BLiNK Motorsport Posted August 30, 2012 Share Posted August 30, 2012 Congratulations Adam Hope you are enjoying it a bit more than you did your first race where you felt a trackday was better value? Our season finishes at Croft next weekend so if we can spare some time we might come to Mallory to spectate and cheer you on. (P.S. Excellent write up BTW) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cast iron Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 are you at Croft on the 8th 9th Fraser? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onliest Smeg David Posted August 31, 2012 Share Posted August 31, 2012 Brill, a great read Adam. And - very well done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichUK Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 Snetterton was a great weekend, we had a car in the 24hr 2CV race and them two of our guys did both Max5 races as well, they were absolutely knackered by Monday evening! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Navin Posted September 4, 2012 Share Posted September 4, 2012 Small world. we had a car in the 24 2cv race as well will be at croft this weekend with a mk3 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamR Posted April 5, 2013 Author Share Posted April 5, 2013 Bit of a bump...! First race this season is Donington tomorrow, and you can see it (if you have Sky) on Motors TV. We're on at 1:30pm and 4:20pm. I'll do a little report / update afterwards Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onliest Smeg David Posted April 5, 2013 Share Posted April 5, 2013 All the best Adam, hope you do well. I look forward to some entertaining prose! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamR Posted April 7, 2013 Author Share Posted April 7, 2013 Cheers David! You better get the kettle on, this one is pretty long and a bit geeky... Summary for Donington 6th April: Qualified on pole, screwed up the start, made too many mistakes and finished 4th in race 1. Race 2 - again screwed up the start, went off the track quite a lot, finished 7th - but had an awesome time! Well it's been a while, but following a cracking day at Donington yesterday, here's another update! It's a little short on photos as I didn't have a lot of spare time on the day (edit: and just checked my phone, the memory card was being an idiot so it hasn't stored any at all, b*******!), but I'll try and add some pretty pictures in where I can... So, first race of the season. Had done quite a few track days over winter, but only one in the race car just to check it was all ok. It had been reportedly been puffing out a bit of blue smoke at the last race of last season (Mallory, which for some reason there appears to be no report of!? I'll have to sort one out...) but some slightly heavier weight oil seems to have sorted that. Was really looking forward to this one, and it seemed everyone else was too, as we had a full grid (limited to 30 cars so some people were unfortunately turned away), a good split of Mk1s and Mk3s (15 of each I think) and it was going to be much busier / tighter than last year! I was reasonably confident the 'work' (track days, reading / theory, datalogging, car tweaking) I'd done over winter had improved my pace, but there was only one way to find out... I set off down on Friday evening - it's definitely nicer to stay at the track overnight, say hello to everyone, then you have a bit of contingency time in case anything goes wrong... Like writing your tow van off somewhere near Oxford and having to get collected late Friday night - luckily that wasn't me, but one of the new guys Graeme. He got here in the end and though thanks to Jon, but it mean Jon had done Bournemouth - Donington - Oxford - Donington in one go, so he looked pretty shattered when he came to say hello at about 11! Spent a bit of time in Rob's sauna (full on beast-spec awning zipped to the size of his motorhome complete with bottom 'skirt' and gas heater!), then headed to bed about half 11. Unfortunately as you may know, Donington is on a flight path for one of the busiest airports in the country, so I didn't manage to get much sleep until about 2am when the planes stopped. I was really overjoyed (slight sarcasm) when the kicked off again about 5. At about half 6 I gave up trying to get any more sleep, and was hearing some familiar voices outside so decided it was time to get up. Sign on was 8:30 til 8:45, a compulsory 'not raced at Donington before' briefing at 8:30, then scrutineering 8:45-9:45. Usually we head to sign on a little early to give ourselves plenty of time for any issues later in the day, but when we turned up about 8:15 there was a massive queue. Not ideal, but hoped I could get to the front before the new driver briefing... Half 8 came and I was about 5th in the queue, b******* - off to the new driver briefing and lose my place. Never mind, that queue will die down, won't it? Not so! It was even bigger now and qualifying was at 10 - meaning we'd get called around 9:40. This was going to be tight - especially with family / relatives arriving around half 