Brands Hatch Indy yesterday, MSVT run. Packed up the night before, then had a load of work to do until past 1am and ended up with about 4 hours sleep, but brands is about 50 mins from my house so nice and easy vs Croft at 6 hours...
Garmin Catalyst - TLDR: well, this is a game changer. It's like having vbox/harrys/go-pro all in one, with very little effort to get it running and it does so much of the hard (editing/analysis) work for you, and then also acts as a backup driving coach that will give you live verbal/visual instruction on braking points and speeds.
- the good bits? integrated video, stats, optimal lines calculated giving you pointers and photos of optimal braking points (vs your average), suggested improvements to breaking, apex, acceleration and cornering speed. It works really well, it's well thought out and within seconds of stopping in the pits you can instantly review a lap - the video of it, stats, charts on some useful datapoints and it will string together all of your fastest segments to give you an optimal laptime - and show you a video of this. pretty good. the box contains both screw down mount and a suction mount, plus spares for the camera - so i can move this to other cars pretty easily leaving the clio wiring/mount setup in place. they seem to be updating it with features too, so thats nice.
- the bad bits? it needs a rear facing camera, i'm going to re-purpose the crappy go-pro for this - mostly for context of who else is on track and why you might be avoiding racecars sat on your bumper. strangely simply 'turning it on' is.. hard. i think i've worked out 'when it has put itself to sleep its a 10s (yes, 10 SECONDS) press to turn it on.'. It's also not cheap, but if you tried to build this with harrys, a go-pro and some software/time spent editing you would probably be not far off in time vs money.
MSVT - pretty well run tbh, generally very good standard of driving, the most aggressive coming from the racecars.
My only gripe for the day is just the mix of cars being so broad - we had stock Seat Leon 1.9tdi on rainsports, stock clios, 1980s MGs (stock, 97hp..), 1960s Austin healey, and old mini, some more track prepped stuff like mine/182/minis/abarth 500/scooby/e92, and then a decent jump to race prepped ginettas, seat leons that looked like BTCC cars, AMG GTs (british GT), and some endurance Ferraris (458/488 challenge kinda thing). One chap came along in his Pista, and another team came with race prepped Cayman GT4s and McLaren 600LTs. So - 90hp up to 720+ meant speed difference was drastic so plenty of time spent getting out of the way of racecars. A few red flags, some electrical failures but no serious incidents. The closest car to me was probably the Pure Track 197, that i think is designed for 750MC races.
Started the day with sighting laps in full sun, sat behind a stock clio and what looked like a bastardised Radical made in a norfolk shed, and in front of two 600hp+ Ferrari race cars. Pretty much summed up the day.
Spent a bit of time messing with go-pro mounts as finally got the right sized bolts from Westfield Fasteners (love that site..), but i definitely need a new GoPro - mine blows out the light and really struggles to adjust exposure for OUTSIDE of the car, and vibrates like a mofo. I'll use link one vid below to help diagnose a problem i had, but it's not much use for entertainment purposes. I'll add an ebay gopro 6/7 to my bday list.
I did 9-10 sessions of between 12-15 laps, one ended due to red flag, and one i sorta cut short due to some hesitation/acceleration weirdness. Generally the car performed well, well, i did sighting laps and first session with the Gaz set to pretty soft, and then moved to 10 clicks from soft on the front and 5 on the rear, and then later moved another 5 clicks on the front. i think next time i'll just go a few clicks away from hard and perhaps keep the rear in the middle.
Previous visit i was hovering around 1:01 and this visit i was effectively doing the same times, albeit much more comfortably and consistently. I think i have the lines about right, but i just need to brake later and get on the power earlier to actually take advantage of the gripper - not quite used to that ability yet. Likewise messing with coilovers i didn't really feel like i knew where the cornering speed limits were yet.. had some interesting side-skipping moments around Surtees that a few more feet would have seen me doing my best impression of a Vegan on the grass ... like the young lad in a Clio 182 with cold AD08s did. With hindsight, i stumped up for a garage but decided i'd be messing with the car too much to fit in an instructor.. but as always an instructor seems to be worth more than any mods, so new rule is going to be to add instructor time to every TD. Likewise - more days with other clios, as they're the best.
Highlight of the day was chasing a full race prepped Cayman GT4 for a few laps to eventually pass him when he realised i'd be right on him all of the next lap, and he had to let me past. Will chuck that up session from the Garmin as example (it has no GPS data as didn't wait before moving from pits to get a signal, it catches up later..), with the 'optimal time' as 'all my best segments stitched together':
Any comments from those who know Brands are very welcome!
It was a day with an evening session after the day, and the poor folks that turned up were greeted by heavy rain (After a glorious day) at 16:30 - at which point i had just gone out for last session, but after 2 laps of trying to slide about - bailed and called it quits. Packed up, pumped up the tyres, and drove home with suspension 15 clicks harder than the morning journey. London speed bumps with a boot of kit .. hilariously painful.
Uh oh? Right after lunch i had some oddity with hesitation, low power and rough (intake?) noise - tbh in the time i was out i couldn't completely confirm whether it was gearbox or induction/fuel/spark. Happened after i missed 3rd and went to 5th (coincidence? first time i'd done this), turned corner and when on hard throttle it was chugging with low power and gruff intake noise. revving in the pits afterwards i couldnt hear it, but mid track i dropped clutch and revved and i *think* i could hear it then (should be evident in video after the hairpin), right before a helicopter lands overhead. It seemed happier in higher revs (like it was chugging through the mid rev band, fine at low rpm, fine at 6k+). Not sure what this is/was, i pulled in - parked it, let it sit for 10 mins and started again, let it idle for a few mins, then went out again and had no issue again. Sorta felt like a turbo car where the turbo wasn't working and you got extra throaty intake and no power. Downside of the scorpion exhaust, manifolds and ktec intake is you get so much noise in the car (cool!) it's hard to identify wtf is going on (not cool) sometimes. Perhaps i need a code reader to check for clues there?
around 44s here:
Want to get this resolved/confirmed before the next outing - either Snet on 25th or something sooner if i can find one.
Off to NYC tomorrow so not going to be near the car for a week