Saturday 1st March - my first time out this year. I have arranged for my nephew, Oliver Bryant, to come with me and give me some professional tuition (if you haven't heard of him, check out his web site on the link at the top of the page).
Olly's the young good looking one!
Armed with a new oil cooler, and seat (see last years blog -my last race at Snetterton for how I broke my seat), I'm off to Silverstone on a Gold Track track day.
I remember now what I love, and what I hate about track days.
What I love is the chance to see all that exotica in action. It's amazing isn't it. There must be, what, a few hundred 997 GT3 RSs in the country? I reckon nearly all of them where there. It was like a Porsche Club meeting. That's not to mention all the 996 GT3s, a Lambo Mercialago, a couple of Carrera GTs, and more M3s than you could count. Oh and I spotted a new Nissan GTR in the car park.
What amuses me is that these guys are out there in their hunded grand cars, burning up thousand of pounds worth of tyres going as fast as they dare, and here's me in my old bath tub of a Westy worth a few quid, and I can easily keep up with them. There's a certain satisfaction in that for me (not that I wouldn't do the same if I had a shed load of money to play with!).
What I dislike about track days is the fact that you can't do any timing, so you have no idea whether you are improving or not.
Having said that, Oliver is a good instructor and I reckon I picked up a few really good tips, not just for the Silverstone GP circuit, but for everywhere, like how to deal with chronic understeer, and getting in the habit of using all of the track width even if you don't think you need to.
It was an eventful day though to say the least.
Firstly Olly had a set of hemets with an intercom system so that we could talk to each other. Well that was the idea anyway and I'm sure it would work well in a car with a roof - or even a windscreen, but with neither the wind noise was just too much at anything more than cruising pace. So we did our best with hand signals and lots of post- lap briefings.
I then got a bit too brave at Copse and span and rode sideways over the curb. I can't be sure, but it was probably that that broke my rear roll bar. I must admit I didn't notice anything different except a vibration that we both put down to flat spotted tyres, but we were black flagged and had to come in. The remains of the roll bar had snapped and was hanging loose. That in turn must have knocked the rubber boot off the drive shaft and there was diff oil everywhere.
We cobbled together a repair to the drive shaft seal, removed the roll bar and got out there again. We lasted nearly another whole session but then developed a severe vibration which felt bad enough to need to come in and sort out. I got the wheels balanced and did a bit of nut tightening, but one more lap showed it wasn't fixed so we called it a day.
Back to Spirit for a check over before my first race on the 17th. I'm hoping it's just the prop shaft out of balance. We'll see..
I remember now what I love, and what I hate about track days.
What I love is the chance to see all that exotica in action. It's amazing isn't it. There must be, what, a few hundred 997 GT3 RSs in the country? I reckon nearly all of them where there. It was like a Porsche Club meeting. That's not to mention all the 996 GT3s, a Lambo Mercialago, a couple of Carrera GTs, and more M3s than you could count. Oh and I spotted a new Nissan GTR in the car park.
What amuses me is that these guys are out there in their hunded grand cars, burning up thousand of pounds worth of tyres going as fast as they dare, and here's me in my old bath tub of a Westy worth a few quid, and I can easily keep up with them. There's a certain satisfaction in that for me (not that I wouldn't do the same if I had a shed load of money to play with!).
What I dislike about track days is the fact that you can't do any timing, so you have no idea whether you are improving or not.
Having said that, Oliver is a good instructor and I reckon I picked up a few really good tips, not just for the Silverstone GP circuit, but for everywhere, like how to deal with chronic understeer, and getting in the habit of using all of the track width even if you don't think you need to.
It was an eventful day though to say the least.
Firstly Olly had a set of hemets with an intercom system so that we could talk to each other. Well that was the idea anyway and I'm sure it would work well in a car with a roof - or even a windscreen, but with neither the wind noise was just too much at anything more than cruising pace. So we did our best with hand signals and lots of post- lap briefings.
I then got a bit too brave at Copse and span and rode sideways over the curb. I can't be sure, but it was probably that that broke my rear roll bar. I must admit I didn't notice anything different except a vibration that we both put down to flat spotted tyres, but we were black flagged and had to come in. The remains of the roll bar had snapped and was hanging loose. That in turn must have knocked the rubber boot off the drive shaft and there was diff oil everywhere.
We cobbled together a repair to the drive shaft seal, removed the roll bar and got out there again. We lasted nearly another whole session but then developed a severe vibration which felt bad enough to need to come in and sort out. I got the wheels balanced and did a bit of nut tightening, but one more lap showed it wasn't fixed so we called it a day.
Back to Spirit for a check over before my first race on the 17th. I'm hoping it's just the prop shaft out of balance. We'll see..
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