jasonius

iTrader: (1)

Great day, even if it is a little difficult to drift a scoob..

Big thanks to everyone and I hope you all enjoyed it and gained something from it. Thanks also to David and Peter for their excellent guidance..

I've got a few vids to post up of how to do it and how not to do it..

Psigeek, I'm really sorry that we couldn't find a replacement. With hind sight I should have had a contact number from Ben, but even then it would have probably been too late..! As a very small consolation, I have your £13.50, which, if you PM me your addy I'll send out a cheque first thing Monday morning.

Camel

Superb fun - thank you very much indeed for getting it all organised Jason - the considerable effort was well worth it in the end. Sorry I didn't see you to thank you in person but your group had started by the time we got out the canteen at lunchtime so we just pushed off.

Enjoyed meeting the others in the morning group and it sounds like some of us might be up for a bit of rally driving at some stage - you know who you are

I was most impressed with the way the Aston handled, it was far more stable than I anticipated - but I didn't really get to grips with the random kick - need another visit I think.

Looking forward to seeing some of the pics.

Cheers

Cameron

RobinSherwood

Firstly - Jason thank you very much for organising a superb day, we had a lot of fun.

Other than that it was great to put faces to a few names on here, a day like this just goes to show what a superb bunch of people we have here on Scoobynet.

I hope having to faff around with the Ginetta didn't get in anyones way and assuming we are able to go racing this year please don't be shy about coming to find us and saying 'hello' if you are at any race meeting where we are racing.

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

Robin, in no way did you 'get in the way' it was a joy to share the day with such a wonderful car..

Here's a few vid clips..

Me over-cooking the slalom:

MVI_3951.flv video by jason5467 - Photobucket


How it should be done by Steve (aka NXG):


MVI_3952.flv video by jason5467 - Photobucket

and me again before I 'sussed' the kick plate :

http://s14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...t=MVI_3956.flv

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

Can someone check that the other images in my Photobucket album are secure and these links don't allow anyone to see all my album..

Camel

You're secure, clicking on your name prompts for a password

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

NXG

Wow, what a great experience! Big thanks to Jason (top man) for organising this and to Rockingham's David and Peter for making us feel so welcome and giving some excellent tuition.

I learnt a lot about how the car handles at the limit (or doesn't when you over-cook it! ), and it was great to be able to push it beyond the limits in a safe environment whilst having fun at the same time!

There were some very different cars in the afternoon slot, from Classic to New Age, and a BMW (that looked like it just wanted to fish tail ) and a G50 Cup Ginetta (Robin's?), that was a REAL handful, but sounded awesome

Talking of the Classic, who was the little "Drift Meister" driving that thing??? I saw him go round the crescent in a perfect drift more often than not, and it's harder than it looks, due to Scoobies having so much grip (I had to use the handbrake to get anything other than mild understeer)

Anyone that missed this due to timing or concerns about the car or their driving should really have a go! It's safe, (top speeds are below 35mph), very educational and FUN...

Count me in for the next one!

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

^^^

sums it up perfectly..

The drift meister would be cmasterScoob (aka Chris), thought for a minute it was Needle's behind the wheel..

Lol, as for me, grip, grip, tad of understeer, grip, boot whoops 360..!

NXG, we could have had a bit of fun on the way home to had it not been for all the damn speed camera warnings flashing up on the sat nav and the fact that we're law abiding people of course..

Andy916

iTrader: (8)

Thanks Jason for organising a great event. I was in my blue classic on the morning session, along with Paul in the TVR, plus Anne and little Ben. I liked the fact it was relaxed enough to allow Ben to passenger - he was really thrilled by it!

Rather than take the A14 back south, I had a bit of time so re-discovered the B660 to St Neotts then the B1046 towards Cambridge. Great roads!

Thinking back, I think my favourite was the basalt tiles section, where you could really play with the car's attitude. Although slow, it replicated much of the feeling the car has when stepping out on a trackday and a sprint.

Did anyone else experience vibration on the 2nd and 3rd sections when using a lot of steering lock? I think it was down to tyres in my case - I've been using up some 50 profiile 16's through the winter and they're not the best when pushed beyond the limit!

cheers
Andy

NXG

Well done to Chris then He had a lot of errr "moments" on the tiles and kick plate, but obviously learnt something as he put the techniques to good use on the drift section!

