The day before Brands:
- Pick up new trailer from Brian James: Check
- Pick up car from Steve Williams: check.
- Do "faff" stuff after picking up car. err......
....it's 1am and I'm packing up the car on the driveway having not left Steve Williams until c8ish. Home>work call> stuff food down me neck and then start packing the car. I've still not sat in the thing since the cage has been fitted. 4am reveille. Arrive at Brands for 7am. Unload car. Engine won't start - battery flat. Got a friendly caterham driver to push me off the trailer. THANK F**K i brought the battery charger - stick it into the mains, charge up before heading off to the briefing. 
I've finally got to a trackday! I think to myself. Nothing that new - tb as I did 15 of the things in the VX last year but this *feels* a completely new experience. I have no idea what to expect from the car. Whenever i've driven it on the road, it's been wet and cold and what with the toelinks and geo messed-up, it felt awful.
Back to garage, fire her up. It starts! wahey. Trundle out onto the track - after over 60 or 70 trackdays in my life, i've never actually driven here. The gradient changes out of paddock hill bend feel just like the 'ring. 2nd sighting lap, i start to accelerate out of paddock-hill. No power.
Gulp.
There's a rather spiffing tractor-type noise coming from the engine. Sounds like it's missing or only on 3 cylinders. Limp into pits. Spend an hour faffing with the car (see below) before calling Steve. Spark plug cover off - no water ingress. Nothing visible loose. Had a play with the coil pack leads - no0 use. Must be coil pack.
2 hours later, it's lunchtime and Steve has sent Andy down in the car with some spare HT leads, plugs, spare coil packs. An hour or so of faffing at it's sorted.
Straight out onto the track, banged in a 20 min session. The car feels great: the tyres are on their way out but aside from that, it feels good. Tangible difference in weight compared to the VX. This is most noticeable at Druids (turn #2) - where I would expect the VX to understeer on the way in and push understeer on thw way out under acceleration, the elise just noses itself in without any resistance and statys nailed to the line on the exit. I surprised even myself how quick the car is. I really don't miss the power of the VX.
Making use of the rest of the day, I hooked up about 3 more sessions. The car felt really great: the braking feel - compared to the VX - is on a different planet. I'd become used to servo-assisted brakes (not good) but with the Elise, the feel you get through the pedal means you can go in so so so late on the brakes; with the car being well setup, hard trail-braking into the turn doesn't seem to upset the car as badly as the VX did. Again - there's much more weight in the rear of the VX which would account for this. The car really does dive a lot under braking - the single-way damper valving and relatively soft springs (400/500) are accountable for this - but it's something to sort out next year after 10 or so race starts give me a better idea where I am.
As great as the car felt, it was very unnerving through paddock hill bend - regularly being completeley out-of-shape by the time i reached the clipping-point. I'd like to say this was down to my heroically fast skills but actually it had nothing to do with that. It almost felt as if the wheel was toeing out. Maybe it was the tyres, or the camber of the corner, but most likely knackered bushes or worn drive flanges. Either way, I want to try it again on a longer radius right-hand corner. If i was racing, this would be a great excuse for qualifying at the back
In the last session, managed to tag onto x3 caterham academy guys who were giving it the full beans. We had a great race_I_mean_session. The cars were very evenly matched through all but paddock hill; where they seemed to be able to take completely different line to me: turning in much earlier and getting on the power earlier. Whenever I tried this the rear just stepped out. Entertatining but not fast.
We all had a good natter in the pits afterwards - the caterham guys have a really exciting season ahead and I can totally see why that series attracts so many new entrants every year. End of day: loaded the car up (see below)
Despite being a fantastic family car and daily runner for me (I do c25k per annum) the Skoda is not an ideal tow-car. As you can see from the pic, the rear of the car is really under a lot of load; which in-turn moves the weight off-of the front wheels. As it's FWD, it spins the wheels in 3rd even in the dry. it's very unnerving on the motorway. I can get the elise further back on the trailer to alleviate that to some extent but i really need a RWd or AWD car for more stability
Also being a manual box, manoevering the trailer in the paddock was a nightmare. I had to reverse up the hill into my parking space, riding the clutch all the way. Smelly clutch. As I found out - it's not a good idea to try and get out of the paddock at brands through the exit tunnel. It's NOT designed for trailers! As I apexed a left hand bend into the tunnel, a quick glance in the NS mirror showed there wasn't a chocolate-teapot's chance of the trailer clearing the apex. Cars were backed up behind me and in a split second I saw the scene which might have unfolded - trying to reverse the trailer, it jacknifing - having to take it off, re attach etc etc. It's very easy to panic in these situations and i did to a lesser extent. But by some miracle, i reversed it round the corner without changing the steering spip angle and tried again and it cleared by about 1mm. Thank f*ck for that!
Silverstone report and credit-cruch-impact-on-racing-plans-for-the-year report to follow......
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