What can I say.........
AWESOME!!!!The trip down was lovely. fine weather all the way and Robin had a gorgeous 18yr old, track obsessed lady with him from the Northloop forum, who asked to come down with him at the last minute (she knew everyone, which made the intro's and day a lot more interesting).
Arrived in one piece at the 'ring with just one minor mishap - a stone hit the edge of the windscreen causing a 6" crack at the top corner (out of eyeline). Had to go down to RSR to get the okay to go on track.
The day arrived and the weather was just perfection for a turbo'd car = 4
oC in the morning to 15
oC in the afternoon and brilliant clear skies all day, with the track as dry as a bone
Some superb cars there on the day (sorry I was too busy driving to take too many pics). The new Ferrari 599XX was there and looked and sounded fooking awesome, as did the R8 Le Mans race car. There were a few other race teams there too including a rather tasty bright orange race prepped and bodied Scirocco (sorry no pics
). Everything else as you would expect from a camper van (don't ask!!) to Lambo's.
overall I managed 24 laps of the full VLN circuit ('ring plus GP sprint circuit), so for those of you who said it wouldn't be worth it
I would have happily paid double what I did for this day as even though there were some major off's, the track stayed open ALL day, with no closure for dinner and free instruction on tap!
I managed to drop my times after instruction from my slowest of the day at 11 min 15 seconds without a passenger to 10 min 45 seconds WITH a passenger. I didn't time all my laps and there were one or two flying laps in there that were stonkingly fast. The best I can lay claim to with a passenger from the pitlane (ie not a flying lap) was the 10 min 45 sec lap. This transposed into....
1min 51 sec for the GP sprint circuit
8 min 45 sec for the FULL 'ring circuit
8min 18 seconds for the bridge to gantry section (but remember I was going a LOT faster through the bridge (150mph!!)
You must have R888's to do this - I did my first few laps on the Sessanta's and they were pants on track!!!!
I do have HD footage fo the full circuit, with a passenger, before I had instruction and that lap was....
1 min 54 sec for the GP sprint circuit
9min 05 sec for the full 'ring circuit
8min 37 seconds for the bridge to gantry section
When I get the footage up, you'll see that there was an old, slow red Porsche that held me up for around 30 seconds and an old campervan that didn't indicate to let me past, that properly held me up for a few secs too. Overall I lost more than 10 seconds off that lap time
The trip back proved interesting, but I'll leave that to Robin if he wants to tell you all!
