Thought i'd share some photos and the experience.
Went in my Clio 172 with my brother in his Mk2 Scirocco (2.0 16v Seat powered). It was only our 2nd time on track, the first time was at Brands in december last year - in the wet sharing his MX5 - very sideways but not fast!
We were much luckier with the weather this time, so the 1st time in my own car and in the dry.

Arrived early and grabbed a garage, which we shared with a nice chap in Blue 172 Cup and his mates in Mk2 Golf GTi and a Caterham.

Before the pits filled up:



Ran on some used 15" Avon ZZRs on the front, these were great, only used about 1-2mm of tread and did alot of laps. Rears were some cheapish BF goodrich's which felt quite weak walled but once topped up with pressure and warmed up were very predictable.

Cheekily ran my Racechrono so kept a log of times and laps. I did 113 laps (£1 a lap then!) best time was 59.8 seconds, and was consitantly running at 61-62 seconds on the clear laps.

Was nice being on a road car only day, meant there were no idiots in real race cars using it for testing. And not many stopaages that I noticed. Early on someone spun on padock hill and a porsche dived in to the gravel to avoid him. An M3 ended up sqaushing his N/S everything on the armco and about 3ish another BM dumped a fair amount of oil and water on Graham Hill bend which meant the last half hour was spoilt by having to avoid the apex.
There were a couple of clueless morons, mainly old guys - one in a merc who when the red lights went on for the oil/water, failed to find the pit entry TWICE! another in a bog standard late model 5 series touring who thought queing for the noise test was for everyone except him, then asked the classic 'did I pass' - go home mate! (funilly enough I didnt see him on track one so he may well have done!)

Cant wait to go back again.
Will get some videos up soon too.

Some professional shots:









Didn't have any scary moments, this was the closest I came to getting it wrong:

Most excellent!

Brands is on my list for next year.

60 seconds in a road car is really good, with the good weather I should have made the effort

I was hoping you was going to report back.
Glad you had a good day. Sub 60 is a good benchmark so well done.

Weather was amazing, I had no chance of getting down, work got in the way! !

those little cars are excellent trackday tools!

Just thought id update this with some of the videos I took, these are 3 of my better laps, apologies the last and (typically) fastest lap was corrupted. But time stamp does show it was a shade under 1m.

Turn in later for Druids and Surtees....you can then carry more speed on the exit of Surtees.

Thats annoying that the video played up, especially as I have recently brought a DVR that could fall under the "cheap chinese" banner.

I do agree with Jeff. later turn in on Druids and Surtees.

For example, the position of the apex cone at Druids suggests:

1) That you either brake late, go deep, then straigthen up to get high speed out. so High speed in, sharp turn and long acceleration with small turn angle.
2) You carryu a high average speed throught the corner and hug the red and white creating one long apex.

The correct answer for track days (one fast quali lap, no other racers to block) is Line 1.

I poted up about this a while back and got some great response, see below:

http://www.locostbuilders.co.uk/viewthread.php?tid=180969&page=1

Regarding the line for surtees; I received some great 1st hand advice from Eddie99 on here. He said to have balls and turn in late. I went out with him in his car and felt how much more at ease the car was doing this.

I have tried both of these changes and was lapping faster for it.

My final point to add: Having done Brands a load of times and other tracks to boot my general thought is that I commonly turn in too early on all corners to start with and start to get faster lines near the end of the day as my confidence grows and that involves pushing my apex round the corner further. Turn angle should be not kept to a minimal as I first thought but time spent turning should be kept to a minimal.

quote:

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Originally posted by bi22le
Turn angle should be not kept to a minimal as I first thought but time spent turning should be kept to a minimal.

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To be fair the laps that posted there were lap 13 and 19, so I was still learning the track. The only previous time round brands was in a very different car in very different conditions.
Will clip together a few of the later faster laps as am interested in overlaying them against the GPS logs and a general comparison as the Racechrono gives you an optimum lap, based on your 3 best sectors strung togther and base don that I should be able to shave off over a second.
Going back again in new year with a better camera and a better GPS logger with any luck.