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£75 Trackzone day, Donington Park, January 26th 2003
Quite a good morning at Donington Park race circuit. Got there nice and early, and managed to grab ourselves a garage, #17. The 1st 30 minute session started at 09:30, and I managed about 22 mins in all. I came back in because I could smell burning, and it turned out to be the rear lamps! One of the light units had slipped, and the brake/side light bulb was resting on the brake lense, and melted it! A quick fix with some gaffa tape, and a refuel (>20 litres!) and we went out again at 10:30 for the 2nd session.
Much more comfortable with the car this time. Spent about 25 minutes driving very hard, really working the brakes, which are a lot better now I've modified the linkage (to get more leverage from the brake pedal). I didn't remember to switch the datalogger on for the 2nd faster session, but during the 1st I recorded 98.10 MPH on the pit straight, which was quite respectable. On the 2nd run I managed to hit the rev limiter in fifth gear, just under the Dunlop bridge, which I reckon was about 115 MPH. Like I said before, she's not really geared for race track use, but she's incredibly quick through the gears for sprints/hillclimbs, and I was able to catch and overtake a few cars, so she's not that slow!
Starting the 2nd session I noticed the alternator drive belt squealed when I drove out the pits. At the end of the 2nd session we discovered that one of the bolts that holds the alternator in place, had sheared, and the drive belt was loose. We removed the alternator, but it looks like the bolt had bent before it sheared, so we couldn't remove it from the alternator. We tried, we really did! (thanks to Mark from the XROC for his assistance, and socket set!) But I think fate was telling us that it was time to call it a day, and by about 2:30PM, we'd loaded the car back on the trailer for the journey home. I'd rather something like this broke on a test day, than whilst competing, particularly as Donington isn't that far from where I live, so its a short journey home if anything goes wrong.
The alternator mounting will be modified to prevent it from breaking again.
Aside from the breakage, she was just phenomenal! So quick, so much power, and she handles so well. According to the datalogger I pulled over 1G of lateral acceleration on the 1st session, which shows how much grip she has round corners. Going down through the craner curves, you could really feel the offside suspension loading up, before the right hander, and she was just so easy to control on the throttle. In the 1st session the track was still damp from overnight rain, and I could actually get the back of the car to step out, and I drove round the corners with the tail hanging out. Very enjoyable, and I'm really looking forward to the coming season now. The map below shows the datalogger's interpretation of the circuit. It is coloured according to the speed, so yellow sections were the fast bits, and black the stationery bits (ie the pits)
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