Glacier White 200 Cup

My Yaris has auto blip built in to it, but that is intelligent enough to know if you are downshifting regardless of whether or not you touch the brake.

After a track day I am sure I will work out if I this any good.

The Nurburgring 2025 trip went really well. We set off on Friday and when we got to the tunnel I realised that I had picked up the Wife's passport instead of mine. Helpfully the Wife drove the passport down to me and we then had an uneventful trip all the way to Nurburg. My two brothers and a friend joined @EthanMenace and me on the trip. The other three travelled in my brother's Hyundai Ionic 5N that he wanted to take for a spin on the Nordschleife.



On Saturday we went out for some TF laps. Two of the others rented a Golf GTI each and went out for a few laps with an instructor. Ethan and I did some gentle TF laps. It was busy and a bit chaotic on the track. I did manage to get a lap in with my brother driving his Ionic 5N and me driving the Clio. The 5N is extremely fast in a straight line and is not bad round the corners. My brother did pay an instructor for one lap of tuition and then the instructor asked if he could drive the 5N which probably shows how capable the car is.



The others that came with us were not booked on to the track day on Monday so they left on Monday.

We did the Circuit Days track day on Monday. The weather forecast was that it would be hot with the temperature being in the high 20s or even low 30s. The forecast was right because it was really hot. I spotted 3 other Clio 200s. Most people who had booked on to the track day had turned up in a Porsche or a BMW that was probably more suited for a power circuit compared to a Clio. Megane's seemed to be popular choice as well. Everyone suffered in the heat in one way or another. I spoke with someone at our hotel who was driving an OG M2 and he said he only did 10 laps due to the heat.

We have not had problems with temperatures in the Clio before and the plucky little French car dealt with the hot weather really well. The oil temperature did get up to 130 degrees, the gearbox temperature got up to 120 degrees and both the air intake temperature and coolant were higher than usual. The only thing that seemed to be affected by the heat, other than us as drivers, was the tyres. At one point in the afternoon the track tarmac temperature was over 50 degrees and the tyres felt a bit greasy and had lost a bit of their grip.



I took the GoPros with us and the RaceBox but the RaceBox was doing its own thing and kept recording the track sessions as drag runs - I think that the heat got to it. I haven't looked at the footage yet and don't know what our lap times were. To be fair I wasn't really that bothered about getting a good lap time as I was just enjoying myself driving around the track without having any concerns about insurance or being liable for damage to other people's very expensive cars. The Nordschleife is a special track and just driving on it, even for a second year, was enough for me.

We did see DannyDC2 in the Devil's Diner car park. He had an early finish in the afternoon after one of his driveshafts gave up.



I am not sure how many laps we both did in total but we were doing runs of three laps at a time and then coming in for a break. I would guess that we did somewhere between 20 to 25 laps. Every lap was good fun and Ethan enjoyed playing with the traffic by making up for the Clio's lack of power with it's ability to corner and outbreak other cars.

We even ventured in to T13 to get our second tank of petrol. The 98 Ron fuel there was 2.30 Euros for a litre so possibly the most expensive petrol on the planet.

After running the Clio from 8am through to 4.15pm with breaks for fuel, lunch (although the track did not close for lunch), and drinks we were done. There were no red flags all day and only a small number of yellow flags during our laps. After punishing the Clio with a track day at the Green Hell we then treated it to some TF laps at the GP circuit in the evening!



It was pure luck that the GP track was open for TF laps that same day. The TF laps on the GP circuit are done in sessions rather than laps. You buy a ticket for 35 Euros and you get a 15 minute session on the track. TF on the GP circuit was real chaos as you can overtake on either side and drivers will slow down on both the right and left to let faster cars through. During Ethan's session a M2 and M3 who had been on the Circuit Days track day started drifting round corners which was entertaining to see.

After a full day of car action we gave the Clio a break and headed to Pistenklasue for a good steak.

