I treated my mate to a track day experience as he has helped me a great deal when i bought my house, he re-wired the whole place, and also for generally being a top bloke. Bought a Lambo and Aston experience for the pair of us, with high speed saloon ride also. We went to the Prodrive test track in Warwickshire.
You'll be glad to know the high speed saloon ride was in, yes our old favourite VXR8. And when i say high speed... well every corner me and the lad spent looking out the side windows. Serious high speed drifting, shredding the rear tyres. They had their own 'stig' type doing the driving on this... also another dude, we'll call him t**t with a hat. Lanky sod just strolled round all day with his aviators on and a tea cosie on his head, drove like an absolute bell end, but was good at it. You really wanted to see him cock up tho. 'Stig' did get it wrong driving to hot a couple of times in this and another car, maybe he was doing it cos we were un-phased by his driving or he just had enough that day.
My mate paid for us to have a 2 lap passenger ride out in the Supercharged Aeiral Atom. God alive, the acceleration of it, really notice it upto 50mph then it becomes the norm oddly, just feel the wind resistance against your helmet. Even the way it corners doesnt suprise you, its the way it shrugges of speed on the brakes, really pulling some serious 'g' on them, really shockingly hot on the brakes.
We had our runs out in an Aston Martin DB9 sport and the Lambo Murcielago. All the cars in use had personal instructors. Dude that ran us with the DB was a seriously calm bloke. Semi understandable, as he was just asking to gently corner with it, seriously light on the rear end. Much like an old Mk3 Supra. So any given moment to much throttle was seeing it being very twitchy even on the straight. Makes the Monaro feel like a much more planted car and slightly more capable. Thing that did annoy and did cause me to miss gear was the auto-tip tronic box. You were using the pads but even if you let it go past 6,000rpm it changed up itself. And on change down both me and car changed down at the same time from 3rd so it came into 1st, so quick back up to 2nd and guess what the car thought that too and we're in 3rd again. I wanted to leave the ups a little long and on the down lot closer and harder with the braking but just wouldnt let me. Still a lovely car and is well up on the wish list, but the Lambo.... God alive what a car, LCD display had given up on the gear selector so was hard to guage where you were for some corners with a high revving tall gear'd car you really had to think, This instructor, was like having Clarkson sat next to you, POWER, UP UP UP UP UP, BRAKES DOWN DOWN DOWN... he just wanted you to really use it, and on the ending of the first lap you saw why, the grip on the thing. Your brain cannot compute the sheer speed you can carry round the corners for what is a large hunk of a car. You were exiting corners and your head was playing catch up just thinking 'hang on how did that happen'. Excellent car seriously loved it. Much Wantage.
Overall great day, organisation was poor tho, so anyone thats looking to do this arrive an hour early as we did otherwise you wont be seeing daylight ours when getting home. Just a couple of pics to bore you with. Cheers all.
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...a/C65E3635.jpg
http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b2...a/C65E3417.jpg
