Birthday Bonaza

Birthday Bonaza for Big Al

A very Happy Birthday present indeed - money from his mum and dad (THANKS!!) to spend on a trackday at the mini-nurburgring, aka Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire on 5th May 2009.
I had not driven the car since Mallory in 2008, which was in August! So, as you can imagine with the Mad-Racing team tinkerings, quite a lot had changed....

Anyhoo, Mike was out in the morning session, very much thwarted by heavy rain and oil on track - not the nicest driving conditions generally, and especially not with our race tyres!

Anyway, once in the car ~1400onwards, I got my eye back in and started to put the car through it's paces....It generally felt a lot more stable and controlled than last year - much more predictable, compared with last year where it definately had a snappiness about it - causing numerous unexpected mid corner slides and even a couple of spins. So, it's very pleasing to know that the changes over the winter (using the F1 wind-tunnel*) have made an improvement. The green machine, Kermit, was clearly the fastest car on track at the Cadwell Track Day, and the speed at which I was able to approach/over-take other cars is just gob-smacking. The single biggest improvement on the car is the brakes - they are now awesome, have so much stopping power and are very easy to modulate. Really a great improvement for a race-car...

We made a few set-up changes during the afternoon, which made some further improvements to the car, and further inspired confidence in it's ability.

The bend of all bends at Cadwell is now Coppice, this is the uphill left-hander off the start-finish straight, that with a clear track and perfect turn-in point can be taken with a slight lift, but otherwise flat-out in 4th gear (guess ~100mph) - unbelievable feeling as you fly up the hill! It probably looks like a Tesco run in the video, but trust me - heart-in-mouth doesn't even begin to describe it!

Anyway, the day finished on a real high - the car was going round Cadwell with excellent handling, and with performance that we know will be very competitive compared to everyone else's performance from last year, so feelings are running high in prep for Mike's race here on the 10th May and Al's race here on the 12th July.

Roll on Cadwell race days!!!

Al out.

* Not really a wind tunnnel, more of a hairdryer really...