Update: (Quite possibly the most exciting) Bedford Autodrome 24/02!
(Finally!) did my first track day in the clio and it was absolutely mega! Extremely wet in the morning, loads of standing water everywhere, very drizzly and overall just really greasy conditions, didn't feel like it was going to clear up anytime soon either. Not exactly ideal for NS2R's, so i was a bit apprehensive at first but I wasn't put off as i knew it was going to be a lot of fun, and that was my goal, to just have a good time.
Initial noise testing was hilarious, they tested the wrong side of the car and i got 85.6db static (Don't know how they didn't question that!) so i had a good laugh about that in the morning. But it was never static that i was worried about. It was the 87.5db driveby, i'd even gone as far as remoiving the induction kit and putting a new ramair filter in the stock airbox to help with this.
Literally went out for sighting laps and immeadiately realised just how slippy the track was! Came back in and said to my mate who was in a 275 cup-s also running NS2R's about how slippy i found it. So i thought to just drop the tyre pressures to around 28psi ish, go do some laps and see how i got on. Very understeery in the first session haha! Struggling to put any power down coming out of corners and I forgot to turn traction off so it was cutting in left right and centre. Had a lot of fun and just came back into the pits & had a good laugh about it though!
Went out again about shortly after to try get some more laps in and again, just super slippy, one of the chicanes there was absolutely soaked it was like driving through a bath and then the hairpin on to the main straight was the slippiest corner all day. Saying that the right hander on to the pit straight was very slippy, couple times it got a bit floaty going through there and if anything i just didn't want to bin it infront of everyone!
Soon realised at about 11.30 that i had 0 fuel however, 40 miles left in the tank so i called it at about 11.45 before i ran out of fuel and waited until lunch to go to the Shell down the road and refuel.
After lunch it had dried up a fair amount! Though it was difficult because a lot of the track was dry and lots of it was still very greasy, i went out for a proper session immediately after lunch to find barely anyone on track and i finally managed to get some actual heat in to the tyres and it was far better! Came in and they had go to about 30/31 psi ish so i kept them at the pressure they were for the rest of the day and it was getting better and better as the day went on!
Got to about 3pm and i had built up a lot of confidence, really started to push on and got some hard laps in trying to catch the big boys, got about 5/6 laps in and was behind my mate in his meg on the hairpin before the back straight and i saw a black flag! Thought 'ah ffs', lost focus of what i was doing and the back end kicked out on me! haha, caught it anyway and drove casually back to the pits to allow everything to cool down properly. And no-one to greet me at the pits to tell me off!? Anyway, figured i'd be going quite hard so allowed the car some cool down time before going back out.
My last session of the day i felt like i was flying! Really pushing through in the corners and i could feel just how much grip the car had to offer when the tyres were warm with the quaife and some actual dry track! Corner speed was getting on 15mph faster on some bends.
Anyway, to summarise. I am absolutely over the moon with how the car performed. The way it takes corners is just absolutely mega, the oreca makes all the right noises on upshifts and downshifts when it gets really hot & somehow didn't get black flagged all day! The clio didn't skip a beat all weekend in driving 130 miles there, 120 odd hard miles on track & then 130 miles home! (Which weren't exactly easy either). The quaife LSD is also unreal, it really does just pull you into the apex and is so confidence inspiring.
And finally, photos.