Van Diemen Single Seater - Sprint time!
Discussion
MagicalTrevor said:
I love the fact that you CAN enter anything and there's a class to suit. Beats a track day IMO
I agree with you about the accessibility of sprinting, but not sure how that follows to track days. My housemate co-owns a completely shagged 1.3 Ka between four people, it's done nearly a dozen track days and they always have fun. There's no bearing on performance, and you can take anything roadworthy along, but I suppose that "roadworthy" point does make it still more limited than most sprints.If you're talking about the thrill, though, you're absolutely right. Nothing compares to true competition, I love pushing myself on sprints, it's a unique feeling. The only place to go from there is racing!
n3il123 said:
WRT to signature situation if you have a copy of the results from the meeting you should still be able to get signatures from one of the clerks that attended the meeting, speak to the organising club and they should be able to help.
Thanks, I'll be doing that but that wouldn't account for 8 signatures so in the mean time I'm collecting the extras that I need. Good advice though thanks.My post event thoughts:
As I've said above, you really can Sprint anything... although that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be competitive. I fully expected the 500 to be the slowest thing around the track and I was right. My first outing was timed at 107.8s. I was over the moon to discover I wasn't slowest as somebody did a 108s... until I found out he'd spun it!
Anyway, that was the time set and my aim was to improve on that time with a 100s time being the target for the day.
My second practice run was a 101.7s so I was headed in the right direction.
Timed runs started and I got a 105s... A 105!? How did that happen? I suspected that I was leaning on the ESP too much as I was finding it very prohibitive. Whereas normally you'd turn that off and be able to have more control with the throttle, the shopping trolley just wasn't going to play ball as it had no option to turn it off.
I figured that I'd have to try and keep the car away from the ESP as much as possible to stand a chance of getting it under 100s so the next round out I did just that. It felt very counter intuitive to not throw it into corners but I got the time back to 101.x.
So that confirmed that keeping off the ESP was the only was to get the thing round in a decent time I had my final timed run. By maintaining smooth lines to not attract the attention of the ESP I finished my final run. It felt like a good run, although like the runs on Top Gear (SIARPC), the fast runs LOOK slow so I wasn't sure how good it was.
I was very pleased to get a 99.98s. Beat the target by 2 hundredths of a second! I came away feeling really good. I knew I'd got the most out of the car, I doubt I could have got much more out of it and I'd already ignored my Wife's plea to take it easy with her car
In summary, you CAN Sprint anything. I think that with some stiffer springs, better tyres (Goodyear Eco tyres aren't really designed for Sprinting!) and yanking the fuse from for the ESP would have yielded better results.
As I've said above, you really can Sprint anything... although that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be competitive. I fully expected the 500 to be the slowest thing around the track and I was right. My first outing was timed at 107.8s. I was over the moon to discover I wasn't slowest as somebody did a 108s... until I found out he'd spun it!
Anyway, that was the time set and my aim was to improve on that time with a 100s time being the target for the day.
My second practice run was a 101.7s so I was headed in the right direction.
Timed runs started and I got a 105s... A 105!? How did that happen? I suspected that I was leaning on the ESP too much as I was finding it very prohibitive. Whereas normally you'd turn that off and be able to have more control with the throttle, the shopping trolley just wasn't going to play ball as it had no option to turn it off.
I figured that I'd have to try and keep the car away from the ESP as much as possible to stand a chance of getting it under 100s so the next round out I did just that. It felt very counter intuitive to not throw it into corners but I got the time back to 101.x.
So that confirmed that keeping off the ESP was the only was to get the thing round in a decent time I had my final timed run. By maintaining smooth lines to not attract the attention of the ESP I finished my final run. It felt like a good run, although like the runs on Top Gear (SIARPC), the fast runs LOOK slow so I wasn't sure how good it was.
I was very pleased to get a 99.98s. Beat the target by 2 hundredths of a second! I came away feeling really good. I knew I'd got the most out of the car, I doubt I could have got much more out of it and I'd already ignored my Wife's plea to take it easy with her car
In summary, you CAN Sprint anything. I think that with some stiffer springs, better tyres (Goodyear Eco tyres aren't really designed for Sprinting!) and yanking the fuse from for the ESP would have yielded better results.
MagicalTrevor said:
I fully expected the 500 to be the slowest thing around the track and I was right. My first outing was timed at 107.8s. I was over the moon to discover I wasn't slowest as somebody did a 108s... until I found out he'd spun it!
That's the spirit, compete, find out who is slower than you and then immediately go and ask them why they're so slow 
Looks like I made the front page 
Albeit not in the Fiat 500
http://www.pistonheads.com/news/trackdays/van-diem...
Albeit not in the Fiat 500 http://www.pistonheads.com/news/trackdays/van-diem...
For anyone interested, I've started a thread for the new car in the Motorsport section
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...
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