Mk1 In Car footage from Donington

[BenF]

I managed to get some footage from my Mk1- here's four clips for the moment.

The morning was very damp and greasy - the track was damp, and the grey sky meant the chances of it drying out were nearly nil.

The Yoko A539s on the Mk1 really aren't at their best in the wet, but they still gave really good feedback in the wet - I was finding turn in was OK, but the car was running wide of the apex of the bend

Clip 1 :A Damp morning lap

Note when I turn into Redgate, I get huge understeer - you can hear it and I run waaaay wide of the apex - I play with the steering to see if the car will turn in but no dice. The Caterfield in front decides it is too wet to play. At Macleans I meet a mk1 Golf wearing slicks with engine problems .. coming down the straight towards the chicane the front disks are slightly warped and so I get steering wheel vibrations. Through the Chicane (just where the tape drops out ) the mk1 decides to get sideways ..

Clip 2 : The Afternoon session

It did dry out slightly for the afternoon though, and I took Mark Nias out for a lap. I tried the Craner Curves without braking and end up at the old hairpin faster than I thought - Lauren catches up, gooning away. I let her through, and the rest of the lap isn't eventful. The brakes are much more warped though now

Clip 3 : A little too much speed into Coppice

Experimenting, I tried taking a little more speed into Coppice, but it was quickly obvious that it wasn't going to work out ...

Clip 4 : Runing out of talent at Regate

Yes, I'm afraid I caused one of the stoppages - apologies.

Looking back at the footage from laps previous to this it is very slippery out on the track and the car is quite twitchy though the chicane. I was following a Blue Mk2 NA and left braking to the red cones, as I had done previously - but this time I must have been too hard initally on the brakes as I lock up what looks to be the OSF wheel.

All I'm thinking at the time is that I need to cadence brake (which I could have done better!) and to avoid the Blue Mk2 which is looming towards me - the only 'exit' route is straight on into the gravel trap. I can remember watching the wall on the left and checking for anyone else behind us once we'd stopped. In the end, I was able to reverse backwards out onto the track rather than getting a pull from the towtruck back onto the tarmac.

But all in all, an excellent day - roll on the next IMOC trackday.

[Lee @ 3S Service Centre]

ben you need to fix your first link.

pahhh.....admin

[jonno]

Excellent footage ben!

I have a sudden urge to rig up a camera for the next track day

[BenF]

ben you need to fix your first link.

pahhh.....admin

LoL - fixed, thanks.

[BenF]

Excellent footage ben!

I have a sudden urge to rig up a camera for the next track day

The clips have been compressed quite heavily to end up a reasonable size - the originals are very good. You don't see the stones bouncing everywhere that you do in the original of the last clip.

Funnily enough, when I left the track at lunchtime to get some Super, someone was tailgating me (which I hate).

I ignored them and cruised on - but very quickly they dropped back.. thinking about it they probably had loads of stones being thrown up onto their car as they esaped from my bodywork and undertray

[jonno]

What type of camera did you use?

[pistol supercharged pete]

good footage
just makes me waant ot get out there next time

[BenF]

What type of camera did you use?

Camera : RF Concepts in Belfast - http://www.rfconcepts.co.uk/cameras.htm

I got the 21CWSHR which is a high res sony CCD with a couple of different lenses. For the Donnington footage I think I used the standard lens for that which is quite wide angle (as you can see!)

Suction mount :B- Hague - its their "CAMCORDER MOUNTING KIT CMK" - link: http://www.b-hague.co.uk/camera_suction ... mounts.htm

To record the footage, I used the AV input on a Canon MV650i camera - but you can get (eg) in car VHS recorders for under £100 - or pick up on ebay old Canon MV450i's which are also fine for this sort of thing.

To power it all, I have an in car dc-dc coverter to bring everything down to 9v for the camera and microphone, with some custom mods to smooth the powersupply a little more.

I picked up all this info from some guys at Bookatrack who were taking a lot of their own footage ..

[jonno]

Thanks Ben, I am definitely going to sort something simiar out myself.

[Dave Goodhand]

Hi,

I've looked at some of your footage... seems like it was quite good in the afternoon...