Yes, being law abiding citizens we obviously save the playing for the track... err hum.. I think I detected a small blip of your throttle at one point coming past Corby though

Before we left the track, I have to admit to being a big kid, and slowing right down at the entrance to the tunnel and gaving it a little blip (OK, WOT..) for a few yards... It sounded great Next time I think I'll get there earlier and do that until we have to go on the wet handling circuit

The grip on the drift track was a bit of a sod, but I don't mind as it just confirms what I thought about the excellent combination of Powerstation's Stage 3 12 ways setup and Eagle F1 Asymmetics! I'll set the struts on 12 from the start next time, and remember to use the handbrake! Maybe that Ginetta could use some

Just a few notes for potential spectators, there are no facilities around the wet handling course, not even a convenient bush, but it's a quick 2 min drive back to the inner concourse where there's catering and loos. On a wet day, it wouldn't be too nice, but if it was sunny, there's a small grass bank to sit on where you'd get a great view of the 'action'. I noticed the Ginetta boys (and girl) had a support car, which they used for tootling back and forth, maybe next time we could have one too? There's no restriction about having ride-along passengers, no crash helmet etc required and other than checking oil, water and tyres (basic stuff everyone should do anyway), the car doesn't need any special preparation. We also had a mix of cars in the AM and PM slots, and David and Peter don't mind what you bring, as long as they can help you learn better car control, and they're very good at it.

While certain Scooby drivers are no doubt very good already, having had a lot of track experience, I think this would benefit everyone from complete novices who've never pushed a car to its limit or had a slide, to track stars looking to improve their skills or check the effect of new handling parts. We certainly had this mix on the day, and one driver who I think I could safely describe as 'novice' (no offence meant!) looked to be having a hoot and showed huge improvement in slide recovery in just a few hours..

Thanks again for organising this Jason, and nice to chat to you... when did you say the next one was?

scoobyc

iTrader: (2)

Yeah excellent day. Love the salt tiles, could go all the way down it sideways and snaking and recover just before (or sometimes just after) the end, and the kicker was quite viscious! Hitting those water walls makes quite a noise too!

I filmed pretty much everyrun and should get some vids up in a bit.

Here is one my bro made earlier YouTube - Rockingham Wet Grip 2009

Am i sad that between runs i was admiring the water beading on my freshly clayed roof?


NXG, were you the black saloon in the 2nd group i take it?

Your is one of the best sounded scoobs i have ever heard. what you running?

Floodboy

As everyone has said, cheers Jason for sorting this. It was one of the best things ive ever done in a car.

The tiles were brilliant, the kick plate was fantastic for finding out exactly how badly one can control their car as well as learning not to stall it whilst piroeting backwards (luckily just the once).

The drifting was brilliant, also bit too much grip, but the handbrake sorted that out (was also the best way to show everyone how you can spin 360 with no control what so ever)

Had a brilliant day and will def be up for the next one. Its a bit of a trip from South London but was a brilliant day.

Aquatix

Just a note to say cheers for organising a great day - & making the non-scooby owners welcome ! Had a great time in the Tuscan, although similar problems with having too much grip then a massive snap into spin when prodding the throttle too much. A few thoughts:

1. The basalt tiles were brilliant - very easy to slide & control with minimum input, so great fun!

2. The kick-plate was a great experience. Easy to recover from at low settings, but at the top of the range even full lock wasn't enough. Possibly due to reaction time or just the lack of weight at the back on wide tyres was not enough to 'weight-shift' onto the front wheels.

3. Couldn't master the drifting, although some of you guys had it nailed quite well. Difficult to unstick the rear without throttle, which then just induced too much spin !! Would have happily tried for hours though ...

4. You definitely don't get as wet if you put the windows up first !

5. Don't bring a blonde to take photo's unless you like tarmac & grass, or pictures of where a car was a few seconds earlier .. Hope someone else got better pics...

OMG - I did a few runs of the tunnel before leaving, in a Tuscan S with CC exhausts and no roof, 6500rpm, 120db - deafening !!

Oh, the trip back was good as well, almost 200 miles of A-roads took twice as long as motorway but more fun and well into the triple digits a lot of the way (with laser jamming system on full)

NXG

Looking forward to seeing more vid Jason's passenger managed to get a good one of me. Made me laugh as I'm not sure how much of it was Ninja car control and how much was frantic steering wheel spinning! A little more of the latter probably, but it looked good

Yes, it was me It's an API 2.5 conversion. Contributing to the soundtrack are GT Spec 2 headers, sports CAT and a H&S 3" system with an MD321T. Last Dyno run showed 452bhp and 485lb/ft It's as subtle as I could get it... i.e. you can't really see it but there's a huge FMIC and oil cooler behind that bumper. All sprayed black, very stealth

scoobyc

iTrader: (2)

jesus christ! Sounded like a rally car.

