This weekend I had some time on my hands other than attending at a dog birthday party. The Clio had not received much attention since we went to Cadwell Park. It had not been cleaned after two tracks days so I gave it a deep clean inside. Despite Douglas not being transported about in the Clio his hair seems to find its way in the Clio and in particular in to the woven fabric of the Corbeau bucket seats.

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After a few hours of vigorous vacuuming the inside was looking clean again.

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We do not use any mats in the front of the car as the various RenaultSport mats see have tried all seem to free themselves and curl up under the pedals despite the mats being fixed with plastic lugs on the carpet. A bit of elbow grease with a stiff brush freed up most of the dirt on the carpet before being vacuumed up.

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Once the car had been cleaned inside I jacked up the Clio and took off the wheels to clean them. I had noticed that they looked filthy but what I thought was just road dirt turned out to be a lot brake dust. A full day at Cadwell Park in the wet on the Speedlines with Pilot Sports 4 and 5s had left the two front wheels with a lot of brake dust from the Ferodo DS1.11 pads stuck to the inside barrels and on the edges of the "spokes" of the wheels.

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Despite by best efforts I have failed to get all of the brake dust off of the wheels. I spent a good few hours with a stiff brush and a lot of wheel cleaner and fall out remover but there is still lot of brake dust on the wheels. Bizarrely the best way to remove the most stubborn bits of brake dust appears to rub it with a finger as it has a sand like texture. When it is gently rubbed it brakes down in to smaller particles and starts to come off.

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I have tried some Auto Finesse Iron Out and some Chemical Guys Diablo wheel cleaner and neither are having much of an impact. I might try some Bilt Hamber Korrosol. If that fails I might try some oven cleaner!

On the following day I gave the outside of the car a wash. The car was treated to its annual trim restorer session with some Gtechniq C4. The car lives outside and does not live in a garage so the UV rays have an impact on the colour of the black plastic. The end plates of the Cup spoiler had been looking a little faded.

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Hopefully the C4 will keep the end plates looking dark and glossy for 12 months.

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The other trim parts were given some treatment from the C4. The car always look better when it has a bit of gloss and shine to it.

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In other news I contacted Superpro about the boots on the anti rotation links as they have perished after a few months.

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Superpro replied and said, "Manufacturer is providing replacement boots the will last the life of the drop links, you will need to contact your original purchaser to process the warranty claim as this is who your contact of purchase is with." I am guessing they have either changed the boots to a different design/material or are just going to keep supplying replacement boots for the lifetime or my drop links. I have got to complete a warranty claim spreadsheet but will do this and see how quickly they can supply the boots.

I have been doing some more Ring Trip preparation and have requisitioned the brake down triangle and hi-ves vests to go in a Renault bag from the wife's Renault Zoe.

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Just on the wheel cleaning with track pad dust; the best solution I have found has been to use a mix of Autoglym Magma and Demon Wheels. I also then use a scouring pad (the cheap green kitchen washing up variety) lightly on tougher areas - my logic being that it cant be any worse than using a firm brush. Probably not the best solution but it always seems to work.
 
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We replaced the boots on the Superpro anti-rotation links today. Both of the boots that sat closest to the brakes were rather crusty and knackered.

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When the boots were removed the joint still looked clean.

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Even though the two boots that were on the end of the anti-rotation like that bolts to the wishbone looked fine they were also changed for the replacement boots that Superpro had sent to me.

I did ask Superpro if there was anything that I could do to prolong the life of the boots and they said, "The original boots supplied with the drop links did not go through a process to prevent perishing, this was a batch issue that was picked up last year. The boots supplied are the revised version that have completed the process to prevent the perishing and should last the life of the drop links."

Hopefully the boots will now last as long as the anti-rotation links.

I cleaned the track wheels today and packed them up in some wheel bags that I bought recently.

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I had the other track wheels in bags but had not been able to find a product to protect the face of the wheel when they were put in the the back of the car. I then came across someone on eBay selling some simple felt circles for wheels bags. Before I had faffed around with some old towels that had to be folded up and tucked in to the bags.

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These felt circles make life a lot easier to keep the faces of the wheels from damaging each other in the boot of the car.

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I have purchased a magnetic GB sticker for the Clio when it goes to Germany. Since buying it someone has said to me that magnetic ones fall off. Hopefully it stays on the car when it is out of the packet.

