Fast Classics

Had the first shake-down day at Silverstone last Thursday, first time I've driven the car since Brands last year. Was a fun day, gave passenger rides to quite a few people, including Ben on here and the car ran well all day.

In the morning we started with Silverstones all round but they had a lot of life in them so we stuck on a set of worn Silverstones on the rear and worn-ish Toyos on the front. I have to say that the Toyos don't grip as well, which surprised me, but they do have a much much much better wear rate. Towards the end of the day the rears were getting very worn and you could literally feel the rear end grip decrease slightly lap after lap. This was interesting as the car was slightly on the understeery side for most of the day, but as the rears went off the balance went to more neutral, then to a tiny bit of oversteer but very manageable (which I prefer) then to a drift car. By the very end I managed to drift the last corner, my Grandad in the passenger seat didn't quite know what was going on when I did it but he just told me to go faster! Left rear tyre at the end of the day:

Yowsers! That's some heafty wear. How many laps do you think you managed, accounting for the fact of course that you can actually drive a car and we can't.

not surprised the rear tyres look like that after the way you were attacking those corners!
I really appreciated the necessity for bucket seats and harnesses that day....

Did putting the front strut brace back on at lunch make any noticeable difference to the understeer?

How many laps did I manage in total Al? Not sure really, we got about 30 mins of driving an hour so probably around 70, somewhere in that vague region. It was the National circuit, not the GP.

Yep Ben, putting the front strut-brace back on and adjusting the rear ARB did make a noticeable difference, before that it was un-naturally understeery but afterwards it was much more neutral and just about the way it normally behaves.

It's amazing the difference being properly strapped in makes, at the end of the day I took the B10 round for 5 laps and was literally falling out of my seat on every corner. I had to come in after 5 laps as I managed to make myself feel a little queasy.

he he wish i could use my trye till they do that i feel robbed that i havent used them fully and have to drive home

how come you took the strut brace of in the first place ?

and i know what you mean about harrness and also bucket seats i remember coming back from shakespear with brused knees and ribs from the seat not holding me in

One of the good things about the car being trailered home, the tyres can be shagged to death!

The strut brace was left off from the last round in 2009 which was at a wet Brands Hatch where we took it off to soften the front end up slightly, but forgot to put it back on for the first couple of sessions of the day at Silverstone.

Theres a quick vid of us passing the pitwall here, I've never really heard what it sounds like before. I'm the second car past.

http://picasaweb.google.com/esim66/1003 ... 4887892610

i might be able to help with laps....I was lapping an average of 1:05. That makes roughly 18 laps per session. I certainly wasn't any faster than you Alex so you may have even squeezed some more in...

Think I worked out that I did approx 90 laps in the day (5 sessions) although this does seem like an awful lot!

Also...my tyres were bummed too:

Season #3 of MR2 Racing starts in April. Full schedule:

Apr 18 Mallory Park
May 30 Snetterton
Jun 20 Castle Combe
Jul 17 Lydden Hill
Aug 22 Cadwell Park
Sep 19 Mallory Park
Oct 24 Brands Hatch

Not a fan of Mallory so doing it twice isn't ideal, and I've always had bad luck there. But Combe is brilliant, I've done 100s of laps round there from my days at the Under 17 Car Club although it is very much a power circuit. Not sure what to think of Lydden, in my mind I just see it as a RallyX track occasionally used for circuit racing but will have to try it before I make my mind up.

Same thing goes for last year, if anyone wants to come along to any of these let me know a little before hand and I can send you a ticket.

And the GT4 racer who I just managed to beat at Snett last year is now doing pretty much every round, so it should be very interesting.

Car wise, at the shake-down day at Silverstone in March it seemed pretty good. It needs a wee bit of welding done to it and ideally there's a few cosmetic things I'd like to do to it (paint wheels black, touch up orange paint, paint lower rear valance below bumper black) but its based half-way up the country so I may have to spend a day or two up there during easter to sort these things out. It'll also have some new stickers on it by the first race, same sponsor but slightly different company name.

Also, I want to see how much our current wheels weigh. I know they are lighter than the standard Teardrop ones but not sure how much by, and will look into finding some that are as light as possible as I read an article in a car magazine (can't remember which) where they tested a road car round a track with standard wheels, then with much lighter ones and it said it decreased the lap times by about 2.5seconds which seems an awful lot.

So if anyone has any suggestions for mega light wheels that'll fit an MR2 (or Mk1 MX5) that are mega light and either 6x14 or 5.5x14 then I'd be very interested to hear about them!

20th June is Father's day - sounds perfect!

The Mazda fit BBS were very light, somthing silly like 6 KG

As were the hollow spoked E30 BBS's.
The E30 had a lower offset than the MX5 so they may sit in arches better and widen the track, perhaps buy both and mix and match to see if the handling can be improved? With the MR2 I'd have thought you'd want a wider front track.

We have to have wheels with original offset, and the track must be the same width as original, both front and rear. But I will look into those MX5 BBS ones, I know a couple of people run them in the series.

Going up to spend a day with the car next week, hopefully tidy it up, stick the new stickers on, do a bit of paintwork and also paint the wheels black, unless anyone can think of a better colour?

Actually, stupid me asking that here, I'm not going to paint them luminous green, orange or pink.

Ok I am officially on the look out for a set of MX5 BBS wheels, any condition accepted just as long as they're round. Any ideas where the best place to look is?

Ebay and the MX-5 specialist breakers amd MX-5 forums.

This has gone, but you get the idea

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/bbs-wheels-Mazda- ... 0531945227

There was a set of BBS wheels on eBay I was planning on bidding on, but with a couple of days left they just dissapeared completely.

The bottom end shells are being replaced this week to try and freshen it up a bit, also there's an oil leak which is being sorted. I'm going up Saturday to do a few cosmetic bits'n'bobs to try and get it looking tip-top for Mallory the day after.