red flags came out just before the scheduld end of the day. On getting back to the garages we were down-heartened to see lennycarloff’s (Jim’s) RX-7 FC being towed back. At first it looked like a simple issue of a coolant expansion pipe having split, but on restarting his engine it sounded like a bag of nails, maybe running on just one rotor. Plugs were removed and checked and Jim decided he’d drive it home, about an hour away. I was pleased to get a text later to say he’d made it back OK and can set about fixing the problem.

That left just five of us to go to the "Beeswing" pub for what turned out to be a really superb meal, with excellent table service in our own little private corner. A really fantastic way to wind down after the day on track.

C J R, farmboyrex and myself were the only ones left staying overnight at the Travelodge and we agreed to meet up for breakfast this morning at the adjacent Costa. But, farmboyrex (Nigel) had a call this morning to say get back to work asap so we just said our goodbyes in the car park. That left just C J R (Chris) and I had to have a leisurely breakfast before we had a mini-convoy down the A1 until we split at the A1/M1 junction.

I'll hopefully post up a bit of video later, but my camera power supply was playing up in the afternoon, so I've got very little footage after lunch    I think the dampness got to it in the morning  : :lol:

Here's a picture of Adam Morgan:



Ooop, sorry, here's a picture of Adam Morgan - he's the one in front  :wink:

[neil_jdmr]

Be good to see some footage and pics. I hope I did the 3rd gen rx7s proud on the day. Many of the rx8 owners had the opinion that 7s didnt handle so well so I was glad to take a few of the guys out for a passenger ride.

It was my third time around croft and I had a great day

[Casey]

It was really great to meet and see you at Croft Neil. Your car was flying round the circuit  . I didn't go out with you but was most impressed seeing your car from the pit wall, and following you later in the day (short vid to post up when I can edit it). That's why I don't understand why not more RX-7's come along to trackdays.

[C J R]

After the splitter drama prior to Croft plus the forecast of wet weather and lack of front down force, I decided caution was the best approach to the day. Fitted an untested mix of tyres with the idea of testing myself instead of the grip in the wet.
For me the day went very well, had some butt clenching moments in the morning, heavy braking with full right hand lock and car aiming straight !! or skipping side ways towards the opposite side of the track and the grass. All dramas ended without contact with anything solid, result.
Afternoon session allowed conditions to push the tyres a little more and gauge grip levels (which were pretty low), dispite experimenting with tyre pressures. But had some great fun out on track, love the fast flowing course at Croft.
Great to see Neil's FD on track, that was fast all day.
In summary another well organised (thanks Malcolm) track day with a great bunch of guys. Fantastic philosophy of helping each other, whether giving advice, tuition, tools or labour, thanks to everyone in the group.
Looking forward to the next session (hopefully with improved front down force and tyres).   

[Casey]

Glad you got home OK Chris - with the car in the same state as left; only a slight modification to your rear diffuser (and even that didn't happen on track!), a rare event 

A short compilation, which has captured some views of your FD and Neil's, plus some other "highlights".

Best to click on the Youtube link, bottom right, then full screen and use the cogwheel to select 1080p for best quality.

[neil_jdmr]

Thats brilliant,  thanks for uploading and sharing