Our little visit to Spa this week.
 

I managed to get away from home on Sunday and pop over to Spa on Sunday. left home 10am, 12.20 Eurotunnel, Raddisson Blu Palace, Spa by about 5pm.

AlexGTT, Northern Jim and his Ford RS crowd chugged up about an hour later from the Ring and drinking and eating ensued. Evo guy had blown a turbo on his first lap at the Ring so he was carless.

Next morning I had a headache and it had been raining all night so all the dreams of a clear bright warm morning had disappeared :( .

Numbers were very low at the track, no queues whatsoever and slowly during the morning it dried up. Lunch was early at 12noon and by the time we got back onto track it was bone dry.

Managed two good sessions in the dry with passengers including Jim. Maxx had taught me some new trail braking tricks on a couple of complex corners which I was trying to master meanwhile battling with anything I could find.

scared Jim with a bit of wide angle drifting at Pouhon (although he may say I spun at 100mph ;) ) but as you'll see from the forthcoming video I never spun and never stopped and recovered ...... sort of.......almost.

Well after that the Heavens opened and the wind never picked up and the track never dried again so we had to make do with some fun laps and some tail happy fun at the hairpins.

There was a CGT there (black Uk '4 JWC' i think) and it probably did the most miles out of any car. It was out every hour and rain, drizzle, greasey, dry or all of the above. Hats off to the man as he was power sliding out of the bus stop and La Souce every lap and was absolutely on it.

If any body knows him tell him he was my 'star of the day.

Big up to Chris, Teffers and the boys at Circuit Days.

http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...L/30e1d173.jpg

http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...L/d2475349.jpg

Drinks again Monday night and some great grub at L'Auberge (I made the mistake of thinking it was cheap as Curly ate there last visit).

Lazy Tuesday morning and Alex and I headed off to Calais about 1pm, 30 minutes after the RS boys drve off (we thought we'd give them some distance). Clear roads and straight thru customs, managed to get on an earl train and home by 6pm

There were a few track crashes and a couple of red flags, but not bad bearing in mind the conditions. A 7RS lost it at Eau Rouge and back it not the barrier on the left hand side up the Kemmel, a Twingo smashed up really early on and there were quite a few cars that give up the ghost on the side of the track.

http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...L/af06cc25.jpg

http://i401.photobucket.com/albums/p...L/43137cc7.jpg

vid :whistle:

nice write up and from the texts I got from Jim it sounded a good one :hahaha:
Shame about Pauls turbo :bigcry:

Yep you would have hoped it managed more than one lap of the Ring :smokin:

I think the drive from Aberdeen isnt tame and the last twenty miles following Jim up that bad road fooking kills any car :hahaha:

Yeh, not sure why Jim decided to do the 4th stage of the ADAC rally just before arriving at the Ring:thumbs:

Good to meet up with you guys and thanks to Alex for the passenger laps:thumbs:

Good to meet you too, :thumbs:

Looks like fun shimmy, where are more pics and any vids? :thumbs:

good write up shim, sounds like a good weekend was had. Get the vid up.:thumbs:

vid vid vid

Just got back myself after another beer fuelled night on the loveboat....

Fantastic weekend with some lovely like minded people, and Shimmy :hahaha:

By the way, fantastic driving mate, but you only start to scare me when you go on about speedos..... :bigcry:


:thumbs::beer: looking forward to the vid myself

Good read Shimmy/Jim :thumbs: but... more PIX ... pleeeeezzz !!! :smokin:

Would love a wee trip like this in the summer, coming from NI though can be a monster PITA though. Will have to see, looks like some good craic had boys.

You're obsessed! :hahaha:

LOL fuck off you,

:birdman:

:hahaha:

:hahaha::hahaha:

Shimmy is quicker than me!:beer:

:hahaha::hahaha::beer:

http://img121.imageshack.us/img121/8711/img2115dl.jpg

http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/4617/img2111o.jpg

http://img64.imageshack.us/img64/3742/img2044t.jpg

http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/6513/img2001xq.jpg

My favourite (so far)

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/3...tenfahrten.jpg

:smt055 pix :thumbs: especially the one of Shimmy all crossed up right behind that Blue FORD Jim ;) Also loving' the square 9J 265/30/19 PHAT set up on Al's motor :supz: Might just have to try that for myself :whistle:

Nice pic's jim:thumbs:
Times shim was in the 2.54's in da dry:smokin:

Get the vid up shim or yer still sulking after your boys took a beating:hahaha:

How did the gayman do? Or where you not there John?

Didn't go in the end shane got a little busy at work plus i was only going last min.com;)

Just no time at the minute Curly, I'm on a curfew from the computer.....:whistle:

Best time was 2m54.4 so no real change from 2009. But tbh it was two dry sessions only and after the wet and grease it takes a bit of time for me to get faster with confidence even though I was happy to lark around with the passengers onboard. And again maybe 14 dry laps and two with clear traffic and even then only really one clean run at B2 where I always seemed to catch as car (some of the closing speeds were scarey):whistle:


Really need that end of day 2-3 sessions to get 20 laps in with maybe 8-10 clear ones to make the best times, but I'm starting to think firstly sub 2m 50 may be a little optimistic and secondly it is always gonna rain now whe go there........



Thanks for the pics Jim,

:mad: Do they know there's 000's of peepol waiting for this...

Get yer vid oot, get yer vid oot, get yer vid oot.....

Like the pics, a good advert for RWD versus boring FWD!

Whos car has rear wheels all round? Did you have to run a lot of camber for clearance?

Alex had rears all round and i think normally you have to run -3 degrees or more.

i run 265/18/35 all round with different offsets and can run as low as -1.5 at the front :smokin:

helps in the wet for sure!

It was a fun day , but the weather was not that great .

I was hoping to do a few laps behind you shimmy but you always passed me when i was on my cooling down lap (was hoping to learn a few things) .

My best time is 2.54.3 @ SPA wich i think is not that bad but i hope to do some 2.52 laps this year .

I think i have a vid somewhere where i'm passing Alex .

Shying forgot you said you were going, yes with those times it would gave been some goods lapping and as with Curly in 2009 you tend to learn some bits off each other as you go.

Next DRY time we will do it. I reckon we'd easily get 2m 52 but 2m 50 would be a real challenge

Flow

Sorry I didn't say hi but totally forgot you were going!:whistle:

I think 2.50 would be very difficult , if i can get 2.52 i will be very happy :thumbs: .

Some other time we will have to do some lapping , i was hoping to steal some racing lines from you :hahaha: .

Vie got a theoretical best of 2m 51,8 but that's means nothing if you can't pit I in on one lap.

I agree, 2m 52 would be great......but 2m 50 better :thumbs:

The ford monkeys are useful for something at least :beer:

I agree about the track time too, I spent my time trying not too brake through eau rouge, which for me was a real mind over matter job, plus with my little mind I found it even harder:bigcry::bigcry: maybe one day I will get under 3:33:whistle:

Some good times there Flow and Shimmy I think its more realistic to get into the 2.52's at Spa with the kit you are running you are not going to make anymore time up in the slow corners you are going to have to do it in the fast ones which is a bit harder,smoothness and earlier on the gas is the key

Here's a golden oldie from 09 with me, shim GT3 and a tranny van on slicks :hahaha:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCr3urNz5-A

The golden oldie from my car (3.00m onwards)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhWxIdBUSAQ