3 laps of Brands Hatch from Monday evening

[Shad]

My first time at Brands since December 2006 and my first time in the 7, miraculously the weather held out and the entire evening stayed dry so I was able to press on and explore the limits of the handling. Unfortunately all I found was understeer, understeer and more understeer, but that didn't stop me lapping 2 seconds faster than with my old Honda (which is a credit to the Honda in fairness).

I had some fun laps with another Caterham which was great but I was pretty surprised at how lacklustre the Lotus variants were (apart from a couple of 211s and a 340). I seemed to spend most of my time picking my way through traffic and lapping people. I suppose that's a testament to the abilities of even a basic 7

Anyway, the video: Brands Hatch April 2008

The 'fast lap' works out at 56.8 seconds, give or take a few tenths. I don't know how that compares with others laps with 7s but I'm pretty pleased with it. There's definitely more to come from the car, the setup needs some work to give me a more responsive turn in - it was more like driving a FWD car, despite taking quite a bit of air out of the front tyres. Reminded me how much I want to go racing though...

Comments appreciated as always

[stevie lee]

comments - hmm let me think, WAAAAYY too much wind noise on the mic, can't hear the (probably) loverly engine noise.

video stops after 3:42, says 4:26 for total time, problem with uploaded content or just my end?

[Shad]

Hehe yeah the wind noise is a pain. Last time I taped the mic up completely and that was pretty bad, this time I taped foam over the mic and well, it's not really any better or worse. I need a bullet cam and a remote mic really but I'd rather buy tyres or other improvements

Fixed the 3:46 problem... don't know what happened there, though I've had no end of trouble with encoding and uploading with this video. Thanks for spotting that anyway.

[Rave]

I'd lose the music personally, and stick a cheapo mic in the engine bay. Otherwise a very nice vid.

[Zak33]

doersn;t dip much under braking does it chap?

Do you have any softer springs for the front to try and get it to dip under breaking to weight up the front tyres?

[Zak33]

let me strengthen that statement...

it doesnt dip AT ALL!!

Your speedo is whipping down and the front wheel arch spats are in the exact same place as when you're accelerating.

That car must be HELL in the rain...sheer hell.

Are softer front springs easily available to try?

[Shad]

It's a very good point. The sensations I feel Inside the car, the difference between the nose rising under heavy acceleration and then dipping under heavy braking is quite obvious, but certainly in the video it's not very evident. There are several inches of up/down movement in the suspension that I can generate just by pulling/pushing on the wishbones by hand, so it's not exactly rock solid, but the dampers and springs have done nearly 30k miles now so there may well be some sag creeping in, changing the effective rate of the springs. My rake angle is much too flat at the moment which doesn't help either!

Adjustable dampers are next on the list so I can corner weight and set things up more to my liking, along with suitable springs and an adjustable front ARB. Changing the springs on the standard Bilsteins isn't that practical. In the meantime I can carry on tweaking the geometry, pressures and rear ARB. To be fair the car still works very well, but the development of the CRX has given me certain benchmarks to work towards!

I wouldn't say it's hell in the wet at all. Granted I've not tried very hard, but the throttle becomes a much more useful direction control than in the dry


Also, have a look when I'm going down the hill for turn 3, there's quite a bit of dive there as I jump from full throttle in third gear to hard on the brakes. I think the undulations of Brands may be creating a slightly worse case scenario?