I did the track day at Ty Croes on the saturday with Porsche Club.A friend of mine has a new GT3 so he invited me and his brother in law to join him at the circuit. I drove his Lotus 2/11 with his brother in law who was here on holiday from Australia in the passenger seat . We rocked up at the circuit late morning by which time the cars were out on track ,some going a lot quicker than others including my friends GT3.He took his brother in law out for a blast round then came my turn. To say he was on the pace was an understatement. Nothing got past him including a couple of other GT3's! We stayed more or less until the end and saw a 944 go head on into the tyres at the top of the circuit after losing his brakes. The car was a write off. The driver broke his hand but other than that and shock was ok. The car had been driven there but it needed a recovery truck to take it home.
I drove the Lotus on the way back as well so decided to take the route via Bethesda through to Betws Y Coed and round the EVO. We more or less had the roads to ourselves once we got off the A5, so the EVO was driven at a fairly blistering pace. What a sublime car to drive on the limit. A bit hard core as far as the hardness of the suspension was concerned but the handling was just awesome. We then turned off into the back roads through Clocaenog Forest and did about 20 miles or so down narrow twisty lanes. The smell from the pine trees was amazing, as the Lotus is an open top car we really got the full effect from it. All in all a fantastic boys day out.
My friend took the GT3 to LLandudno on Sunday and met some of the guys that had been at the circuit. He got talking to one guy that was a bit upset that he got consistently lapped by my friends GT3 despite the fact he had the same car in bright red. He had spent a fortune having it all set up for the track day but drove like a woos. He wasn't a happy bunny. I just laughed when he told me about it when he got back to chester. Thought to myself, what a pretentious prat. My friend was driving his car like it should be driven and everyone else wasn't really pushing hard.
I never thought I would get the chance to drive a Lotus 2/11 through some of the finest roads in North Wales and get to experience a GT3 Porsche flat out round Ty Croes all on the same day. I was on a high for several days afterwards.
I'm back at Ty Croes this coming Thursday with him. He's taking the Lotus and I'll be in the Clio. There's 4 of us going, two who have never driven on track before, and they're taking an MX5 that they bought on Friday for £1500. It's going to an interesting day! If anyone is free, come over and have look. It's a Javelin trackday.