Rockingham Trackday

I went to Rockingham yesterday with CP and MC and there 1.4 16v Nova on TB's. It's the red one with the old Vauxhall Touring Car red, white and grey chequered graphics on for those of you that might have seen it in the past.

I wasn't racing myself, I just went to lend a hand and take in the day. It was my first time at a track day so I was enjoying the variety of cars that turned up.

It was a long day, but thoroughly enjoyable. The Nova had a couple of teething problems, but once it was running it was flying round the circuit. There must have been about 50 cars and the Nova was up there with the quickest, even managing to keep with the Ferarri 355 challenge car that was in the garage next to us.

The quickest cars were the 'Caterfields' and an Ice Blue S2 Elise that was very quick! There were a couple of GT3 RS' that were pretty quick, but I suppose when you're behind the wheel of a ?60k car you're not going to be pushing it as hard as you could, especially with a concrete wall only inches away from your O/S wing mirror, lol.

Unfortunately the fuel pump gave up in the afternoon so they had to cut the day short. The two guys who own the Nova want to do Rockingham before the year is out and I'm very tempted to join them as the circuit looked suited for the Nova.

I took some pics of the day, but I made a rookie mistake of not checking which setting the camera was on, so the pics have come out really badly :(

If anyone want's to do a trackday I can't rate Rockingham high enough. The organisation, venue and driving attitude of everyone was excellent!

Pics:

Got there nice and early for around 8am:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1354/...b82d492b5f.jpg

All suited and ready to go:

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Leaving the pits ready to join the track:

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It was the loudest car of the day. You have to hear this car on full chat. The noise was echoing around the grandstands, it was awesome :thumb:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1277/...c2febbb731.jpg

One of many GT3's:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1226/...d4d6ed1230.jpg

One for Stu ;):

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1248/...c066d08778.jpg

As you'd expcect the "caterfields" were some of the quickest cars of the day:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1184/...2fac95cc5f.jpg

I can't think of any other venue where you would have a Nova and a Ferarri next to each other:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1157/...3609094f47.jpg

Whilst the Nova might have been the loudest car, this was one of the nicest sounding:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1262/...cb59029826.jpg

The 355 spent most of the day on the track, the only time I saw it being worked on was when it ran low on fuel and they changed from slicks to wets. The rest of the time it was being driven :clap:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1127/...d4fe3bc548.jpg

The owner of this had driven down from Scotland. Wouldn't it be nice to have the money to have a GT3 as a weekend car. Also, his mrs was fit! lol.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1431/...5561e45fab.jpg

It was a shame the Nova had a couple of teething problems. This was when the fuel pump gave way :(

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The new Tarox brakes did there job though :thumb:

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This was one of the fastest cars on the day. Unfortunately I never found out what he was running. I suspect a supercharged Honda engine as you couldn't hear any TB noise nor a Turbo, I'm probably totally wrong though, lol:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1261/...d9e7453f85.jpg

This made a nice noise too, sounded like a jet engine, lol:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1043/...d22e8c2fe2.jpg

As the rain came down these boys had some fun doing some nice drifting round one of the hairpins:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1239/...5daf245876.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1417/...25a2dd9310.jpg

As I said, I'm really sorry with the pixilated quality of the pics. I'll make sure I check the camera settings next time and take the laptop with me so I can preview the pics on a decent sized screen.

There are some more pics here but the above give the impression to the day.

Sounds like it was a tops day:thumb:
CP's Nova looks so nice :D As well as going like the clappers!!

Sounds and looks like a top day out!

Cant believe the size of the brakes on the E46 M3 tho!

Looks great Jim

A similar kinda turn out to oulton park, where i went on tuesday

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1155/...d749980fdd.jpg

This was at Oulton, Lots of Carbon. HUGE slicks, Sequential box ! Chap also had a CLK DTM, v8 Vantage !

ooo i might have to try a rockingham track day. rude not to with it bein 20 mins away :p

Looks cool, i think i need to attend a track day at some point to see what its all about !

Car's still crook - not sure whats happened yet - as far as we can see its not injecting fuel :confused: . Need to download the engine data to see whats packed up. I thought I had dropped a valve mainly cos I'm always expecting it to die that way but a compression test showed it wasn't that. At least its not terminal internals.

The big thing about the day for me was the braking. After fannying about forever with not very good brakes for one reason or another I finally decided to shell out some silly money for some proper brakes. I've always known brakes are key performance parts but to have brakes that allowed us to stop to competition standard was an eye opener. I was scaring myself to death to start off with thinking that I was heading for the tyres for sure each time I left my braking to the last minute but all I found was that I could leave it even later. The new slicks were great as well but the ATB diff was a pain in the hairpins