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Today is Father's Day @EthanMenace has bought me a TF lap of the Ring. I think a few very slow, and very careful laps on 30th June 2024 might happen now.

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We can save the fast(er) laps for the proper track day on 1st July 2024.

We are off to Donington Park on Tuesday next week.
 
What dates you boys travelling??
We are going over via the tunnel on Saturday 29th June 2024 and should be there by late afternoon or early evening. We are leaving on Tuesday 2nd July 2024 to catch a late afternoon/early evening crossing home.

What about you?
 
We went to Donington Park today for a track day that was dry all day. There was no rain even though the forecast for weeks had been rain in the afternoon at 3pm. After our recent wet and damp track days I was really pleased to be able to put on the semi slick tyres and try to drive as fast as we could.

Other than cleaning the car and sorting out the boots on the anti-rotation links we had not done much to the car recently. It has got to the stage where there are less major changes to the car and there is more finessing between track days. Our plan for today was to enjoy the day and make sure the car came back home in one piece ready for it's Nurburgring journey in a few weeks.

Today's track day started at 10.00 am rather than the usual 9.00 am due to Download festival taking place over the weekend. We have done this same trip to Donington Park in mid June for the past there years (with the same 10.00am start time) and should have learnt by now that it is the same price as other dates in the summer season but with an hour less of track time. To be fair each year we have done this track day with Track Obsession we have always had bright, dry and clear weather.

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Before we started the track day we looked up the lap times we had achieved last year as a target to see if we could improve on those times. In theory the car has a Cup Racer front end so should have been more capable today compared to last year.

I am pretty sure that the track day was sold out today as Track Obsession had been posting on Instagram last week that only 10 spaces were left. There were a lot of interesting cars in the garages and paddock. My favourite of the day was a Clio V6 that was used on track.

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There were a lot of C1 drivers and driving experiences taking place today. Driving standards were not great, but they never are at Donington.

The morning was good. @EthanMenace and I took turns driving the Clio and managed to squeeze in 5 sessions in the morning.

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Ever since smashing the Clio up at Snetterton earlier in the year I had thought long and hard about my driving style. A few comments on the crash video had actually been positive and constructive criticism. I had also been watching videos on YouTube recently about driving styles which had made me think more about trying to drive smoother so that I was not driving with the throttle at 100% or 0%, or braking as hard as I could or not braking at all. I spent most of my day trying to focus on trying to keep the car settled when braking before a corner, settled so that was more balanced entering a corner, to hopefully allow me to carry more speed and be faster on corner exits. I think that my driving improved over the course of the day.

The car suffered with understeer today. It was fine to set it up to brake and enter a corner, but when it was mid corner it started to lose grip which meant we had to adjust the throttle input the keep the car on course but once we had reached about the mid way point of the corner, or just a bit further, it was usually fine and back to normal grip levels.

Playing with tyre pressures did not have much of an impact on the issue either.

After lunch Ethan decided to see if taking off the rear 20mm spacers would have any impact of the rotation of the rear of the car, or the understeer issue. The Clio has a Cup Racer front end with 5mm spacers so it is already fairly wide at the front. We had kept on the 20mm spaces at the back to provide a wider stance in the hope that it would make the rear end more stable. So off came the spacers.

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Removing the rear spacers made no noticeable difference to the rotation of the rear or the understeer.

There we no red flags in the morning which was very unusual at Donington, but just as the afternoon sessions started there was a red flag followed by another 2 or 3 throughout the afternoon. Cars were either braking down or having to be recovered from the gravel traps. We managed to do another 5 sessions in the afternoon.

Towards the end of the day both @EthanMenace and I both did a solo session each which usually results in us getting our best lap times of the day. By this point the car had less fuel in it and with one of us out of the car it is 90 to 100 kgs lighter. Ethan got a 1m 25s and I got a 1m 28s.


Our lap times did not show the improvements over last year that we had expected and that may be down to a number of things (or possibly excuses):

1. The tyres we used today are some well worn MRF ZTEs that we got last year. They have probably been through too many heat cycles and just don't seem to provide the level of grip that they probably should. We have been using MRFs as they are durable but our current set might just be too durable. The set of Direzzas that we have not fitted yet feel very slightly sticky when you touch them whereas the MRFs feel like hard rubber when they are cold.

