Cadwell Park ? Test Day
Head for Grimsby and turn left. It is my custom to head for any port in a storm but in this case I would have been quicker trying for Dieppe. It took an age to arrive at Cadwell but immediately the impression was that it was worth the journey Cadwell park is known as the mini-nurburgring, a complex and tight track weaving through the Lincolnshire trees and up and down the mini-mountainsides. Compared to the elegant O-level simplicity of Mallory this test was more akin to sitting A-level maths in Cantonese but what fun. The slow corners are faster than you think and the fast corners are much faster than you think. With the aid of Matt and our GPS data logger we were able to take 13 secs off my original lap time in the duration of the day. As this was a track day rather than an official test day the was a motley assortment of machinery, from mighty minis, to MR2s and a weapons grade Caterham R500 which put out more horses than ben hur.
The day did not lack drama, a well prepared racing Caterham made a mighty mess of the back end of a stationary Lotus Exige in the mountain complex and a MR2 was reduced to scrap after rolling out and over a few times. The thing was flat as a pancake however both drivers limped away with nothing more serious than giant holes in their wallets. I did what I could, narrowly missing the barriers, trees and a slow moving Seat Leon to damage the car but with the light fading and a very, very enjoyable day drawing to a close, it was determined that lack of talent was again holding me back. In the final session nothing seemed to be going right and it was only later that we discovered a small hydraulic leak on the back brakes that squirted a small but critical amount of fluid onto one the back tyres every time I stomped on the brakes. As it was only one of the tyres, the excitement was limited to corners when that wheel was fully loaded, going the other way there was less of an issue. At the time this knowledge was beyond us and with lap times on the increase we called it day.
