Nice to be behind the wheel again!
After the snow and ice and general tribulations over getting the car ready…. or at least all one uniform colour and ready, I can report that we had a very successful day. 
and that I had a great time.
The only changes we had made to the car this year were to turn it blue, and move the coolant radiators to the side pods.
Moving the coolant to the sidepods had two concerns, firstly I was worried that the reduced mass at the front would give me nasty understeer, and secondly I was a bit concerned that it might impair the cooling efficiency.
On the first I needn’t have worried, the integral splitter in the new front bodywork is probably a bit more efficient than the old one, and the car’s handling is largely unchanged from last year.
On the second point, the cooling efficiency is impaired, and in the morning on a very relatively cold day, I was seeing water temps in the 100+ territory, at one stage my coolant temp warning light, which illuminates at 115 degrees, came on. I also had some odd behavior when accelerating as the temp would jump from 91-105 in about 3 seconds. This later proved to be airlocks in the system, which it self- resolved as it cooled down after lunch …. we added a full 3/4 ltr of water.. That is some airlock.
Andy Bates suggested blocking off the exit from the front wheels, as this may be disrupting the airflow down the sides and into the sidepods, we did this using a handy cardboard box, and that did get the coolant temps in the 80s – 90 range. However the same trick didn’t stop the oil from getting to 130 degrees after ragging the arse of it for 15 laps. So there is still some work to be done on cooling and aero. I have to admit I need to build my base knowledge on aero a bit as at the moment it is all terribly unintuitive and I need to educate myself to think about boundary layers, separation turbulence and vortices.
Considering air ambient was in the region for 5-10 degrees, come June at Brands she is really going to struggle, so there is some more work to be done on the cooling. I suspect I’m going to end up remodeling the side pods to have a proper Naca ducts in the sides.
Once we cleared the airlocks, and blanked the sidepods the water temps were controlled and I was having a ball .
I just about worked up up to trail braking from under the bridge in the Esses, but I’m not quite brave enough yet. Elsewhere I felt Richies was good, Sear was variable ( i never get it right), The Bomb hole and Corum were very good. In fact I felt I was right on it in Corum by the end of the day. and the Chicane was a bit variable.
The morning was cold and frosty and late rain the previous evening followed by frost had left the paddock sheet ice. I ended up sprawled on my arse just walking between the garage and the motorhome.
The track was extremely slippery, and after one injudicious application of throttle I managed to lose the back end and did a full 720deg double spin up the main straight. I also had a half spin at Sear, due to locking a rear brake, a tweak to the balance soon solved that. other than that I was a good boy all day.
The track dried and rubbered in, and really became extremely grippy by the afternoon, and it turned into one of those great days, when the surface is dry and grippy, the track is emptyish and the air is cold, so the engines are just purring . Perfect driving conditions
Retrospective analysis of my data logging (you’re not allowed timing on a trackday) showed that I would likely be on row two of class B and top 10 on the main RGB grid.
Tim however seemed to be a bit quicker than me everywhere, and now that he has a class B engine no doubt will be perennially 2 seconds ahead of me again. And I’d just closed the gap to under a second . Sheesh!
Overall the afternoon was fantastic. The RGB cars were pretty much the fastest things out there bar one or two well driven Caterhams (Rob’s included) and a Radical Clubsport. So we spent the whole day gobbling up pretty much everything else, including a couple of big Porkers. I’m always very careful to follow the trackday rules… as I still remember being a novice.. tis fairly intimidating to have all this race machinery flashing by, but even so its hard on the novice in an open pit lane session.
Top Fun, more so because towards the end of the afternoon the track cleared a bit (apart from the odd gaggle of Bookatrack Caterhams running in convoy together) and you could get three or four laps of seemingly totally empty track. Paradise
In one particularly memorable session, Tim, Colin and I were running in very close proximity at pretty much race pace with no one else around, We were obeying all the rules, but we each, apparently independently thought “We’ve got to stop this or we’ll get a good telling off from the Bookatrack folks” It was a nice pre season moment though.
We also weighed the car and if Steve’s scales are moderately accurate, she is a further 10KG lighter coming in at about 490Kg without fuel. Cool
Top fun, and a car in 1 piece ready for Snett in a months time.
Oh and everybody commented on how nice the colour was and how shiny she is
So overall I’m pretty pleased and I’ve some stuff to sort out before race day, not least the cooling… but at least I haven’t forgotten how to drive her over the winter.
And I think Josh needs to be looking in his mirrors for Tim approaching fast
and I’ll try not to bend her (touch wood).
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