a bit of video from my last track day (colerne)

[hoshy]

There was a guy there richard in his e90 auto 320d. lol. Had a really good drive about with him and he has some footage of myself and my mate's 200sx.

I'm what he calls "that other 3 series" in the video and you can see me from about 3.30 mins in.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=WpAPmbhbnko

There's also some from my boss's ibiza - in here somewhere I manage to spectacularly outbrake myself (around 2min40)

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=diBXbiacplA

[Jon_Bmw]

Looks fun, I find the hardest corner at that circuit about 2 on from the one you outbraked yourself. So you go left, then its a hard right, almost a hairpin, then straight for a bit(cones on the left) Then its a sharpish right but with loads of runoff. I've only done colerne in the 200sx which has bags of understeer then a shed load of oversteer and I found balancing the throttle was the only thing to get me through there. You couldn't be brutal with it at all. The FWD golfs and what not were just chucking it in really tight.

Guy was loving his auto 320d Nice to see it getting a spanking I guess. Was he constantly turning the traction control on or off or something? He kept pushing a button by the centre air vents which is a DTC in an e90.

[hoshy]

Hehe - yeah that guy was really giving the 320 some punishment - full respect! Yes he was on and off the traction control alot. He said he couldn't find a happy balance. With it on he could be any power out of a corner and with it off he said he was having trouble with the back end. In the first lap or two he really pulled away from me but after I sorted out some confidence it was all over

I know exactly the corner you mean. It's the one I had most trouble with also. I found that the best way for me was to go in medium pace and at the last tight apex start to apply the "power" progressively. The car then had more of a tendency to under steer which i could just ride out a bit. But in general I probably took it differently each time.

I did have some nice tail action there also, managed on one occasion to spin out also which was a tad but hey, I was just being silly really (An no power steeering didn't help... that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)

[Jon_Bmw]

When I was at abingdon some chappy was there in a 330d I think and I remember him saying that the marshalls asked him to rev it to 4.5k for the noise test to which he replied "it won't do 4500rpm!"

My dad keeps banging on about making a fast track day diesel! They are too torquey and not enough power top end though. Great fun and they probably drift around a fair bit due to the power curve.

Good news, my 1.6 box has arrived so the 205 will hopefully be recommisioned tonight.

That corner is quite good fun, nice and wide so even a tank slapper can be brought under control with relative ease. But if you are trying to get through it quickly, it just doesn't happen compared to other corners. I suspect its off camber.

[mt1104]

that 320d looked fairly nicely balanced.