Snetterton Test - February

Last weekend was the second pre-season outing in the new car and the summary is that it went very well. My overall impression from the day however is that his car is just a complete laugh to drive. Its quick, responsive and gives great fun. To be honest I did not want to come in and a couple of times I only enter the pitlane because the fuel level was so low! You can just about see from these pictures that the front of the car is no longer higher than the rear. Paul and I ran a few laps line astern to get an impression of relative speeds again. Its quite hard to do this on a trackday with other cars of course because of the different performance and driving experience levels so it was good to be on the track together again.

The first outing was just to bed the new Ferrodo DS2500’s in and to see what the 13” rear wheels were going to be like. They both felt fine and the setup modifications combines with the braking modifications all came together nicely.

Leading up to this test, we made a couple of setup changes and the results were very promising. The front weight transfer is now nicely controlled on entry and as you transition into a balanced throttle at the apex and increasing throttle application from there on the front end really grips. The only adverse effect of this change was in the two very high speed corners, Turn1 and Corum where the rear was a little too lively.

One thing I was very pleased at was the progress we have made on the braking. Well when I say we, what I actually mean is getting the car to a point where I feel confident when hard on the brakes and with a feel that enables me to modulate pre-lockup.I can get a bias balance which works for all of snett although if I was really pushing in a qualify lap, I might still need to make a couple of in lap adjustments for T1/T2 and the Essess.

Towards the middle of the day, we made a couple of anti-roll bar changes to see the effect with the aim of calming the rear down a little through the high speed corners. Going forward there might be some time to gain through some small damper changes and a change in the location of the ballast.

The modification we made to the seat are spot on, I am now held in enough by the side of the seat to be able to attempt left foot braking into the bomb hole rather than needing to lift just before entry and it stops one more transition as the car gets towards the apex as I am already on the throttle pedal.

Outstanding items leading up to the first race are video and palm installation as we ran out of time before the test and to get the new graphics / colour scheme on to the car. Just 3 weeks left until the first race!

Towards the end of the day I had the chance to drive Rob grants car again. The last time I drove the car was as part of the Birkett relay race. This time Rob had made some setup changes and it felt really good. In the picture here you can see me driving around Russels in Robs car with Neil just behind.