Did the motorsport events Hullavington Airfield trackday in the Golf yesterday. Bloody good fun.
The car is a Mk3 16v, 147k on the clock with mostly stripped out interior, lowered with coilovers, front strut brace, bucket seats and harnesses. About 80kgs lighter than standard.
The car went out 10 times including the sighting laps, so 9 times on the track in anger. Shared the driving with my wife and daughter who are now both hooked on track driving.
The scariest moments of the day was passenger laps with my daughter (19) who has no fear at all. There is a tight hairpin corner in the middle of two long straights, the marshall who was sat at the hairpin actually ran out of the way the second time she approached the hairpin, I was surprised when she made it round.
Later in the day we were approached by a bloke in an Elise who we had overtaken, he was asking what had been done to the car and how much track experience we had. He was well pissed off when we explained he was overtaken by a 19 year old girl on her first time out on the track. The look on his face was priceless.
The car ran faultlessly all day, no oil used at all, no overheating issues temp gauge stayed at 90 all day, handling was brilliant with the coilovers, only thing that might need looking at is some extra brake cooling, but we had no brake fade so perhaps I'll leave it alone.
My brother came in his 306 S16 track car with GTI-6 manifold and throttle body, we were marginally faster than him on the straights but his car felt tighter than ours probably due to the rollcage in his. He had some issues with his cooling system, a split hose on his 3rd session dumped his water, a bodged repair with a bit of generic pipe sorted that out, but last session saw another pipe connection go after we pulled in. Another top up and gentle driving saw him get home OK.
There was some nice cars at the event, a very quick Lotus Exige, Honda Civic Type R, some kind of Caterham Hybrid with Cosworth engine and running gear (stupidly quick). The best of all was a 996 on a corporate shared driving event, it was strange to sometimes be quicker than it and other times have it blasting past you depending on who was driving it.
Gonna book again for their December 3rd event at Colerne.
Cheers
Paul