9, and my car failing scrutineering due to no brake lights, argh! I still needed to get changed, check tyre pressures and go to the loo as well... I got back to our paddock area and started poking around in the back of the car, both bulbs were fine (I'd changed one over winter as it blew at Mallory) but Tom pointed out the switch at the pedal wasn't connected - THANK YOU! I decided tyre pressures were more important than the loo, and strapped myself in to get to the holding area just in time. Phew. With 30 cars lined up I anticipated a busy session so tried to get myself somewhere that might allow a bit of space... The session went pretty well, the car felt good and I didn't get caught in much traffic at all, which allowed me to get stuck in and get some clean laps put together. Rob, the fastest guy last year, said he'd been doing high 1:28s at a session earlier in the year, and I had done a mid 1:30 in my road car with a passenger at a recent track day, so I had a feeling I might be able to get somewhere near him. After quali, I got mobbed by the aforementioned family / relatives and completely forgot about picking up a timing sheet. However, when someone brought one over and it showed I'd managed a 1:29.0 and was 0.7s quicker than the 2nd placed car in my class I was pretty shocked! I would end up starting with 3 Mk3s between myself and the nearest Mk1 - so immediately my plan for the race was to use them as a 'buffer' and try to keep ahead... One of the things I'd been doing over winter was some datalogging. I have found it very very useful in identifying areas to gain time very quickly and in an easy to understand graphical format. I'm a big believer in developing the driver instead of the car, and it seems the ideal tool to do it. Here's an overview of the qualifying session, with my quickest lap highlighted in red. It looks a mess if you don't know how to read the data, but here's some of the stuff I look at... - Braking / acceleration G, cornering G and speed trace at the bottom. If any of the 'spikes' under braking or cornering are obviously smaller in one corner, then you know immediately you are not using all the available grip at this point! - On the lap times chart, F means fastest sector, FC means fastest consecutive sector (top middle of the pic). On Lap 7 the first sector was actually 0.17 faster than the first sector from my fastest complete lap (lap 10), for example. So, my overall theoretical quickest lap (if I'd have strung together all my fastest sectors into one lap) would have been 1:28.63 - about 0.4 faster than my actual fastest lap. This is useful to see how consistent your driving is - if your theoretical is miles quicker than your actual best, that tends to indicate things are a bit erratic! - You can also see that laps 4 onwards (with the exception of lap 8 where I got held up) are all pretty consistent and gradually tending to get quicker. You must complete 3 laps without firing it off or you aren't allowed to race, so I always take the first couple pretty steady, build up pace, get some heat into the tyres and brakes, learn the track conditions, try to find myself some space in the traffic, and then press on. - The coloured track map shows were I can go faster and where I did ok. You set up a 'simulation' car (using power, weight, drag coefficient, maximum cornering (1.25) and braking g (0.9), and a few more) and the software compares your performance to it. Red means I'm slow and blue means I'm not so bad! It doesn't take into account gradients and cambers (those who have done Donington will know how important these are!) but the main areas it looked like I could gain time were the braking zone into the first corner (Redgate) and the uphill entry to the right hander at the back of the track, Coppice. This is where I could hopefully gain some time for the race... The section between marker 3 and 4 is all uphill, hence the simulation software thinking I was losing time. (All the pics can be clicked for enlarged versions) Race 1 was at half 1 and we were on live TV! In order to save time we were informed we'd be doing a rolling start - we'd not done these before so it was going to be a steep learning curve! After a spot of lunch, our time came around and we all headed to the assembly area so get ready. Being so far up the grid was a little weird but I kept in my mind that if I could get a decent start, all would be ok... Unfortunately I made a right mess of it, haha. The rolling speed was about right for 2nd gear, so as soon as the lights went out I buried the throttle. A couple of seconds later I hit the limiter (for rather a long time, haha), forgot to change up and was completely swamped - I think I must have lost 4 or 5 places by the first corner. The race was really good fun though - I spent a lot of timing dicing with the top 3 guys, but couldn't find any sort of rhythm and kept making stupid mistakes. This dropped me back, meaning I had to catch them again - which I was able to do since they were busy fighting their own battles - but as soon as I got a sniff of a pass on Chris I cocked up