It seems to become a trend of mine, having tracktime on holidays, now on Easter monday and the previous one was on Christmas eve 🙂
Nearly 4 months later and the conditions were equally bad.. while on Christmas eve it was raining cats and dogs… last monday was very sunny and 18 degrees.
How is that bad? first nice weather of the year so more akeen to go to the beach then sit in a race car.
Oh hey, Circuit park Zandvoort is on the beach!
Packed up the racer, loaded up the Discovery and headed to the beach, euh, racetrack!
Since the last outing i’ve mounted softer rear springs, as the car was a bit loose in the rear.
Also replaced the front brake pads to Pagid Racing RST1’s (out with the Ferodo DS2500, might use them as rain brakepads)
First Session:
This was purely to get a feel for the car, how is the balance.. how are the brakes?
Well… the car was very softly sprung and damped now, last time was in the rain so kinda forgot to stiffen up the suspension.
About the brakebalance… had to add a lot more front bias, but these pads bite!
Still need to get a feeling for the car as im braking way to early.
A good friend of mine was timing me while i was shaking things down, dunno why but i guess he liked it 🙂
Did a 2.15 with not paying attention whatsoever.
Second session:
After fixing a sweaty turbo oil feed gasket and stiffen up the suspension it was time to get back out again.
This time i was starting right behind my timing friend 🙂
As he drove out the pitlane, in a very slow fashion, i’d used my overtake lights to tell him to hurry up… which he didn’t.
He wanted to gives us both room on the track to go for it, good idea, but it didn’t work out as i got black flagged before completing the first lap
Appearantly i had my windows open, the marshall in the pitlane noticed my window’s can’t open and he kindly allowed me back on track… but i lost sight of my friend..
Anyway…
After 2 laps everything was up to temps and i started to get a bit more confidence in the car.
Were i lifted at 180Km/h on the front straight during the first session i send her during the full length of the straigth.
Result: topping out at 210km/h before braking too early for the first corner.
I feel i can brake 20 to 30meters later but i don’t have the confidence yet (or skill and/or strength)
And in the very last lap i managed to get back on the bumper of my timer friend 😉
All in all it was a good fun session, got a lot more out of the car compared to the last 2 outings.
Even managed to do a complete 360 degree spin but nobody could see it was me, a nice cloud of tire smoke!
recap:
- Oilcooler needs better airflow management, size should be sufficient but temps got up to 118’C
- Gearbox oil gets to hot, shifting gets difficult after a few hot laps.
Next testing session might be end of May or in June, to see if some modifcations to the above mentioned problems are working before going to Mettet with GPDays in July.