On Tuesday we just packed up and did a bit of car spotting at the Ring where there was a track day running before heading home to the tunnel. Tuesday was hot. When we stopped for a break during the journey it was 34 degrees. We ripped the air conditioning out of the Clio a long time ago and even though we did not get stuck in traffic on the way back it was very hot inside the car even with the windows fully down.

I am fairly confident that our current geo set up is working so that we are getting fairly even tyre wear across the width of the front tyres. The photograph below is the drivers side tyre and shows that the tyre has been well used, but previously we would suffer with the outside edge of the tyre having substantially more wear on it that the inside edge. This tyre was reasonably well used before we did the track day on Monday.



The front passenger side tyre also wore fairly evenly. This tyre did start with more tread than the drivers side tyre.



We had fitted the car with an intercom and an auto blipper but had not tested either device before heading out to the Ring. The intercom was fantastic. Ethan and I can now have a conversation in terms of speaking and hearing each other whilst the car is speeding round a track.

The Auto-Blip also worked very well. It automatically blipped the throttle on sections of the track which required both breaking and a downshift.

Possibly the best news about the entire trip was that the gearbox survived and performed as it should have done. Ethan's hard work to rebuild the gearbox in the shed paid off as the box did not crunch or cause any other problems. Ever since we started to have issues with the box this year our main goal was to do whatever needed to be done to make sure that the box worked at the Nurburgring.



The trip was excellent and we plan to book up for the Circuit Days track day next year for their June/July slot.

Here are a few photos from the track day on the Nordschleife.

I have had some time to look at the video footage of our trip to the Nurburgring now. The car did well, but the hot temperatures did hinder it's performance a little bit.

The logs show that when the car was being pushed the intake air temperature was hovering around 50 degrees, the coolant stayed steady at about 90 degrees, the engine oil was around low 120s and the gearbox oil was around low 110s. It peaked with engine oil temps at 129 and gearbox oil temps at 120. We had swapped out the cold air feed headlight with the duct that runs from the outside of the car to the airbox for a standard headlight before we went to the Nurburgring to make sure we did not give any reasons for the police to pull us over. The cold air feed may not have made much difference as the ambient temperature was still very high. I do not know if an oil cooler would have had much of an impact with the raised ambient temperatures?

The best BTG time this year was 8m 55s with @EthanMenace driving the car and me sat in the passenger seat. Last year Ethan did a BTG time of 8m 45s when he was in the car alone and where he lifted off through the last few miles of the track as the marshals were showing red flags to signal that the day had come to an end. I am a big heavy weight and the reduced efficiency of the engine in the heat would not have helped the car at all. We know from our very unscientific tests that when there is only a driver in the car it will lap around 3 seconds faster a lap at Snetterton due to the lighter car weight. So doing some rough maths the weight would have added between 10 to 15 seconds to a BTG lap, and the reduced engine efficiency in the hot weather would have reduced the time as well. So, despite being slower the car was probably better this year?

My best lap this year was a sub 10 minute BTG time. I even got overtaken by Dale Lomas who was driving around in a yellow Yaris, not a GR Yaris but what looks like a standardish Yaris. I am not sure how his Yaris is set up but clearly he has fun driving a slow car fast.

This is the best lap of the day with Ethan driving.


This is another session when Ethan was chasing a Megane 250 and did well to keep up with the car in the corners but just lacked a bit of power on the faster sections until he did catch up and the Megane gave up - probably due to the heat!


The Clio does feel really well set up at the moment. There were a few times on the track day when the car felt a bit bouncy but it is difficult to get the perfect set up on a track like the Nordschleife as it is not flat. The Gaz Golds were set to be fairly soft. We kept the spacers on the rear of the car during the track day to make sure that the car was more predictable but the combination of hot tyres and a fair amount of rear toe out worked. The rear of the car felt like it was rotating nicely, particularly between left hand and then right hand corners which came in quick succession.

If you watch either of the videos listen to the downshifts. I wasn't sure if the Auto-Blip would work very well but it did and was really good working in the background to blip the throttle without having to worry about rev matching. I am hoping that this will prolong the life of the gearbox.