again. I finished the race 4th, happy that it was a fun race but disappointed I'd been so erratic. Last season I had been very consistent in the races (and quali), and it's always the way I drive at track days too, but it seemed the extra pace that had seemingly come from somewhere had taken that away! The only consolation was that I'd taken fastest lap and this was 0.9s quicker than my qualifying time - 1:28.1. Of course consistency and position wins races but I was fairly chuffed I had gained so much time. The MX-5 Mk1 lap record for Donington is 1:26.89 so there was still a way to go though! Unfortunately my camera had a paddy and I forgot to turn the datalogger on for Race 1, but everything was working for Race 2... Starting 4th in Mk1s in a bunch of 6 well-matched cars, this one was going to be good! And it was - apart from me being an idiot and firing it off all over the place, haha. Once again I had the fastest lap, but finished 7th due to two trips across the grass and a couple through the chicane just before the start-finish straight - ouch. I have a video exporting which I'll stick up later, but for now it's back to the data (and I'm a poet but I didn't know it). 'Driving the circle' is a phrase used to try and explain how the g-force trace should look if you are using all of the available grip of the tyres. You get hard on the brakes, then gradually reduce braking force as you turn in, seamlessly blending into full cornering force at no braking or throttle, then transition back into full throttle. If your car can brake at 0.9g and corner at 1.25g, this means you can actually 'cheat' some extra grip out of the tyres and corner at 1g while still braking at 0.4g, say. The best drivers ride the rim of the 'traction circle' all day long and make it look easy, but it's not! Here's a video from the start of the year where I started logging and using the circle to show me where I could use the available grip better (don't need to watch it, just look at the shape of the blob): And then at Cadwell a month later... The first video is more of a 'pitched roof' shape and the second one is much more rounded - this is what we're aiming for! Checking the g plots from the quickest lap in Race 2 it seems I'm getting there but I can still fill out the circle better. Since there are only a few left-handers at Donington and none of them are 'true' braking zones, the trace on the left could never reach as far to the side as on the right: I'm relatively happy with the progression there from the Blyton video above. Looking at the overall data from Race 2 shows the following... - I'd got rid of / reduced the red zones at the two braking points I wanted to (compare the pic below to the one above). - Consistency was bad! Compare theoretical to actual lap times - in fact my quickest overall lap this time only had 1/5 quickest sectors, compared with 3/5 for the quali lap. I think this may have been down to traffic / other cars, you can see at the first corner my speed plateaus for quite some time, and then again at the 3rd 'spike' in the lap. The second speed spike which also plateaus is Craner Curves, so no matter if you're flat on the throttle the car speed doesn't really increase as there is so much tyre scrub. - If I had strung 5 good sectors together I'd be down at 1:27.25, which I was pretty chuffed about! The datalogging software is also really good for finding out why you were fast or slow at a particular part of the track. My 'goal' had been to brake later in general after I'd seen the simulation comparison following qualifying - I managed this and it did gain me over half a second, but the data reveals that I probably overdid it a few times... The comparison below is my fastest lap in quali (blue) vs fastest lap in race 2 (red): - I hit the brakes much later (up to 10m!) at nearly all the corners, but this hurt my apex speed everywhere apart from the chicane. I had gained time, but it was from carrying my end-of-straight speed for a little longer rather than carrying it through the bends. - Example: Where the vertical line is across the speed trace, I was 5mph slower through the first corner apex on my race lap compared with qualifying lap, because I'd braked too late and gone in too deep! This sort of thing was the same throughout the lap, I'd gone from braking too early to braking too late. The video I'll put up later shows the consequences of this You can also study closer into this first corner example, and that looks like this... The pic below compares the first sector only of my race 2 fastest lap with a different lap that was slower overall, but was 0.4s faster through the sector... I braked harder on the 'red' lap (0.86g as opposed to 0.82g), but the 'blue' lap had a higher peak lateral g (1.13 - 1.09). When you look at the lines it becomes obvious why! The blue blob on the track map shows I took a tighter line through the apex, so even though I braked later for the 'red' lap (the traces cross over - the blue sector's line turns orange in the braking zone, indicating I was a bit early on the brakes) and carried more speed into