Track Outing!

track1

A great day out today! Together with Andy Eccles, Adam Tier, Olly Bloxham and Paul Young I hired a small sprint circuit in the Midlands for a morning of ‘testing’ and photography. This is something I tend to do around this time of year, mainly because it’s nearly always damp or cold enough for a low-friction tyre-friendly oversteer surface – but not today! It was 10 degrees and bone dry – a couple of quick cornering tests presented far too much grip.

Fortunately Andy had a great idea during the planning phase, so we’d brought some irrigation for a nearby water supply.

sprinkler

The line up:

Neil – E39 M5
Olly – E39 M5
Adam – E39 540i (manual)
Paul – E87 120d
Andy – E91 325d

Andy and I are sideways veterans at this circuit, so we set about using the wetness to get all attendees sliding their cars around the bend.

Olly1Andy1Adam1paul1

Great success! We spent the vast majority of the morning just hooning around. I learnt that I can do over 45mph in reverse, and that the M5 doesn’t need much help from me to oversteer: look mum – no hands!

no hands!

laptimes

In an attempt to get some vaguely scientific information out of the day, we recorded some laps times. Andy has neatly converted these into a Top Gear style “Power Lap” board!

The diesels did really well against the massive V8s, but again the nature of a small sprint circuit will level the playing field somewhat. Interestingly I did a lap in Andy’s 325d that felt every bit as fast as my M5, but that was a 1:28.

Overall a fantastic day out – throughly enjoyable! Best bit was that there were absolutely no complaints from the M5. I did over 300 miles, visited the rev limiter often, spun, got the oil well over 100 degrees etc, and it took it all in its stride on just one tank of fuel. What a car!

hoses

5 comments so far

  1. Andy on December 23rd, 2008 23:16

    Neil, brilliant day as usual, and a great review! Cheers, Andy.

  2. Robin on December 24th, 2008 00:50

    Looks like fun! Not a single picture of a non-stationary non-oversteering car. Good brief write-up. :-)

  3. Adam on December 24th, 2008 09:04

    Excellent day, thanks to Andy and Neil for organising and showing us greenhorns how to do it. Sprinkler pics still make me laugh!

  4. Luke on December 24th, 2008 19:14

    I’m sad that I missed this. Is there any video footage to follow?

  5. Neil Mukerji on December 24th, 2008 23:05

    Sadly not Luke – there were only two cameras there, and both were good SLRs that don’t belittle themselves with a video feature!