Caterham R300 at Donington and Anglesey Circuits

[Croc]

Following on from the thread here:

http://usa7s.com/vb/showthread.php?t=9660

 

I put together some video of the circuits. One thing to keep in mind - renting Caterhams is not cheap. You break it you pay to fix it (except when it breaks due to something not your fault - e.g. gear lever). Exceeding rev limits (6800rpm) is monitored closely and is punished with a fine for each serious transgression (100-500rpm over is a slap on the wrist and told don't do it again). This is fair when you consider that race cars have a hard life and the maintenance is steep and therefore costly. I have found Bookatrack to be very reasonable about things. They have a team that prepares the car, keeps it field up and helps sort things out when they go wrong. I think they are very good outfit to rent with should anyone want to try out one of the famous UK or European circuit.

 

With this in mind my mode for the day is to get to within 95% of the lap record for that circuit in a Caterham R300. In all cases I succeed by the end of the day and I have not risked the car or my wallet in the process.

 

The Bookatrack Caterham is a R300 spec car. 180hp Duratec, fully caged, stopped race car. CR500 on 13 inch wheels. Caterham 6 speed gearbox. Stack instrumentation but no speedo. They run both S3 and SV chassis. If you do not like the regular carbon Tillet seats or the larger B2 Tillets like I do not (major back pain results) then they have these specially made up foam seat pads to construct a seat that is very comfortable for a days run - this is what I use.

 

Camera is a pre-production Sony. Orginally recorded in 1080/60fps, 120 degrees field of view. Sound is mostly rotten as I was testing the internal mics for the maker. Data is recorded via Racechrono Pro with separate bluetooth GPS logger. I use Manfrotto clamps for the most part. Where the video looks like it is moving around and a camera mount may be loose then what you are seeing is actually the Sony SteadyShot feature which tries to compensate for vibration to improve image quality - I think it failed and will try it switch off next time. The large box on my left wrist is the camera control. The silver box on the scuttle is the GPS receiver for the data logger. Apart from the sound the Sony cameras were excellent - I could use the remote to turn on/off the camera mounted on the wishbone while I was belted up sitting in the car. You can also use it to check aim. The terrain change on these circuits is best shown by the altitude in feet change.

 

Donington National Circuit

 

 

 

 

Anglesey GP Circuit

 

 

 

And an experiment at Anglesey to run a camera low down on the front wishbone/A arm. Apart from sound I thought this was a good position

 

 

Anyone want to join me at Spa-Francorchamps in November?

Edited June 8, 2014 by Croc

[xcarguy]

Well . . . . more drool . . . there goes another laptop. :svengo: Great vids, Mike. Especially Anglesey; what an awesome track! :cheers:

[xcarguy]

Mike, what happened at about 14:40 on the Anglesey video? Looks like no damage or car contact as both are gone on the next lap.

[Croc]

I think it was just the makings of a track orgy. The red car was a very early Caterham which had a brand new driver on track for the first time. The silver car was a Ginetta (I think) driven by a fairly experienced track driver. I think one or both overcooked it on that corner - it is quite fast and if you lift you have a good chance of rotating. There is a possibility that the red Caterham was coming out of the pits as that is pit exit but I was not stopping to find out what happened. There definitely was no contact by any car that day.

[Blokko]

Great videos, Mike. The overlay of the telemetry from the gps logger works really well!