Once again the winter sun was shining for us at our Lakeside practice day. Shane and Greg turned up for a run in their CRX and VtiR Prelude respectively. Nathan Thorne decided to leave his sports car in the garage, and bring his sports bike instead a CB1000 (Honda of course). Campbell, Paul and myself were spectating. There were an interesting collection of sports sedans, Hqs and Geminis running also. In the bike department, various sizes or racing bikes and a very expensive Ducati.
The sports sedans were able to negotiate the slower traffic (Shane and Greg) without any difficulty, the fast cars were doing 1:03 laps and our two were dialed in at about 1:13 to 1:16. Nathan learnt that his swing arm bush isn't quite tight enough to be riding through the kink at 140kph without issuing a warning, by shaking the tail. Greg didn't discover any nasty habits (his or the car), and seemed to settle into a groove by the third session. Shane's brakes don't take kindly to a string of laps, and he complained about brake fade (I reckon he uses them too much!). This sort of treatment will solve your disc glazing problems, and the blueness will go away quickly. One thing to remember is to drive around the pits a bit after you come in, to let the brakes cool off a bit, and don't use the handbrake when you park, or you run the risk of warping the discs or drums.
Shane complained about the tyres moving around on the circuit more than the last time he was there, three things would have caused this, it hasn't rained for a month, so the circuit has a lot of rubber on it, the track temperature was quite high which increases the tyre temperatures, and a BMW split an oil filter coming onto the straight during the BMW Club / John Fraser driving school held in the morning.
I enjoyed myself wandering around taking a whole roll of film, there is access to the tower, and you get a great view of the action from up there. I'll have the photos with me at the next meeting. And some of them will go on "Honda-Oz".
I would like to go up there one wet day, as it's the perfect opportunity to learn what you car does in slippery conditions without hitting anything. At the sort of speeds we do in the wet, the fences are a long way off. If you can learn to drive around smoothly in the wet, your dry times will improve, because your smoothness and choice of cornering lines will improve.
