Turbos.
Last weekend was the Lotus Festival at Snetterton. Its quite a big event there, never seen so many Elises! Think they set a world record for the amount of Lotus' on a track...
We had Friday for testing, where we shared space with old Formula cars and even Procar M1s.
We'd raced only a little while back, so it should have been straight-forward. Although i had a little off when i managed to mash the brake and accelerator at the same time!
As usual though, things weren't straight-forward after all... I came in after that off for the boys to say the engine didn't sound good. Checking the spark plugs, they had water on them. In other words, our freshly built engine's head gasket had lasted 100 miles...great!
It was the end of the day, so the race was on to get the engine swapped.
By mid-night, they had finished! We knew however, the power would be majorly down as the 'B' engine was at a far lower state of tune.
The next day, the sun was out again and i went for a walk around the paddock.
We also had some interesting neighbours...
Considering the less powerful engine was in, qualifying didn't go so badly. I was about a second slower, but about half a second slower than my old man so i opted to start the race. Not before the public pitwalk though!
It was a rolling grid, so we were lined up in position in the pitlane.
As with the race here a few weeks back, it was a matter of keeping the faster cars (in a straight-line) behind for the first corner.
I had some scruffy laps following 2-Elevens, i winced every time i heard the floor crash against the rough ground; off the tarmac is like a farmer's field!
The rest of my stint was very frustrating, i was lacking grunt and couldn't slipstream. The 2-Eleven drivers had learnt from the last race where i would make my move too, so they simply sat on the apex to prevent me having a run at them. For some reason, the car felt fine but i wasn't getting into higher gears at the end of straights, i.e. wasn't carrying the same speed.
We then swapped over and i could rule out my driving, because my old man couldn't beat my times. Despite this, two of our main competitors got penalties for taking too short pit stops (they are 3 minute mandatory), so our position was good. However, there was a supercharged Honda car that was too fast to beat; my dad cruised to second in class...
There was quite a lot of battle damage, thanks to my off circuit shenanigans! Although, most of it was due to other cars spitting up crap!
Having inspected the car, the air filter was absolute full of dirt and associated s**t. The car was running lean because of it, which had robbed us of power, so we had an explanation of the lack of speed. My bad!
After the race there was some demo runs, including a Lotus Elise GT1 car, powered by the Lotus Esprit V8 turbo engine with circa 800bhp! In true Lotus fashion, it didn't even complete a lap! Looked awesome though...
I'll get some video up soon...
We had Friday for testing, where we shared space with old Formula cars and even Procar M1s.
We'd raced only a little while back, so it should have been straight-forward. Although i had a little off when i managed to mash the brake and accelerator at the same time!
As usual though, things weren't straight-forward after all... I came in after that off for the boys to say the engine didn't sound good. Checking the spark plugs, they had water on them. In other words, our freshly built engine's head gasket had lasted 100 miles...great!
It was the end of the day, so the race was on to get the engine swapped.
By mid-night, they had finished! We knew however, the power would be majorly down as the 'B' engine was at a far lower state of tune.
The next day, the sun was out again and i went for a walk around the paddock.
We also had some interesting neighbours...
Considering the less powerful engine was in, qualifying didn't go so badly. I was about a second slower, but about half a second slower than my old man so i opted to start the race. Not before the public pitwalk though!
It was a rolling grid, so we were lined up in position in the pitlane.
As with the race here a few weeks back, it was a matter of keeping the faster cars (in a straight-line) behind for the first corner.
I had some scruffy laps following 2-Elevens, i winced every time i heard the floor crash against the rough ground; off the tarmac is like a farmer's field!
The rest of my stint was very frustrating, i was lacking grunt and couldn't slipstream. The 2-Eleven drivers had learnt from the last race where i would make my move too, so they simply sat on the apex to prevent me having a run at them. For some reason, the car felt fine but i wasn't getting into higher gears at the end of straights, i.e. wasn't carrying the same speed.
We then swapped over and i could rule out my driving, because my old man couldn't beat my times. Despite this, two of our main competitors got penalties for taking too short pit stops (they are 3 minute mandatory), so our position was good. However, there was a supercharged Honda car that was too fast to beat; my dad cruised to second in class...
There was quite a lot of battle damage, thanks to my off circuit shenanigans! Although, most of it was due to other cars spitting up crap!
Having inspected the car, the air filter was absolute full of dirt and associated s**t. The car was running lean because of it, which had robbed us of power, so we had an explanation of the lack of speed. My bad!
After the race there was some demo runs, including a Lotus Elise GT1 car, powered by the Lotus Esprit V8 turbo engine with circa 800bhp! In true Lotus fashion, it didn't even complete a lap! Looked awesome though...
I'll get some video up soon...
