Well this isn't quite the FCS/Donington write up I hoped to do....
Started off well, got the cars ready and packed up with time to spare which is hugely unusual for us and met at
@DJW Daves work ready for a sweaty 5 hour jaunt south
5.5 hours later and still 50 miles away thanks to some shite traffic this is how it looked
Dave can't help but catalogue pose 24/7. Broke down with no warning at all just where the M18 joins the M1, since we had a fair amount of spares with us we spent a hour trying everything before giving up and calling the AA. They diagnosed it as a seized fuel pump, certainly no fuel was getting through and he said he heard and felt it prime but then stop. We'd already sanded the relays down to no avail.
Given that Dave only had 1 seat in his car it left us with a bit of an issue, either I could go home with the car or we could overpack the RB and move the seat over. The patrolman was sound and said he'd flat tow me to Rotherham where we could do what we needed to do.
So he did, towed me straight into the Halfords car park which had a cruise happening. Mildly embarrassing with all the cheers on arrival!
But we quickly did what we needed to do and got back on the road at 2145, having had no dinner and still a hour to go.
Due to all the delays we then hit the M1 nighttime closures and didn't make it to the hotel until 2315, pizza and beer were ordered immediately.
It's fair to say we were both pretty dejected at this point and I just wanted to go home but f**k turning round after it taking 12 hours to get there. Dave had said I was to use his car but I wasn't even sure if I wanted to drive it at all. Our mate Henny (sorry, can't remember your CS username!) had also offered his car and so had Mark Alsop which was incredibly kind of them but my head was a mess.
It wasn't until I was passengering with Dave in the morning that I decided I was going to drive and I'm so glad I did. It saved the weekend, what a superb track. Said that I wouldn't push too hard since we were down to 1 car, it wasn't mine, it had done a track day that morning, it was 28 degrees and we still had 300 miles to go home. But I'm f**king useless at not going flat out and ended up managing a 1:28 which I was pleased with for my first time round there and the only mods being ds1.11, sportlines and R888s. Can't thank Dave enough for letting/making me take his car out.
We split the journey home up and stayed at Daves uncles house in Heysham which was great cos we were knackered after the emotional roller coaster and heat!
For as nice and helpful as the AA patrolman was as a company their comms were shite, the car got left in Ferrybridge services for 2 nights with my track wheels in it and the key on top of a wheel I assume. Think I made 8 phone calls to them in the end and it eventually arrived home at 7pm on Sunday night, just before their 48 hour cut off.
And after all that, it was the fuel pump relay, cleaning a broken one was never going to fix it. Kicking myself for not packing 1 but thats hindsight for you.
So yeah, to end, massive thanks to Dave everything, Henny and the rest of the crowd down there, the FCS staff that made swapping the session over easy and the sound AA guy for not being a bellend!
And f**k you very much fuel pump relays.