1st Track Day - Keevil

Packed the car up the night before with Helmet, Go-pro, fuel, fluids, tools and an assortment of spares;  Paul texted to confirm the meet up time as 0730 at the Podimore services on the A303 - all set.

Tricia got up and made me a packed lunch, drinks and reminded me to take sunscreen and to use it! Left home at 0715, met up with Paul at Podimore and took the A303 to Mere, the back roads through the Deverills then on to the A350 to Keevil, stopping for fuel at the BP Station in Yarnbrook about 5 miles from the airfield.



ST220 V6 - The Beast

Malcolm and Dale had already arrived and had their car off the trailer and a gazebo set up in the "pit lane".  Chris was also there and was doing the last setup on his car







Paul and I parked up between them, unloaded the kit from the cars and then fitted the semi-slicks to Paul's car and did pre-day torque, fluid and general visual checks to both cars then off for the noise test - the testers must have confused mine as a bike engine car because they tested me at 6,000 rpm 99.7db against a limit of 100db hopefully this means I'm fine at 4,500 rpm.

0930 was the Driver's brief followed by a couple of sighting laps behind a van then in and wait for Session 2 and my first lesson to begin.

Duratec - 220bhp after a visit to NMS

The lesson went well and it was now open track so I went out as a passenger with Paul in his 944S Turbo - very quick and useful to see the line he took.  We then went out in the Westfield, after a couple of warm up laps my limited talent reached it's limit and after a 120 deg spin I had to do the mandatory return of shame to the pit lane. Time for another lesson!  The lesson went well with lots of pointers as to how I could improve and the then went out for another 6 or so laps on my own to practise.



After lunch I completed another 6-8 lap sessions - cue the video..................

http://s1079.photobucket.com/user/Jonjh1964/media/Keevil10Jun13-email_zps6836e907.mp4.html

Then another lesson - need to be more aggressive accelerating out of corners - followed by a couple more sessions before the finish at 1645.  As we were preparing for the return journey Chris returned to the pits with one of the stewards having suffered an upright failure on his final lap.  A quick bit of improvisation to strap the lower wishbone to the upper allowed us to push his car onto his trailer - 1st time he'd used it for a track day.

 About 50 laps and 75 miles in all  and I met up with Malcolm and Dale at the George Inn, Longbridge Deverill for a pint on the way home.