... a couple of tips though - you can run much wider on the esses at the end of the lap, and most of the corners looked like you were turning in quite early - you need to turn in fairly late for the 1st corner to get a good run into the craner curves.

All in all though looked like fun, didn't realise you were allowed video footage in your car at track days. We need a place where we can put loads of MR2 vids (ie complete laps etc) as this will help people learn the circuit before they go themselves.

[BenF]

I've looked at some of your footage... seems like it was quite good in the afternoon...

Yeah, it had dried out a little - but it still quite slippery.

... a couple of tips though - you can run much wider on the esses at the end of the lap, and most of the corners looked like you were turning in quite early - you need to turn in fairly late for the 1st corner to get a good run into the craner curves.

Yep, I didn't pick that lap for 'quality of driving' - I was chatting away to Mark. it was only my 2nd trackday at Donnington, but on the whole I was generally happy with the lines. I do tend to start turning in early, but feed the turn in gently, unless I have to make some corrections. Generally I was following the coned out lines. I thought about altering the lines as it was wet, but had more fun on the slippery dry line, and I definitely wasn't going for outright speed or laptimes.

There's loads of speed to be made on the Redgate -> old Hairpin
though, I just didn't fancy finding the limit at the bottom of the crainers doing a ton and running out of blackstuff.

All in all though looked like fun, didn't realise you were allowed video footage in your car at track days.

It depends on the circuit, and how secure your camera is. For example, the Nurburgring has banned video cameras and film cameras. Some circuits in the UK don't like filming as they think it encourages bad behaviour. However, with companies like Bookatrack you can find out in advance of booking an event if you will be allowed to film at a location.

Most of the time though, if you can demonstrate your camera is safely and securely mounted you should be fine. I would have mounted it on the side of the car on the rear 3/4 pannel, or the drivers 3/4 light, but as it was raining outside the lens would have got covered in water ruining the footage - been there, done that.

We need a place where we can put loads of MR2 vids (ie complete laps etc) as this will help people learn the circuit before they go themselves.

That's a tricky one. Encoded video files can be really big, especially if you're new to video editing / compression. I've compressed those laps fairly hard so 2 mins of video is about 5 Megs of data. For reasonable VHS-ish quality you'd be looking at files around 25MB for the same footage.

The best thing may be to do is to allow people to post links to footage they've got stored on their own webspace - perhaps as a thead here?

[Dave Goodhand]

Yeah I did figure as you started the lap chatting away!

There's loads of speed to be made on the Redgate -> old Hairpin
though, I just didn't fancy finding the limit at the bottom of the crainers doing a ton and running out of blackstuff.

Yep, seen it done, one guy went through craners at about 140ish with me following, put it sideways into the wall... was a pretty nasty accident and the car was a write off.. although he was racing the next weekend!

Theres generally a lot of time to be made up from the corner coming onto the straight and at the old hairpin - its a tricky corner to get right if you've gone through craners with a load of speed, but it does have several lines to use as the track widens on the exit. (but its a bit bumpy over the grass on the outside

Might have to do a trackday where they allow filming, as would love to get some quality laps around Brands, Snetterton and Silverstone just for archive footage.

[Mk1 Turbo Powered Steve]

ThatsSome great footage,I was there and saw you going round the track.I look forward to some more.ASAP

I managed to get some footage from my Mk1- here's four clips for the moment.

The morning was very damp and greasy - the track was damp, and the grey sky meant the chances of it drying out were nearly nil.

The Yoko A539s on the Mk1 really aren't at their best in the wet, but they still gave really good feedback in the wet - I was finding turn in was OK, but the car was running wide of the apex of the bend

Clip 1 :A Damp morning lap

Note when I turn into Redgate, I get huge understeer - you can hear it and I run waaaay wide of the apex - I play with the steering to see if the car will turn in but no dice. The Caterfield in front decides it is too wet to play. At Macleans I meet a mk1 Golf wearing slicks with engine problems .. coming down the straight towards the chicane the front disks are slightly warped and so I get steering wheel vibrations. Through the Chicane (just where the tape drops out ) the mk1 decides to get sideways ..

