Does your water temp move at all on track?

[funtime]

Just come back from the ring, had a good time but worried about a possible temperature issue...

Here's what it did.. - bare in mind it was 25-27 degrees whilst doing this:

I was running most of the time with the aircon off and the heating fans set to around 20 degrees at about half power.

The temp gauge towards the end of the lap would be around the 2/3rds marker and oil around 125.

Then on Monday they opened the F1 circuit aswell so each lap was just over 15 miles. My mate drove the CSL as he knows the track very well and when he drove we had the aircon on all the way round with the fans on nearly full power blowing cold, by about 2/3rds of the way round i noticed the water temp was almost in the red, and by the end of the lap it was just in the red, but after going under the gantry on the back straight and coming off the power coasting to the exit of the track it had already returned to half way on the water temp.

This got me worried, although the only thing that made me feel slightly better about it is that his M3 was doing exactly the same, so I put it down the the hot weather and longer track, although i was still surprised it got as high as it did.

The next time we went out, I put the heaters on full chat at 32 degrees, and had the windows open a touch to stop us melting, and by doing this the temp never went above the 2/3rds marker.

I did some reading yesterday and saw Shimmys troubles and a few others on here and instantly feared the worst so I did a compression check this morning.

Results are fine and don't show any signs of a HG failure which is a relief, but im just worried now about what else it could be.

I'm guessing you boys don't do all hot track days with the windows open and the heaters pumping at 32 degrees!

Any help and suggestions much appreciated

Another thing to note - my temp gauge never seems to sit bang in the middle either, normal driving it sits just under the half way marker and then a spout of hard driving you can actually see it move to just over the half way.

Could this all just point to a dodgy thermostat?!