Donington on 4

For several years I've been asking JJ if I can drive his Elise, and last week the tease said come to a trackday... and be passenger. Oh well, better than nothing :)

It was BookaTrack's Christmas event for regular customers, with a few corporates thrown in (literally? well maybe), but because they ended the year a bit low on the finances they also accepted others who wanted to book, making it a bit more crowded than it would have been.

Donington is under the flight path from East Midlands, which means that the place is covered in a film of jet fuel, only washed off by very heavy rain. Drizzle such as yesterday morning's makes the track into a long snaky skidpan. JJ went out once just before I arrived, but it was cut short by someone spinning off. Only the car damaged.
I signed something that gave permission for the bodyparts to be returned to my stated next-of-kin, and was handcuffed with two taglets (one for food and drink, one for Permitted On Track - oooooh). We chatted to various nuttersfriends of JJ, mainly about incidents and accidents and blown-up engines, and it was time for me to don my Roof. Good thing I'm small because JJ had the lid on the Elise - for which I was grateful, it being a bit chilly. JJ repeated the warning about feeling sick ("Let me know straight away - there's nothing worse than puking in your helmet"). It was backed up by another driver who said he'd once made himself sick. Er...

We trundled up to the track, me doing the self-hypnosis thing (I prefer to drive, not be a passenger, so the mantra was "trust; you are not responsible"). Vroom. Not as fast as it might have been. JJ later said he wasn't being careful of me, just not wanting to embarrass himself by spinning, but 100ish, and beginning to get into it as the track dried a little by the fourth lap... and there was the flag. Someone else had dived into the gravel. But it was fun; and I wasn't sick.

A ginormous Christmas dinner. One of them there new pseudo-Rollers arrived and lumbered down to the far end. Ugly beast. We hoped it would be taken out on the track, but no such luck. Now, watching that go end-for-end would really have been something. It would have had to do a 3-point turn to get round Coppice Corner.

Brief break to wander round and admire the assembled kit-cars, tweaked cars, Lotuses, and lesser cars, while JJ went out by himself (I thought it prudent to let the deathbychocolate go down a bit), and I was ready for another go. All strapped in, and... everybody off. One of the Caterham 7s had been topped and tailed and spread over the track. By the time it was cleared the winter dusk was down.

All in all, a very gentle intro trackday - shame for JJ, but there was enough excitement for me :)

JJ's car - Lotus Elise R with replacement Honda engine (197bhp, which is not too bad), seen here going sideways.

And, even though it was as passenger and moreover on too many wheels, I've finally seen one of the tracks on which I've watched friends and been timekeeper for Team UKRM, from the inside. HUGE GRIN!

And then we went to visit Kathryn and Matt and talked about research - their PhDs are on communities on internet (Kathryn, psychology) and origins of music (Matt, bio-geneticist), thus there is quite a bit of commonality with mine.