2. The car is mapped and usually runs on 99 RON fuel. Today we struggled to find a petrol station within 15 minutes of Donington Park that had 99 RON fuel and just used 97 RON instead. We could have filled up at Donington Park's own fuel station but at £1.95 a litre we were both too tight to spend the money - even though I am now complaining that is might have had a negligible impact on our lap times.

3. It was busy today and it was difficult to get a run of good laps together.

4. We just didn't go as fast today.

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All of the tech worked today. Both GoPros recorded the front and rear footage without failing or freezing today. I did manage to put the front camera in to 960p resolution in the afternoon meaning that some of the footage looks like it has been recorded for a 4:3 television screen from the 1980s. The RaceBox also recorded all of the GPS data for every session. The only issue that I have our tech is that our CANchecked gauge is not logging data at a constant speed. When I try and use the exported data logs they run at variable speeds which means that the data does not sync with the video footage. CANchecked have acknowledged the problem and their devs are looking in to the problem. I did watch the gauge when I was a passenger today and the coolant, air intake and oil temperatures all stayed at sensible levels despite the warm weather.

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The front tyres are still working their way through the front section of the arch liners, and the edge of the front bumper - but the natural rubbing looks fairly normal at the moment. Hopefully we have got the point where not much more will rub away.

We might give the brakes a bleed over the weekend. The MRFs will come off the gold Speedlines and will be replaced with the Direzzas this week. We should then be ready for a few TF laps on 30th June 2024 and our Circuit Days track day on 1st July 2024.
 
I would assume fresh tyres will help but I imagine the cause is your spring rates, now you have fixed the RC the frontend is too stiff relative to the rear.
That’s a good point, not something we’d thought about.
Have you gone softer at the front or stiffer at the rear with yours?
 
That's interesting what you're saying about understeer, I found the opposite after doing the modification(s), the front end was very keen to get to the apex and once you're on the throttle the Gripper just drags it round. The rear end feels quite mobile, which @RSRowe has mentioned to me before when chasing and looking back at videos.

I'm trying to dissect your description:

The car suffered with understeer today. It was fine to set it up to brake and enter a corner

Presumably you mean the initial turn in is OK, and the car isn't resisting that initial change of direction by washing wide?

but when it was mid corner it started to lose grip which meant we had to adjust the throttle input the keep the car on course
but once we had reached about the mid way point of the corner, or just a bit further, it was usually fine and back to normal grip levels.

There's a conflict here, mid corner is described as where you start to lose grip or where the grip came back, so I'm not sure I understand the terminology.

Are you on or off the throttle at the point where you experience the understeer? Watching your throttle trace back will be interesting to see whether there is a theme you can spot. Does it happen to you both (presumably with slightly different driving styles) or is it consistent between drivers?

Could be worn tyres, I know what you're saying about the MRFs. I've got a couple of sets and whilst I can't seem to kill them off, the grip levels do drop over time. I can see me replacing them at some point because of age/performance rather than tread wear.

What toe settings are you running at the front?
 
I found initial turn in was ok but early to mid corner it didn’t feel as though there was much bite. It wasn’t awful but just felt like the front was sliding through most corners

This is the alignment from a few weeks ago.

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I will be the first to admit that I am not the greatest driver so my description of the mechanics/physics may be slightly off.

This is a video of one of @EthanMenace's longer sessions which includes the lap that I have already posted above.


I wasn't recording the throttle pedal inputs yesterday so I only have the GPS data to look at in terms of speed, acceleration Gs and cornering Gs.

Turn in was always good, the car followed the steering inputs. The car had no problem going in to a corner. As the car decelerated at the braking zone the car would turn in and the throttle would be used at the start of the corner so that the car would head towards the apex but then felt like it would, to use Nathan's phrase, start to wash out wide once it was through the apex. If I kept the throttle level up at the start of the corner the car felt like it was understeering in the middle third of the corner, usually after the apex. Sometimes I would have the decrease the throttle input to combat the understeer and once that was done the grip came back.

The reality of the situation is that I was trying to get round corners like Redgate as fast as possible so it always going to result in the car being pushed outwards due to physics. It just felt like yesterday we were losing grip mid corner.
 
I don't see any issues with the driving style on that video, lines and turn-in seem good. Lots of tyre squeal though which makes me think you have indeeed reached the end of the sweet spot for those MRFs. Possibly tyre pressures too high but you've said you were checking those?

@EthanMenace decent peddling, next thing for you to practise is some heel and toe downshifting :thumb:
 
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