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17th February 2018 by Probably Nitrous
After finally getting around to booking a track day, 4 members of Probably Nitrous headed to Bedford Autodrome on Saturday for their first track day of 2018. For some, their first track day ever. Scott out for his first taste with his Polo, Fraser having done 3 previously with his Clio, and the Gavin/Sean dream team were going to alternate piloting Sean's Mini. Neither having been on track.
This was the second time I had driven Bedford Autodrome, and with3 more track days than the rest of them I was feeling confident in my ability to embarrass the rest of the guys on the circuit. Scott in his Polo was the only other person to have 4 decent tyres on his car, so I had no excuses. After doing the sighting laps and getting a feel for the day, we queued up to hit the track seriously. Despite Scott being ahead of us in the queue, we all got on ahead of him thanks to his failure to fit his towing eye. Rolling past him as he was pulled to the side of the line of cars on his knees was infinitely satisfying. Initially we were separated on track, and this was not bad thing as it gave us all a good chance to build our skills and confidence before attacking the track properly.
An early morning red flag due to a Clio catching fire in the pits unattended (much to the owner's dismay) brought us all back into the pits to swap info and freshen up. As the day progressed the weather stayed dry and the track stayed mostly open with only a few incidents causing yellow and red flags. I took some time from my own car to passenger with Sean in his Mini, not expecting much from his run-flat front tyres and Peugeot engine. I was immediately taken back by the angry engine note and pace his car managed to pick up. Makes my Clio feel comfortable! Down the back straight he was hitting 130mph - the fastest speed out of any of us - and was absolutely launching it on the brakes into the corners. His car lacked the front-end grip of mine, but he was making no excuses. Impressive. I never got out with Scott, but I heard he was basically walking it around.
Towards the end of the day we got some good bumper to bumper trains going, and I was extremely impressed with how the others - or their Electronic Stability Control - were doing on the first track day. They were already passing other drivers, and there was even a random compliment directed at Scott's driving overheard in the pits. I still had and edge on them, but how much of that was down to having 4 proper tyres and how much was down to skill I guess we'll never know (all skill).
A 5:30am alarm is rarely welcomed by me. However a 5:30am alarm on 17th February was welcomed as it meant one thing. Track day.
I'd been slightly apprehensive the few weeks prior, what did I need to take? Would my car, a 2013 Mini JCW, be up to the task? What if I crashed? It was too late for those questions. It was time to make the 90 minute journey to Bedford. After signing on and listening to the safety briefing, it was time to head around to the pits to start our sighting laps. Fraser had some previous track experience and said that although the sighting laps are slower than normal track day pace, they're still pretty quick. This would have been the case, had an Estoril Blue BMW 140i not decided to do 30mph.
A few laps under my belt and feeling more confident about the whole day, I handed the keys to Gavin for him to get to grips with the car as he's never driven the car before, or the track. First lap out down the back straight . . . 130mph. Crikey. After he'd done a handful of laps, we pulled in to catch up with the others. Everybody's confidence had been given a boost following a nice slow start as well as the relaxed atmosphere in the pits. Without warning, a rather nice Martini liveried RS Clio 200 that was sat quietly by itself in the pit lane decided it didn't want to exist anymore and set itself on fire.
I set out to do a few more laps and as confidence grew, so did my speeds. Feeling more confident under braking and with hints of tyre squeal from the run-flats on the front axle around the corners, I suddenly hear the car's computer bong. The screen flashes up.
Knocking it into neutral and coasting into the pits, the warning disappears. We checked the oil levels as well as the cars' diagnostics using my trusty Bluetooth OBD reader, and everything seemed fine. Plenty of oil ( Mini's use a lot of oil . . . F1-tech trickery ) and no fault codes. I decide to brave it and take her out for a few slow laps to see if I can get it to throw the fault again, but to no avail. After some forum scouring, it turns out that the Mini's often throw this code up when cornering hard, which seems a bit silly for a performance focused car.
With more laps under my belt, I felt confident with the track environment and was able to work on my technique and lines. The car was severely lacking bite on turn in due to the run flat tyres, but I learned to cope with this by loading up the front axle with a touch of brakes before tipping her in. Some fun duels with a range of other cars ensued. RS Clio's, Focus RS's and even an M3 being unable to shake me off (he might have been on his cool down lap but we'll gloss over that). I jumped into Fraser's RS Clio Trophy with him to see what both car and driver were made of. I was very surprised with the Clio. The dual-clutch gearbox behaving perfectly and the OH-MY-GOD stopping power of the Ferodo DS1.11 pads. Fraser had the racing line down perfectly and I picked up a few tips from him as we were going around, including to not give it the beans on the first lap after lunch. Clio's don't work very well on grass we found out.
