Snetterton - 15th March
As you'll all no doubt have seen by now, the Clio has been an absolute pain in the arse with a lack of power, strange noises and generally being a sad panda. As we've got quite a few of us going to Cadwell next month I was using today to get issues ironed out, reasons being that Snetterton has lots of run off if things go wrong and I've done enough laps to know whether or not the car is performing well.
Got to the track around 7.45, left the car warming up on the trailer while I got my wristband and sticker, this means the engine isn't stone cold when I go for noise testing. Static I'm sure the guy said it was something like 89Db which is nothing. Forecast for the day was patchy rain throughout so the PS4's were on standby.
After sighting laps I came back in to let everyone get their mad 5 minutes out of the way, there were a LOT of race teams there today and the morning was spent queuing to get back out after repeated red flags!
This was red flag number 4 by 10.30. It wasn't going well.
The morning session was spent checking a few bits over on the car, playing with tyre pressures and generally making sure the car was behaving. I'm pleased to report that it was! For reference at the last Snetterton date, I was exiting Williams onto the back straight faster and by the time I was braking at marker 2, I was doing 103mph. Today I was exiting slower (more on this later) and GPS speed was showing as 114mph at the same braking point. The Racebox coming in handy for the data there.
Another red flag at 11.50 (the 8th of the morning according to the tannoy announcement!) ended the morning session after a Subaru dropped oil for nearly a mile! A lengthy clean up was needed, top work by the marshalls as usual!
I decided to have a look at my brakes as there was a little vibration through the pedal, turns out the centre of the wear face was opening up, doesn't look like much on the photo but I could feel this through my gloves, so therefore... New discs needed. This was going to be a job for yesterday but the pads still had life in them so I didn't bother, thankfully I brought everything with me.
They've done well, probably a dozen trackdays (or more!) and several sets of pads, but the cracks were too much to ignore.
Ended up fitting the drilled Brembo HC discs as they were on offer from Autodoc a while back, they were substantially cheaper at the time than the plain HC discs so I figured I'd give them a punt. I also ignored the Mintex F2R pads I had with me (sorry Nathe!) in favour of the Carbon Lorraine RC6 that
@Beany always raved about.
The reason I was exiting the right handers slower was because the left front felt odd, I can't describe it but something felt very odd indeed. Turns out when I had that corner apart for driveshaft related issues, I thought I'd done the driveshaft nut up fully, turns out it was 2 full turns loose! Oops. I think it'll need a new wheel bearing soon but once I'd tightened the driveshaft nut up, the play had disappeared. Confidence restored.
The afternoon went without a hitch, the only red flag of the afternoon was for a breakdown I think, then come 3pm the forecast rain hit and it all came at once. I've not seen rain that heavy for a while and as soon as it had come, it went and the sun came out again.
Ended the day after a dozen wet laps, the only reason I came in was because I'd run out of fuel for the day. Full tank + another 20 litres, all without a hitch. Very happy with today!
Roll on Cadwell! Well, don't roll... You know what I mean.