Clip 2 : The Afternoon session

It did dry out slightly for the afternoon though, and I took Mark Nias out for a lap. I tried the Craner Curves without braking and end up at the old hairpin faster than I thought - Lauren catches up, gooning away. I let her through, and the rest of the lap isn't eventful. The brakes are much more warped though now

Clip 3 : A little too much speed into Coppice

Experimenting, I tried taking a little more speed into Coppice, but it was quickly obvious that it wasn't going to work out ...

Clip 4 : Runing out of talent at Regate

Yes, I'm afraid I caused one of the stoppages - apologies.

Looking back at the footage from laps previous to this it is very slippery out on the track and the car is quite twitchy though the chicane. I was following a Blue Mk2 NA and left braking to the red cones, as I had done previously - but this time I must have been too hard initally on the brakes as I lock up what looks to be the OSF wheel.

All I'm thinking at the time is that I need to cadence brake (which I could have done better!) and to avoid the Blue Mk2 which is looming towards me - the only 'exit' route is straight on into the gravel trap. I can remember watching the wall on the left and checking for anyone else behind us once we'd stopped. In the end, I was able to reverse backwards out onto the track rather than getting a pull from the towtruck back onto the tarmac.

But all in all, an excellent day - roll on the next IMOC trackday.

• 

• 

[Mk1 Turbo Powered Steve]

Some great footage and i think stupid me has worked out how to reply properly

[Lauren]

Great stuff Ben and your car sounds so good!

Only one thing i'm going to say--- Stop shuffling the wheel!!!!

I think the appeal of the 539s though is the lack of grip just makes it so much fun. Can't wait to get my NA up and running now.

[vashy]

I think the appeal of the 539s though is the lack of grip just makes it so much fun. Can't wait to get my NA up and running now.

I know, I was slithering around lots on mine (A539's too). I'm grinning remembering it again (:

Nice vids Ben, your coppice slide is impressive. You lose a lot of speed though, you should keep the power down (;

John

[BenF]

Great stuff Ben and your car sounds so good!

Only one thing i'm going to say--- Stop shuffling the wheel!!!!

You mean keep hands 9 o'clock / 3 o'clock ?

Yep, I know. Its kinda tricky - to fit me wearing a lid into the car I have to adjust the seat forwards, and the backrest right back so I don't end up clonking the roof all the time. That means my arms are fairly much at full stretch, so holding the steering wheel 'properly' isn't easy/comfortable at times.

Maybe I need a bucket seat .... or are there other ways of lowering the Mk1 seat a bit?

[Lauren]

Great stuff Ben and your car sounds so good!

Only one thing i'm going to say--- Stop shuffling the wheel!!!!

You mean keep hands 9 o'clock / 3 o'clock ?

Yep, I know. Its kinda tricky - to fit me wearing a lid into the car I have to adjust the seat forwards, and the backrest right back so I don't end up clonking the roof all the time. That means my arms are fairly much at full stretch, so holding the steering wheel 'properly' isn't easy/comfortable at times.

Maybe I need a bucket seat .... or are there other ways of lowering the Mk1 seat a bit?

Well a bucket seat would certainly enable you to get it lower down which would help this a great deal.

Only downside is that something reasonable starts at around £200 but on the upside you can take it with you. I would make sure you try plenty out though to make sure you get one thats a good fit. They are a PITA to fit but worth it IMO. They also mean you can steer without hanging on to the wheel.

[Dave Goodhand]

Keeping your hands at 9 and 3 can be pretty tricky all the time, I would suggest maybe a smaller wheel (if its going to be a track car) it will be down to personal preference, you might find that 10 and 2 will be better.

Basically what Lauren is saying is to keep your hands at 1 fixed point on the wheel, and cross your arms when cornering (ie dont "push, pull" like driving instructors tell you to do) This allows you to keep much better control of the car (despite the learning way in this country, as I've never understood it!)

(Dave - BenF here - Apologies, edited your post and added my reply. ..)

Cheers Dave, good advice. I'll see if I can find some combination of seat / backrest that allows me to cross my arms comfortably - at the moment, my arms are fairly much out at full stretch which isn't comfortable.

.... sounds like you've driven a fair bit on track yourself ...?

[DoM]

Nice Vids Ben.

I'm sure it's to do with me being in the car! Those gravel traps work bloody well though!

Dom