After a full day of pounding around track and with a solid average of 9mpg, it was time to head home. The Mini happily sat on cruise control on the motorway and returned a more wallet friendly 50mpg. The breadth of the JCW still astounds me. I took one overriding thought home from my first track day experience: I've caught the bug.
It was an early one - 5am to be exact. However, I was helped out of bed by the knowledge that the day was going to bring: my first proper track day experience.
Bedford Autodrome is fairly central to all of us: only a 1.5 hour drive from my house. Setting off so damn early meant I only had to make up a little bit of time after de-icing the car. Got to love February in England! Arriving at Bedford I was greeted by the friendly marshals there, with decibel meters and clipboards to find out exactly how badly your car is going to disturb the surrounding animals, countryside and tarmac. Given I had no idea what the previous owner had done to the exhaust - based on the rest of the car it could be anything - I was a bit concerned as to how loud the car was going to be.
Knowing the static limit is a relatively low 101dB, I had done a few rudimentary noise tests of my own with a phone and had come in at around 100.9dB. Suffice to say I was even more concerned that my day could be halted before I even make it onto the track. I explained to the marshal that the Polo cannot rev past 4k whilst stationary, and gingerly raising the revs I was relieved to hear that my car posed a modest 85.5dB. Making it the loudest out of all our cars (my one claim to fame). Following this it was very straightforward signing into the track day at the desk and getting the appropriate wrist band and car number sticker so that they can easily identify you on track. A quick helmet hire and safety briefing, and we were all back in the cars to convoy it over to the pits for the sighting laps.
Sighting laps were pleasantly calm and easy, helped by the fact that I had some previous experience with the track when I'd been to passenger here with Fraser late last year. However, a couple of "slower" laps to find braking and turn-in points definitely went a long way to increasing my confidence quickly. After only three or four, it was back into the pits to line up for the actual track session. Being an eager beaver I - rather amateurishly - went straight into the on-track queue only realising after the fact that I had forgotten to fit the toeing eye which is a requirement for quick retrievals.
So I rather sheepishly pulled off to the side to fetch the eye from the depths of my boot and got onto my hands and knees in order to fit it to the front of the car. Having spent a good few minutes on that only to realise that the boffins over at Volkswagen decided that the eye should be threaded in reverse, I was heading back into the queue. However, by the time I re-joined the queue, the track was full and had to wait anyway. School boy error.
The first few laps that I had at "full pace" were by no means fast, but once I got into a bit of a rhythm and found my line, I was overtaking my fair share of cars. After a relatively short first session, I was back into the pits to chat to the others about their first impressions, and it seemed that everyone was having an absolute blast.
Going out again, we managed to head out at the same time, so we managed to have a bit of a play on track. This was quite interesting as it meant we were able to see where we were all (bar Fraser) starting from in terms of skill, given we'd not had any previous track day experience. By the end of the day, we were all fairly evenly matched which definitely makes for a more fun time out on track.
Having forked out a small fortune on Michelin Pilot Super Sports the previous weekend and fitting EBC YellowStuff brake pads on the front a couple of months prior as an upgrade from factory pads, I was keen to try and utilise the full potential of the car. The brakes definitely got worked hard, to the point where I came into the pits after a particularly intense bout of laps and they were smoking (always do a cool down lap!). The tyres lived up to their reputation barely squealing unless they were under serious load whilst providing absolutely buckets of grip. A definite must-have if you're looking to change to tyres that you can use both on the road and track. I'm sure the other Probably Nitrous members will wholeheartedly agree.
On the topic of Super Sports, the day did almost go out with a bang as after about the second stint I suddenly remembered I hadn't changed the tyre pressures since I had them fitted. With sitting on what could only be described as a primed explosives, I hastily retrieved the pressure gauge and, to the great enjoyment of the others but sheer panic of my own, I discovered the heat had bumped the pressures into the "severely high" category: some 5-psi shy of the maximum. It's safe to say that a few more laps and the day could've become a whole lot more expensive. I let all four back down to the recommended operating temperatures from Michelin, and set out to turn some more laps.
The rest of the day went pretty much as I expected for a track day, with people coming off every so often and a surprising number of cars deciding that today wasn't their day, and setting themselves on fire. Much to their owner's dismay. Very soon it was all over as quickly as it started and around the 4pm mark we were all getting rather tired. It really is quite deceptive how mentally tiring driving around a track for a good 5 hours on and off is. We all parted ways and with a full fuel tank after my third splash and dash in less than 24 hours, it was time to hit the road and head for home. This was a good chance to give the car a well-deserved rest sat on cruise control.
Overall, the day was absolutely fantastic, even if I did have to get up at the crack of dawn to trek up there. I can confidently say that I'll be doing a fair few more of these in the future. This is only the beginning.