the turn, I couldn't keep the car on line, couldn't get on the power as early and ended up being slower all the way down the next bit of track, losing time overall! So, it really is a delicate balance - and there is still a lot of work to do - however I have learnt a few things from yesterday... - My pace has improved quite a lot, but I need to reign it in a little now to keep things consistent. - I need to improve my starts and maybe be a bit more ruthless! - Having 30 cars on track all at once makes for some very good fun. - I can't wait for Croft in 3 weeks! If I find some pics floating around the net I'll pop them in here just to try and make it a bit more interesting... Cheers, Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamR Posted April 8, 2013 Author Share Posted April 8, 2013 Here's my vid from Race 2.Started 4th in a bunch of 6 similarly-paced cars, again cocked up the start, then messed up in the race quite a lot and finished 7th.I was chuffed with my pace (qualified on pole, and fastest lap in both races) but I was too inconsistent and made too many mistakes in the races, which was pretty diasppointing.Video 'highlights' are as follows:0:30 - Messing up the start by being too far back from the car ahead when the lights went out, then being too cautious throughout the first half of the lap.1:05 - 3 abreast through Craner2:33 - Tom closing the gap fairly forcefully 3:25 - Good run on James, passing into the chicane with Rodders up my inside - left him room but didn't come through3:58 - Let Rodders through the inside and expected him to disappear into the distance...4:17 - But nearly ran into the back of him at Old Hairpin! (He was in a borrowed car)5:49 - Good speed through Old Hairpin, carrying the speed to pass Tom up the inside at the next right hander8:10 - Good run on Josh out of the chicane, easy pass8:55 - Getting cosy with Chris9.38 - Good exit from chicane again...9.56 - But screwed up again and lost both the places, dammit!10:20 - Pass Josh up the inside again11:42 - Oversteer down Craner, then Sam getting twitchy through Old Hairpin12:27 - Good run on Sam... But overcooked it in quite a big way 14:50 - One handed drift through Old Hairpin, allowing Tom to pass me15:30 - Slipstreamed him to make the pass... but screwed up again16:23 - Too hot into Old Hairpin, gave it up and went grass-tracking17:15 - Alan outbraked himself into the last corner, sat in the run off before the chicaneAFter the race I realised one of my front pads was down to the metal - that may have had something to do with the lack of retardation towards the end of the race! (Racing Driver Excuse #457) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Onliest Smeg David Posted April 8, 2013 Share Posted April 8, 2013 Yep' several brew ups worth! I quite enjoy a bit of geekiness! Even geekier - I wasn't lost! Also enjoyed the race vid as haven't got sky so couldn't watch it live. I look forward to the next episode. This is much better than majority motoring fly on the wall so called programs on the tele. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamR Posted April 8, 2013 Author Share Posted April 8, 2013 Ah good stuff - glad it was enjoyable (and you got a few brews out of it) Apparently the TV only showed the front runners in the other class, which is disappointing as our race fees were increased by £40 per person for the TV coverage... You'd think they would cover the whole race, eh. Might have to have a bit of a moan about that one. I will keep updating for the rest of the season - got Croft in 3 weeks which should be close and exciting again... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AdamR Posted April 8, 2013 Author Share Posted April 8, 2013 And a couple of post-race pics, possibly related...It seems the front tyre / something flexed enough for the tyre to pull the return lip on the edge of the wing straight when I went over those kerbs!And this may have had something to do with it... They had half their meat on at the start of the day! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgey Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Brilliant! - totally loved the Donnington video :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BLiNK Motorsport Posted April 9, 2013 Share Posted April 9, 2013 Watched the Race on TV Adam - it was recorded as we were at Rockingham. Two fastest laps for Adam - good driving and very enjoyable to watch - well done everybody thats invovled in MaX5. Hope to get to Croft if I have time to watch you guys so might be scrounging some tickets! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteveD Posted April 10, 2013 Share Posted April 10, 2013 Watched the Race on TV Adam - it was recorded as we were at Rockingham. Two fastest laps for Adam - good driving and very enjoyable to watch - well done everybody thats invovled in MaX5. Hope to get to Croft if I have time to watch you guys so might be scrounging some tickets! well there is a surprise you scrounging Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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