Yes thanks for organising the Jason. Brilliant

Anyone off to Donny in april ?

NXG

Yes, API don't do things by halves I'll be updating my profile with a write-up as soon as I finish it!

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

I'm toying with the idea of trying donny, as a complete track novice it would be a good introduction and only 45 mins from home.. I'm just afraid of breaking the family daily driver..

Not looked on the SIDC post this week, how many are currently down..?

Back to yesterday, with regards to the kick plate, I initially went into it thinking, right I'm going to drive through and kid myself that nothings going to happen and then react to the skid, as you would if you were caught out on the road. And the result, oh f*#k, that doesn't work, as by the time you react it's all over and you're facing the wrong way..!

IMHO the only way to correct it was to anticipate the kick and actually apply opposite lock before the kick. This was obvious when it came to random direction kicks at the end.. Suddenly, everyone was unable to control it, even those who were previously catching 9/10 kicks. Luckily by then I'd mastered it and caught every random kick...lol.. (NXG..)

IMHO, by far the hardest thing is getting over the natural reaction to lift off once the rear goes.. I'd agree that the basalt (sp?) tiles were a great teaching aid. Towards the end of our stint on them I was starting to over come lifting and starting to apply throttle to pull the slide back. It's quite amazing once you get it, how easily the rear comes back in line.. With hindsight I'd have liked longer on that by dropping the crescent (something to consider for next time maybe.. )

One other tip for future visits, don't bother washing your car before hand, as the water leaves nice spots all over your nice clean paintwork. Nothing a quick layer of snowfoam won't wash away..

RobinSherwood

I have to be honest and say I don't know how a road tyre would compare to race wets in terms of wet grip. Mind you the wets we were using are almost a year old so probably long past their best. The Ginetta wasn't best suited to drifting, the limited lock and the lack of handbrake were probably both limiting factors. Tom found it was better to just attempt to drive the car round the arc as quickly as possible as it if was a wet race. Having sat in the car with him for that I found it fascinating to see how much input was going in just to make the car drive round the corner as fast as possible without letting it slide more than necessary. (Despite the fact it is my car that is actually the first time I have been a passenger in it at anything more than walking pace).

As I have already said it was fantastic fun. From the point of view of learning from it Tom felt he would have learnt something from it at the beginning of last year when he was learning the car but that having raced the car for a full season that he didn't actually learn anything. Especially having raced it in the wet and for example having driven it on slicks on a wet track at the beginning of a race when we gambled on the track drying out (we were half right, the track didn't come to us quickly enough BUT we did set fastest lap).

Obviously very few people have national level race experience but for anyone approaching it from the way we were that might be useful information.

Tom did have the cheek to tell me that he thought I needed to do it in my Spec D and that he thought I would learn a lot from it

I took some pictures of several of the cars in the afternoon session. I haven't had a chance to do anything with them yet as we needed to turn the car round to test at Silverstone tomorrow but once I have had a chance I will post any decent ones up.

YXD

Another big thanks to Jason.. top day out although i was gutted to nearly always be following Chris with his perfect displays followed by me knackering it

I too loved the salt tiles the best and had way too much understeer on the drift section. Definitely need to go again.

As for the trip home..lots of A&B road fun after a day of going 20mph, shame it wasn't raining to try out those skills

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

^^^

lol, I think you've hit the nail on the head with the drive home after 3hrs + at 20something MPH it was nice to 'open the taps'..

I'm so glad the feedback has been so good. David did ask me to email him the link to any feedback and I'll be happy for him to see so many happy people..

Butty

iTrader: (2)

Jasonius, thanks for organising the day - particularly persevering to get the numbers together when others would have called a halt.

I thought that a single group of nine kept the concentration on the boil and stopped drivers getting cold, compared with the last day I did.

I thought that the kick plate/drift track surface had gained a little grip as drifting was (a bit) easier last time, so out came the trusty handbrake - I just wished I could have been able to do it "properly" though.
Was good to see a mix of cars and some familiar faces

If anyone is after doing this in the very near future, the Alpina Register are on the track 21st March and are looking for drivers to fill the spaces.

theALPINAregister.com :: View topic - Wet Handling day 4 - Sat 21st March 2009 [Payment requested]
Cheers

nick

jasonius

iTrader: (1)

Some very good video footage there and damn quick at getting it uploaded..

There's one clip in-particular, on the kick plate, where you can see/hear clearly how to catch the rear end by giving it some (not a boot full) gas. It's quite impressive when you eventually do it, as it works a treat..

