Turbos.
So, my first track outing for a number of months was at Silverstone this weekend. Friday was a proper test on the Silverstone 'Arena' (new GP) circuit. I wasn't feeling incredibly confident as last time round was in the race there last year, where the car lasted only a few laps with me in the car thanks to a broken driveshaft!As well as driving the Motorsport car, i was going to be shaking down my more production based Elise which i may use in in the Elise Trophy (where all the cars are pretty much the same spec). The engine, which barely made 100bhp before, now has a more healthy 160bhp thanks to a Scholar rebuild. However, it still has the same Nitrons and bits from 5+years ago! Hopefully i'll find a bit of money to sort that out at a later date...
As it was pretty foggy, the morning was delayed so i went for a walk about and found one of these...
Then wandered back to our garage to take some snaps.
Pipsqueak, the Motorsport car, hasn't had any performance mods over the winter so really it was a case of seeing if i could shake the cobwebs. Having a few months out, you always presume you'll be a bit rusty and i wanted to make sure i was on the pace for the first race at the same track in a month or so. There is however one small addition, a new button for the pit lane limiter, which requires one touch; previously i had to hold down a button the whole time which was a PITA and hurt my thumb!
Surprisingly, i got up to pace pretty quickly and soon matched my best time from last season despite numerous red flags spoiling the sessions. Things were cut short when the throttle pedal broke, which i was told is quite important
So after seeing we had run out of cereal, i thought i'd give the little Elise a go. In the company of much faster cars, in context it still felt really slow, especially with the ponderous gearchange that just wouldn't be rushed. However, it was good to see me pull away slightly from a Mini JCW race car on the back straight, so it did definitely have more than 100bhp!
The difference between the two cars is night and day, you'd never know Pipsqueak came from such humble beginnings. The biggest differences are the braking and of course cornering/aero ability. With the little Elise you have a lot of time to think through corners, and any sort of sloppy driving is fun, but costs a huge amount of time. I found it was great for confidence though, and jumping back into Pipsqueak i knocked off two and half seconds from my lap time! Because i was driving the Motorsport car like it was an underpowered road car, i squeezed all i could out of it. There is always a bit of nervousness when you're carrying so speed much into corners that you're never too far from a crash, but once you've gone over the limit you realise just how friendly the Motorsport car is on the limit.
The next day we were at the small Stowe circuit normally used for F1 shakedowns (you may remember seeing Hammond on TG trying to drive one round this circuit). At first, it seems very mickey mouse but over the course of the day i started to really enjoy it. I stuck to my Elise, where i could have a tussle with my future rivals. I ended up about a second away from Steve Guglielmi who is known for his set-up expertise and is consequently pretty handy! So i was pretty chuffed with that, considering my car isn't exactly spot on for specification.
Sadly one Elise caught fire. For once, it wasn't one of ours...
And of course, this is a fairly regular scene at a Lotus event (for some reason Photobucket has unrotated my pics!)
I was thinking of selling my Elise but i had a real blast on the Stowe circuit. There is a sequence of four 90 degree turns that, if you entered it right, you could swing the tail like a pendulum through each section. It was immensely satisfying and is proof you don't need a massive budget to have a fun car. The only annoying thing is you aren't allowed an LSD which meant i couldn't drift it in the wet, it just span up the inside wheel and i was virtually sitting there on the spot as the wheels lit up!
Anyway, hope to see more CS members at the races this year, was good to see fellow member James in his Aston too. Hopefully he'll post pics of the nice Vantage he was driving :approve:
As it was pretty foggy, the morning was delayed so i went for a walk about and found one of these...
Then wandered back to our garage to take some snaps.
Pipsqueak, the Motorsport car, hasn't had any performance mods over the winter so really it was a case of seeing if i could shake the cobwebs. Having a few months out, you always presume you'll be a bit rusty and i wanted to make sure i was on the pace for the first race at the same track in a month or so. There is however one small addition, a new button for the pit lane limiter, which requires one touch; previously i had to hold down a button the whole time which was a PITA and hurt my thumb!
Surprisingly, i got up to pace pretty quickly and soon matched my best time from last season despite numerous red flags spoiling the sessions. Things were cut short when the throttle pedal broke, which i was told is quite important
So after seeing we had run out of cereal, i thought i'd give the little Elise a go. In the company of much faster cars, in context it still felt really slow, especially with the ponderous gearchange that just wouldn't be rushed. However, it was good to see me pull away slightly from a Mini JCW race car on the back straight, so it did definitely have more than 100bhp!
The difference between the two cars is night and day, you'd never know Pipsqueak came from such humble beginnings. The biggest differences are the braking and of course cornering/aero ability. With the little Elise you have a lot of time to think through corners, and any sort of sloppy driving is fun, but costs a huge amount of time. I found it was great for confidence though, and jumping back into Pipsqueak i knocked off two and half seconds from my lap time! Because i was driving the Motorsport car like it was an underpowered road car, i squeezed all i could out of it. There is always a bit of nervousness when you're carrying so speed much into corners that you're never too far from a crash, but once you've gone over the limit you realise just how friendly the Motorsport car is on the limit.
The next day we were at the small Stowe circuit normally used for F1 shakedowns (you may remember seeing Hammond on TG trying to drive one round this circuit). At first, it seems very mickey mouse but over the course of the day i started to really enjoy it. I stuck to my Elise, where i could have a tussle with my future rivals. I ended up about a second away from Steve Guglielmi who is known for his set-up expertise and is consequently pretty handy! So i was pretty chuffed with that, considering my car isn't exactly spot on for specification.
Sadly one Elise caught fire. For once, it wasn't one of ours...
And of course, this is a fairly regular scene at a Lotus event (for some reason Photobucket has unrotated my pics!)
I was thinking of selling my Elise but i had a real blast on the Stowe circuit. There is a sequence of four 90 degree turns that, if you entered it right, you could swing the tail like a pendulum through each section. It was immensely satisfying and is proof you don't need a massive budget to have a fun car. The only annoying thing is you aren't allowed an LSD which meant i couldn't drift it in the wet, it just span up the inside wheel and i was virtually sitting there on the spot as the wheels lit up!
Anyway, hope to see more CS members at the races this year, was good to see fellow member James in his Aston too. Hopefully he'll post pics of the nice Vantage he was driving :approve:
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