A couple of weeks ago Elite Motorsport put a thread on the forum offering a day of coaching, data logging and tuition to the first people to answer.
I leapt at the chance for some coaching and car setup advice and happily bagged the last offered slot.
Ed from Elite collected a lot of details about my car and driving style before we met, and agreed to be at Cadwell on Saturday morning to support my
day testing there before a race yesterday.
Ed and the team arrived just after me and got to work quickly, setting up a gazebo and toolkit to measure up and check over the car. We spent soem
time looking at tracking and suggeted tyre pressures - then it was tie for my first track session. I'd done a track day at Cadwell but it's
a difficult track so I was a long way from really knowing my way round. So I did a session worth of laps and met the team, in the assembly area -
they pounced on the car like a well oiled machine and checked the tyre temperatures and pressures. As they'd thought, I was running too much
pressure all round.
Between the first couple of sessions, they set my tracking properly and put the video camera on for session 2- so we could watch through the session
and comment on my lines as well as the car.
The second session was much better. Just a little tinkering with the tyre pressures and everything felt much better. We'd set tyre pressures
and damper settings based on minimal knowledge andf maximum guessing - Ed and the team really got them right for the first time.
The rest of the sessions were split - I did a few laps, check the pressures and temperatures, ask me how it felt and adjust the dampers a little -
repeat until sorted.
Between each session we spent a bit of time looking at my lines on the video and reviewing what I could change.
By the end of the day I had knocked 7 seconds off my lap time and felt much better about the car and how to set it up. So if anybody needs setup
advice and coaching - I'd suggest Elite.
(They didn't ask me to writethis, btw....)
Ed (not the same Ed as Elite!)
Do you use the car on the road?? Whats it like on the road with the adjustments?? How much would the day cost if people were paying??
Glad to know you enjoyed the day and it was successful, Well done on winning the class and going even faster in the race. I'll get the other bits
in the post to you.
[Edited on 12/7/11 by eddie99]
thank you very much edd, it was very nice to meet you.
cheers
stuart