Some more this time from Japan

And a couple more ...

Shutter bug bites again !

A different point of view

Remember the DC5 vs EVO post ?

Well it turns out the guy who owns the EVO found my video on YouTube and posted his video of how it all looked from his car.

Enjoy !



- Rod

A new track - a lot of mixed feelings

Last week I went out to the RAC Driving Centre near Perth International Airport to join a Tuning Day organised by MC Motorsport. It was a 2 hour "event" of driving on their private road course and the #4 skidpan.

It all started with an instructor giving us a rundown on the layout of the course and all the do's and don'ts. Initially we were told only to use the road course but since there were only 7 drivers (out of a maximum of 24) the instructor extended it to the spidpan. I was the only one who attended the session for the 1st time so I was asked to follow the rest of the group on a couple of laps around the course to get me accustomed to the track and the layout.

After about 10 mins it was my turn to go out on my own.

The 1st thing I noticed immediately was how hard the track was on the engine. It was mainly 2nd gear in high revs with an occasional 3rd down the back and main straights. The distance travelled on a single lap was approximately 1.53km and the length of the track reminded me a lot of Tsukuba 1000 although a few of the corners were almost a carbon copy of what I had experienced at Ebisu East. Nonetheless it was a fun little track but narrow, very abbrasive on tyres and tough on brakes as you get very little cool down in the types of events people do there. On top of that no decent run-offs if you end up going wide.

Nevertheless in my case (of 3 laps per go) my brakes worked very well, although if I was to do a single lap attack it probably wouldn't have been the same. Tyres didn't get much time to warm up and so there was much less grip than otherwise.

So will I ever consider competing in the sprint series ? ...

Well at the moment all I can say is I am undecided. Undecided because most of the sprint rounds actually don't include the road circuit and cover only various skidpan layouts available. Competing in these events would consume my brakes/tyres and rotors far quicker than on a proper circuit and I wouldn't really gain much other than satisfaction of being able to memorize the layout around a set of cones. On the other hand it wouldnt hurt to compete and test my memory and give my car (and myself) a different type of workout....

The jury is still out ...

Video coming soon ...
- Rod