If anyone has any video of my efforts (good or bad.. ) I'd be grateful of a looksy (PM me for an email address)..

scoobyc

iTrader: (2)

Yes i have a 1 or two of you jason.

Took me all day yesterday to find a bloody converter to convert mts to an avi codec which works with windows movie maker.

Will finish the job off tonight hopefully.

chrisTOTB

i texted jason to thank him on the day as i havent had net access this weekend. loved it and would go again. i was in the red bmw530 diesel which was great fun. the basalt tiles were quite good once you got used to it, and i think the kick plate was superb. i learnt quite a bit about how fast you have to be to wind the lock on, as the bmw is quite lazy power steering and not that quick a rack. i had to bang loads of lock on immediately you felt it kick and just keep the boot in.
i thought the full drift bend was good but very tricky in my car, it hasnt got an lsd (traction was turned off all day!) and was just spinning up the inside wheel all the time making it very tricky- all or nothing with the torque kicking in very low down, so a bit more time on that area would have helped me as i felt i'd cracked the kick plate section by the end.
the car is about 220bhp and 320ft/lb+ at very low revs so i found it way too easy to light up the rears :-)

a hooligans playground i'd call it- if you had more time on there you'd run out of fuel in the end enjoying yourself in safety!

ideally i'd like to go back with my mid engined kit car (which is why i went for some further practise to keep my eye in!). the kit car is 400bhp n/a and 900kg
but its open cockpit and seeing how much water is sprayed around would make it a no-no :-)

overall i was very impressed with the day and venue, and would highly recommend it to anyone who hasnt been. nice one jason :-)

WRX-Jo

Chris (in the Supra) and I (blue blobeye WRX) enjoyed our session in the morning too. I found it a bit frustrating and definitely needed longer to master it, but it was fun trying. Some of you guys seemed to have mastered it pretty well - especially the Spec Ds and the Aston.

I found the tiles at the beginning and the crescent at the end quite difficult because my car just wouldn't play ball - all I had was buckets of juddery understeer. The kick-plate was OK on the low setting (when I think the car righted itself, to be honest) but on any higher setting it was hopeless! They said I was doing everything right but I just couldn't stop it spinning and sliding sideways. We reckoned it might have been my tyres as I have Eagle F1 Asymmetrics on the rear but the previous Eagle F1 pattern still on the front, so the rear had too much grip for the front. Interesting that there is so much difference in the way that these tyres function. I think being harder and faster with the steering help too but need more goes to try it! I also had a couple of goes in the Supra (and spun again, of course).

You all say it was nice to open it up a bit on the drive home - well I did one better than that as I actually went on track for the afternoon. It wasn't worth paying for both cars for the afternoon, but we both went round in my car and that was fun. Thankfully no spinning that time though!

We didn't have to worry about the water marks afterwards - our cars were by far the filthiest two there. I was actually hoping it would get washed under the water jets, but no such luck.

So thanks again for a great day. We actually stayed all weekend and grabbed some passenger rides from Supra friends on the next day's track day too. Looks like Chris and I may both be doing Donington next month, so maybe see some of you there.

chrisTOTB

the kick plate was deffo interesting on the random setting. for some reason i decided mine had gone left when it was infact right! :-) full lock on the wrong way and a tremendous spin! ;-)

WRX-Jo

Oh yeah - I think I did that too at one point. Just when I was trying to steer harder I ended up steering the wrong way!

v8voodoo

That sounds like it could be my girlfriend using my spec.D on the afternoon session...?

She was indeed a complete novice, having never done anything like this before. She usually drives a little 1.2 Corsa and had only ever driven my car a fortnight ago for about 40 miles on a motorway before the day...!!

Her learning curve on the day was immense with the instructors being impressed how quickly she was learning considering she'd never driven the car properly before. She loved the tiles and she even got the hang of drifting quite quickly with the aid of a smidge of handbrake..!! The kick plate was a bit tricky for her though and she was getting quite annoyed at not being able to crack it. We experienced fuel cut off several times due to the violence of some of her spins, hence the car being stranded mid track a few times refusing to start (Nick - this was exactly the same as you experienced, strong smell of fuel and no chance of restarting etc).

Thanks again to the instructors for giving her so much assistance and tuition, it was very much appreciated. She came away from the day having learned quite possibly life saving skills and thoroughly enjoyed her Christmas present...!!

Butty

iTrader: (2)

I considered some sort of fuel shut-off had happened, but other cars I've owned have always needed a switch flicked in the boot to get power to the pump.
For some reason I didn't fancy getting out on the track and looking for one on the Spec D
Luckily it stated again with a few prods of the right foot.

nick