Lakeside Bites Again.......

JBT · Postby **JBT** » Fri Sep 20, 2013 9:39 pm

BMW Club track day today with everything from novice to serious race cars. Many cars doing great times - one down in the mid 50s. No offs, prangs or anything.

Trackphotos · Postby **Trackphotos** » Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:12 pm

JBT wrote:BMW Club track day today with everything from novice to serious race cars. Many cars doing great times - one down in the mid 50s. No offs, prangs or anything.

Unusual. The BMW guys usually bend at least one.

I see Damien Meneguzzo was out there with his E30 sports sedan too. Must still be having difficulties with it, only doing 60sec in a car that would be capable of 54 at race pace.

JBT · Postby **JBT** » Sat Sep 21, 2013 9:34 am

Trackphotos wrote:Unusual. The BMW guys usually bend at least one.

Really? I've attended most of their club days at Lakeside for the last two years as a flaggie and don't recall seeing any bent cars. Damien's car seemed to be dríven very consistently and sounded like it was running fine.

Trackphotos · Postby **Trackphotos** » Sat Sep 21, 2013 5:04 pm

JBT wrote:
Trackphotos wrote:Unusual. The BMW guys usually bend at least one.

Really? I've attended most of their club days at Lakeside for the last two years as a flaggie and don't recall seeing any bent cars. Damien's car seemed to be dríven very consistently and sounded like it was running fine.

From what I heard today, Damien's car is still having major heating problems. It runs fine, but overheats after 2-3 laps and has to come in. He had similar issues a couple of months ago when he was racing door to door in the Outlaw group.

Apparently there was also someone who spun off at Hungry yesterday too, no obvious damage. I don't get to a lot of their days, but I do hear about them from a bunch of the e30 drivers after each one. Seems to be a pretty frequent occurrence for someone to spin into the wall onto the straight, or spin onto the grass at Hungry. Being a club level event, they don't often have any huge incidents, but small ones are reasonably common. As you expect for Lakeside

Postby **NitroDann** » Sat Sep 21, 2013 5:22 pm

If the inherent danger isn't what gets you going in a racecar I'm not totally sure what does?

Dann

JBT · Postby **JBT** » Sat Sep 21, 2013 6:01 pm

Trackphotos wrote:Apparently there was also someone who spun off at Hungry yesterday too, no obvious damage. I don't get to a lot of their days, but I do hear about them from a bunch of the e30 drivers after each one. Seems to be a pretty frequent occurrence for someone to spin into the wall onto the straight, or spin onto the grass at Hungry. Being a club level event, they don't often have any huge incidents, but small ones are reasonably common. As you expect for Lakeside

No spin, he just had a wide run off/slide with lots of lock up. He rejoined with only a loss of one place in the field - they didn't even have time to activate the yellow lights. I think he was the only one to go off the bitumen (apart from a breakdown) all day. Off-roading at Hungry is pretty common. I must say I haven't seen anyone hit the wall coming onto the straight in the last two years at a BMW Club event or ever at an MX-5 Club event. Mind you there was one BMW Club off at Hungry last year which started a grass fire because the grass was long and dry and the E30's brakes and exhaust were very hot. :shock:

MX-5 Club accidents (bent panels), as I recall, are the recent off into the tyres past the Kink during the wet, a few years ago an MR2 bounced off the Armco after the Bridge and a year or so before that an MX-5 backed into a rock wall on exit at Karousel. Both the last two had the wrong line, which can be exciting...or disastrous if you have more speed than you can handle. :wink:

Yes, Lakeside can bite...it needs lots of respect and attention to the task by drivers for that reason. One thing people forget is that we can get some pretty quick lap times in road registered cars these days and those times aren't far off the pace set a couple of decades ago in race cars dríven by experienced race car drivers.

Anyway, I very much prefer to take my chances at Lakeside than the very scarey drive in the traffic to and from.

zero00 · Postby **zero00** » Sat Sep 21, 2013 7:27 pm

Agree JBT .. Lakeside Can BITE and that's why the bulk of us treat it with absolute respect. Back in 2011 at it's 50th Anniversary when a lot of MX5's came up the one common comment heard was 'absolutely fantastic! - so technical!!' which it is

I've only been running there 3 years, done I think 11-12 track days there and love it!! Sure, there are places that shove my heart into my throat, the main one being that little 'mini kink' onto the main straight that has flicked so many cars into the armco - just treat that bit with respect!!

Motor Racing is dangerous, we all know that but i'd rather be out there with my fellow club members than not knowing what the fool overtaking me on the highway is going to do!!

See you at Lakeside in 44 days!!

Trackphotos · Postby **Trackphotos** » Sat Sep 21, 2013 11:48 pm

zero00 wrote:See you at Lakeside in 44 days!!

I'll be on some new tyres with a proper alignment this time around, as long as it doesn't rain again I will be aiming for mid 1:08s by the end of the day. Shouldn't have any trouble with the flat throttle stretches, will just be gaining on corner speed. Wouldn't want to try too hard though...

MINX · Postby **MINX** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:00 pm

Ouch

MattR · Postby **MattR** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 3:05 pm

With just what we can see from the photo, I have pulled out worse before with a winch on a trailer and then had the car racing the next day.

Obviously it depends on what the rails are like, but the car doesn't look to bad and I would be giving it a shot to pull out and go again.

Trackphotos · Postby **Trackphotos** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 4:00 pm

MattR wrote:With just what we can see from the photo, I have pulled out worse before with a winch on a trailer and then had the car racing the next day.

Obviously it depends on what the rails are like, but the car doesn't look to bad and I would be giving it a shot to pull out and go again.

Keeping in mind it was not a track car, it was a road registered SP... more of a loss than bending a dedicated track car. Still, could be fixed. Airbags went off, makes it worth a lot less to repair.

zero00 · Postby **zero00** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:10 pm

Sorry to see, Chris is a very good driver who takes it to the limit, to me a 101% driver - could happen to anyone really!

Magpie · Postby **Magpie** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 7:37 pm

I would rather be a driver that can be 100% consistent at 90% of the cars capabilities.

plohl · Postby **plohl** » Mon Sep 30, 2013 8:35 pm

Magpie wrote:I would rather be a driver that can be 100% consistent at 90% of the cars capabilities.

You can still crash at 90%

Sent from my GT-I9100T using Tapatalk 4

toppertee · Postby **toppertee** » Tue Oct 01, 2013 11:19 am

zero00 wrote:Sorry to see, Chris is a very good driver who takes it to the limit, to me a 101% driver - could happen to anyone really!

+1,
I was in a pit box next to chris about a year ago, hell of a nice bloke. Really good driver as well.
Sometimes s#it happens and could happen to anyone.