Brake light 'failure' warning George, although all 3 brake lights have always worked just fine! it is annoying, but you get used to it
Car looked and sounded great on the day! credit to you for building something like that!
Does your pit team usually all wear checkered shirts ?
Thanks Adam.
We laughed so much at the guys in the red check shirts. pure coincidence that they all turned up in matching gear
Final few pics from the day:
I had a few more decent sessions, taking a few more people out.
A friend of Jamies took this great shot as we were heading out to the track:
For the very last session of the day I took Robins housemate Alan out. As I got to the pitlane they said there were only 10 mins running left and to go and enjoy it.
I tried to fire up the camera, but the battery was dead - oh well, it's only the last few laps.
As I left the pitlane and accelerated up Avon Rise, I looked in my mirrors to see Bill in the Badgerwagon flying up behind me having already done an outlap.
This was a bit daunting having just come out on colder tyres, but I pressed on, and the following 3-4 laps were probably some of my most enjoyable of the year!
Having a bright yellow race car with Mr. B at the wheel certainly gives you cause to up your game a little!
After 3-4 thoroughly enjoyable laps nose to tail, I came up Avon Rise, with around 145mph on the clock, and hit the brake pedal, to find the car tried to turn itself right.
Hmmmmmmmm -
strange?
I had to abort braking and try again a few yards later, totally messing up my line into Quarry, so I stuck the indicator on and let Bill through, then attempted to give chase.
I assumed I'd touched on a cement patch covering an oil spill or similar, but when braking hard and late into the esses, the car again turned right. possible fault? or just me trail braking a little to hard into the bend? Not sure, but by this point I was wary.
At Tower I hit the brakes once more, and again it turned itself right - Nope. that's definitely a problem - Badger Chasing mode disengaged
I coasted around one more lap to allow things to cool without touching the brakes, and headed back in to call it a day and see what had happened to my brakes.
A quick inspection, and it soon became apparent!
hmmmmmmmmmm, they're a little lower than they were at lunch time!
best whip the pads out for a quick check:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh! That'll explain it then! having used the car entirely on clockwise circuits, on slicks all year, the front left has always run slightly hotter, which is to be expected. The additional heat had lead to the front left pads wearing out before the front rights, so when braking, the car was trying to slow the right hand wheel FAR more than the left, and causing the car to turn under braking!
I swapped the wheels back to the road tyres, and swapped out the dead front pads for my RS29 spares for the drive home.
We loaded up the cars, and we were ready to head off!
Car was filthy, but I was very pleased with how it had performed all day
One more splash of fuel to get us home, in the same place it all started about 10 hours earlier:
Observations once home:
This was our first time on the Dunlop slicks, having used Yoko slicks for the past year.
I like the Dunlops. They seemed to warm up pretty fast, and the grip seemed comparable to the Yokos.
They do appear to have worn more than the yokos over the course of a single day though, and also were picking up LOTS of rubber on track at Combe, look at these!
I rotated tyres around mid way through the day to preserve them, but I think there will only be 1-2 days left in these in total. I got 4 trackdays from the last set of Yokos. So 3 from the Dunlops would be OK i think.
There is lots of pick up on the inside edges:
but looking for a wear dimple, there still seems to be a good amount of tyre left also:
Last job post ADI was to clean all the wheels:
Victoria is over the moon about my tyre storage solutions in the house