An open pit lane Track day at Llandow circuit, just west of Cardiff organised by BookaTrack. This time I was in my blue XR4x4 as the White XR4x4 is in the middle of having a twin turbo kit fitted
Rob's account
The drive down was in convoy with 2 Caterhams and a 340r when it started to absolutely bucket down, my wipers were going flat out and I still could hardly see! By the time we arrived it had stopped raining and the sun was trying to break through. The first couple of sessions I left the Goodyear Eagles on, they coped really well with the wet track, giving very little understeer. The track is quite interesting, some reasonably fast sections and some very slow technical stuff. As the track began to dry I switched to the Collway F2's, they handled very well, the back of the car seemed to be a little loose and there was very little understeer .... splendid!
I had a bit of a problem when the car started misfiring half way round a lap, I had to crawl back to the pits. After some inspection I found the coil lead was broken
A very helpful spectator (who was also into Sierras,
a Cossie, a single turbo 2.8) gave me a lift to get one from a local scrap yard, a big thank you to him (I didn't
get his name, but get yourself down for a trackday soon), a replacement lead was purchased and fitted, and after a
small initial problem the car was up and running again I did
have a little problem on the way home, a tyre blew out at about 90 (er I mean 70 officer) on the M4
sorry to Jim who got a face full of tyre rubber and smoke as he was behind me in his 340r. Managed to get the car
to the hard shoulder mainly sideways, all these track days learning how to handle the car when it's out of control
have paid off! A quick wheel change and I was on my way again!
Overall the track was very good, though I did really need a few more horses for the long straights, bring on the twin turbos
here's a lap description ....
As you exit the last corner in 3rd you keep left gradually moving the car in to the centre of the track, the right hand side is quite bumpy, 4th gear about half way up the straight, around 110mph, you can either stay in the middle of the track as you brake which is smoother, but then you need to dive to the right just before the entry to the bus stop. The bus stop is quite slow, 2nd gear about 30mph, clip the left corner kerb, hard right clipping the first right hand kerb, keep the car tight, a little throttle, clip the second right hand kerb and nail the throttle! Try to keep the car in the middle of the track for the exit of the bus stop clipping the left hand and right hand kerb slightly, approaching 50mph, try to get the car out to the left but Devils Elbow comes up quickly, a lift to unsettle the back slightly to get the nose towards the apex of the kerb, just touch the kerb and then you can get back on full power, the kerb on the exit is quite high so you don't want to hit that too hard! Grab 3rd and keep to the left of the track, keep the throttle nailed, turn into Nook bend when the outside of the track starts to curve, still full throttle, looking for the apex mid bend, there is quite a lot of room on the exit so let the car run wide. Take 4th down Hanger Straight, about 100mph before braking very late and taking 3rd for jacks curve, trying to straight line the right left right, catching plenty of kerb, nail the throttle again and let the car run out to the edge of the right hander, taking note to bring the car back in a little as there is a indent in the track before the last corner, now a quick dab on the brakes and turn the car in to just brush past the kerb on glue pot, when you know the car is going to make the apex it's back to full throttle, there is a lot of room so let the car run out to the edge of the track, keep left as you go up Paddock Straight as this smoothes things out as the right is quite bumpy, taking 4th halfway down the straight onto another lap
for a little more of a gooning lap don't brake for Glue Pot, just a little lift and you can have some nice oversteer round the corner, be warned though, there isn't a lot of run off too the tyre wall!! There was an interesting incident where a TVR did a 360 spin over the grass in front of me, see movie below!
