So a few months have passed now since my first race at Donnington and in true Honda reliable fashion I've had almost zero issues. The car has been ran for around 3 hours at race speeds (completely flat out) and nothing untoward (major) has happened, also interestingly it has used hardly a drop of oil in the process. Either my dipstick is lying to me or I need a new set of eyeballs and the car runs cool as a cucumber, even when track temps are hot and 40 minutes races.
Croft wasn't a bad track but isn't my favourite either. It has some good flat out sections but for what ever reason it really didn't float my boat. During qualifying I managed to damage my gear linkage, one of the plastic sleeves that the wire feeds through snapped and so the wire had no purchase on the gear change mechanism. Resulted in me being stuck in 3rd gear and having to ride the clutch to get moving from stand still. A little frustrating as I had no spare set. A quick call to the local Honda dealer and they wanted £400....obviously I'm not mental and didn't go along with the sale. Luckily Civic Cup were racing the same weekend as me and I went for a sheepish wonder down to their setup to see if I could borrow/purchase a set of linkages from them. Shaun (SW Motorsport) and Steve (Civic Cup) sorted me right out, luckily they weren't racing until the Sunday and I was on Saturday so they allowed me to borrow there's on the proviso that I returned it to them. Of which I did. They literally saved my bacon and I managed to bag 3rd place in my 40min race. Top blokes!
I was suffering badly from understeer at Croft which is probably what gave me the bad feeling of it. The car hadn't had the alignment checked in about 2 years albeit it had only ever been on a track in that time. So before Snetterton I had it realigned with some setting I found on the HOT forum. They worked a treat and the car had the lovely feeling of rear end rotation again not to mention a sharper turn in feeling. I think some of the understeering issues were also blamed on my driving style and so have tried to readdress that also.
Up next was Snetterton, a track I had heard a lot of grumbles about and not a lot positive....but I have no idea why. Snetterton has it all, high speed straights, technical twisty bits and flat out double handers. If Donnington didn't have Craner Curves Snett would be my favourite track. The 300 setup is long (3 miles) but its good going! It certainly keeps you on your toes. 40 minutes of racing that and I was buggered! Managed to finish in 5th despite it being my first time there.
At the end of the Snetterton race our series manager arranged for all the cars to get weighed. I was pleasantly surprised with mine, with 1/3 of fuel left and with me in the car suited up etc I came in at 1157kg. Now I'm a fatty and with race gear on estimate to be around 105kg. So the car weighs around 1020kg (I think). I do have some car scales but never seem to get them out when I have the time!
As there is now a break until my final race for the Army (September) I decided to do a couple of invitiatiaonals, so I threw myself on to Nippon Challenge at Thruxton last weekend. I have been here a few times to watch various things such as BTCC and knew of its high speed folk lore. It wasn't until I was doing 110mph though a right hander that I realised just how high speed it was. It took a fair while until I grew the cohones to not lift off. I personally didn't like the track that much although it was growing on me. I just didn't find it technical enough as it is just flat out corners with 2 esses. Not really suited (in my opinion) to the twisty ability of the CTR. It was good though and any time on track is better than no time on track. Conditions were brilliant I might add also!
The only minor thing I will comment with regards to reliability is the M2 intake manifold, one of the coolant outlets that is blocked off has a rubber nipple which perished and on my final corner of race one for Nippon Challenge gushed coolant everywhere...resulting in the car instantly overheating and saving itself by going in to limp mode. A little rubbish as about 4 cars overtook me on the start/finish straight but with the temps on my gauge reading in to 130degrees I was just happy the car made it back to the paddock.
I had about an hour to get it fixed before race 2, which I did. Re-bled the coolant system etc and the car was good as new again. The limp mode kindly removed itself without me having to do any wizardry and I cracked on with the final race of the day. Which I ended up bagging 3rd place and a lovely little trophy. Happy with that
Enough Jibber jabber here's a couple of pics.
Also I've been uploading my races onto YouTube also in case anyone is interested. Feel free to throw comments good or bad on to the videos I'm always open to suggestions and feedback of any kind.
https://youtu.be/pMJVWZugcsU
https://youtu.be/ckgLWrObIbE
https://youtu.be/BOCmObcQcMw
Cheers!