Pictures from the day - Video lap

The day was smoothly run and, with track time running right up until 5pm, a great value event. With a lot of attendees, I was wary of traffic jams by the time the open pit lane was declared. This didn't turn out to be a problem though, because just about everyone was politely following the overtaking rules. With a mix of cars from mental Porsches and Caterfields down to more modest road cars like my own, this was a great relief. If more drivers had been stubborn (as some can be) it would have been quite a mess.

I was having most fun with the other Evo Forum people, and a great time when all three of the Clio 172s were on track together. It was fun to see how, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't even gain a few feet on the 172 in front.

The same couldn't be said for some of the more exotic machinery however. There were some very quick cars on track that were making a bit of a pig of some of the corners and were surprisingly easy to catch and pass in the Clio. Some folks just didn't seem to share my enthusiasm for flat-to-the-floor attacks of the Craner Curves for example. Some were braking for each curve treating them as separate corners instead of one flowing section.

Spectating between laps was a bit dull because the pits are located without a view of any of the interesting corners. For this reason we missed such gems as the overtaking uphill from Craner and the slips, slides and two and three wheeled antics through the chicane. No real matter though, because as always the other drivers and passengers there were all great people and we had some great conversations and animated descriptions of the goings on.

By the end of the day I was on a real high. The event had been really well run (including a 3 minute stoppage in respect for the dead in New York), and the few interruptions for offs quickly cleared. There was lots of track time on offer and I made good use of it doing over 100 miles during the day. This was at the expense of a set of tyres and one and a half tanks of fuel. My new brakes were holding up really well though and are recommended ... Mintex 1155 compound. They didn't fade all day, and allowed me to do sessions of about 8 laps at a time before my tyres went too slippy to carry on.