Dembo

It's a public road, so no need for helmets, covering your arms and legs, emptying out the car, or any of the usual trackday rules. But it might save your life if you do follow those rules. I'll be taking a helmet.

chilled

I'm taking a helmet, although I didn't last time. Mostly because I didn't own a helmet, had no space for it in a big trip and couldn't find anywhere locally to hire one from. However hearing about the Elise drive who wasn't wearing a helmet, I'm wearing a helmet.

AquilaEagle

what happened to him?

chilled

Apparently flipped, when the marshall got to the car, the head had been worn down to the neck. Don't know if it's true, but it doesn't need to be...

Dembo

Nice. Helmet might not have saved him though. I think it's as much about side impacts as anything else (which is much more likely than rolling). Last year Ben Lovejoy crashed in their Golf (he was a passenger I think) and that had a roll cage with proper padding and he was wearing a helmet, but was still knocked out and had to spend the night in hospital.

There were some guys going round in a CRX (quite fast too) with an unprotected roll cage and no helmets, which would have very probably killed them in a side impact. I bet they thought they were safer with a roll cage, but if you don't do it all properly it can make things more dangerous.

AquilaEagle

*gulp* are you boys trying to scare me now I am booked?

Kobe

if you are scared now.. just wait till you actually see the circuit...


the risks are there... but more than 99% of this is within your control.. for all the accident stories, there are 1000's of laps without incident....


though for the bikes this is a totally different matter.

Dembo

I think like anything dangerous you need to be sensible, be aware of the risks, and decide if you want to do it or not. I wouldn't want to encourage anybody to go.

On the plus side, it's probably the world's safest public road. It's one way, it's very well maintained and is closed for oil spills or mud on the road, there's usually a fire engine and ambulance on standby, most of the people there are good drivers in good well maintained cars, and nobody's driving round half asleep.

Kobe

all this ring talk has finally motivated me to put the overalls on and start getting the car ready...

but as always, one step forward two steps back.. just refitting the coil packs after checking the plugs.. and one of the bolt heads snapped off as I was just starting to tighten it..

luckily I had greased it.. was not too difficult to extract the broken bit.. I guess it was fatigued because I put almost zero force on it. Anyway will change all four when I get some from the garage.

cleaned up the throttle body.. a bit of crud in there..


and some bigger things planned for a couple of weeks..

Useful

I always do on GT4 on the PS2 - I only JUST remembered not to last April, when Mrs. U. was in the car and 5 month's pregnant