It's been nearly two years since I've driven at Oulton, and so the first time in the 7 RS. I had a few tweaks I wanted to before the event. The standard inertia reel belts are a bit lame for the track even though you can’t move about much in a narrow bodied 7 so I fitted a pair of 3” Sabelt Harnesses.

I had a fiddled with the throttle body see if I could fix the idle problem. I also had the car washed to save a few tenths on track and in anticipation of photos being taken.

Booking a trackday in November can be a bit of a lottery with the weather but the Tuesday morning dawned dry and despite the forecast of showers the weather remained fine and sunny all day once the fog had lifted.

We were using the full track and sharing it with the High Performance Club (www.hpc.org.uk), although there were only 35 or so cars on track which turned out to be a mixed blessing.

Phil Abbott turned up with an ITR entourage but Matt and I had already nabbed our garages. Other cars of note were a Manthey Racing tuned GT3, R500 7, 560hp 996 TurboS, several 968CSs, 964CS, Volvo T5R driven by a 90 year old and a few sleepers, a TDI Bora, Saab 9-3 Estate, and a Rover 600ti.

The great thing about the 7 is that you can just rock up to a track, take the tools out of the boot and get out there, no messing with changing wheels or anything.

The briefing was less than brief, with a pretty comprehensive talk around the track by Callum Lockie, who was acting as instructor for the day.

I don't know if it was because I was ill with the flu or just that I've got used to trackdays but I wasn't nervous at all. Setting out for some sighting laps behind Phil I settled into checking the performance of the car out, the brakes and tyres etc.

The track surface was dry all the way round, even Druids was clear, the last week of dry but cold weather had probably helped.

Being my local track I have driven Oulton the most, and where I find it differs from the other 'local' track - Anglesey, is that I find it much easier to get into a rhythm. The corners are far enough apart for them to flow into one another rather than the constant direction changes of Anglesey.

It usually takes me longer than I think to get up to track driving speed, but after the first session I felt like I was back into the groove. Interestingly, any symptoms of being ill fell away whilst I was on track.

Running on Yokohama A539s rather than A048s the car was much happier and I wasn’t trying to muscle my way around the track. Limits are lower of course but the handling envelope is much wider giving you more options, into, through and out of a corner.
This was the first time out on track with the standard dampers replaced with Superlight dampers and adjustable platforms. The rough set up I did seems to work alright, with no discernable in balance between left and right. In the pit lane the car looked to be higher on the drivers side with no-one in it, which I suppose is not a bad set up for solo driving.

According to tyre pressures after the 2nd session however the rears were doing more work than the fronts. As standard I run 18psi cold, all round and these had risen to 23 hot at the back and 21.5 at the front. Once evened up to 18 I didn’t check them again.

The stiffer dampers definitely sorted out the excessive roll and the car had plenty of grip with good turn in, even at 90mph+.

Old Hall bend – I simply wasn’t going fast enough. The narrowness of the 7 and wideness of the track at that point meant I could have carried a lot more speed through there. I can never quite bring myself to keep well over to the left and turning in relatively late.

Cascades is always fun, Old Hall is taken in 4th in the 7 so I’m well into 7000rpm in 5th before braking after the dip in the road, changing down to 4th and turning in at the service road. Again I could probably carry a few more mph through here but there is a lot to concentrate on.

Island Bend is a big commitment bend, particularly as the braking zone for the Shell Hairpin is pretty short and soon after an unsettling 4th gear – indicated 100mph - left hander. You really have to have trust in your brakes to commit to the bend.

Understeer was an issue into the Shell Hairpin, a steeply banked corner that tightens up towards the last 3rd of the corner. The tricky thing I found was that as the corner tightened the understeer left and the car would dive to the inside and I never felt like I really nailed that corner.

The 1st chicane has a wide left hander into a tight right hander. The most fun way is to dive into the left hander slightly too fast trail braking before unsettling the car and hardly steering through the right hander, carrying as much speed as possible for the uphill drag directly after.

Knickerbrook chicane is after a flat out down hill, where I was braking at the 75m mark and changing down from 5th to 3rd. You can carry a lot of speed into the right hander but too much and the left hander becomes messy and your line for Knickerbrook becomes messy and compromised by understeer.
On quick laps I couldn’t get round Knickerbrook corner without two stabs at the steering.

Straight lining the rise and the gentle left under the Dunlop Bridge puts you on the right hand side of the track and well into 5th again before drifting over to the left hand side, still flat, for the turn into to Druids. The weather was kind to us and the track surface was grippy and consistent and actually great fun, not scary in the slightest like it can be in the wet.

Lodge is looking a little worse for wear. The tarmac is worn and there is basically a pothole on the far left hand side which is a useful guide to turning in. The 7 feels great through this cambered swooping corner and doesn’t suffer on turn in like front wheel drivers tend to do.

Sharing the track with the HPC was great. They are all considerate and aware, I was never held up. The down side was there where only 35 cars and on 2.7 miles of track that is not many at any one time. One of the fun things I find at trackdays is chasing people down and comparing cornering lines etc. I had the track to myself most of the time, which whilst fun is not as fun as dicing with other trackday warriors. I did chase the TurboS for a couple of laps and kept within a couple of seconds of him but you can’t compare 560hp/4wheel drive and 130hp. I didn’t even see where the R500 went…

Once the coldness of the morning had lifted, the track noticeably warmed up and the tyres on DNF were working well.
The only mechanical problem I had in 150 track miles was that a hose came loose at the bottom of the radiator, but nipping the jubilee clip up and refilling/bleeding the system sorted it. The idle never sorted itself out either so that still needs remedying.

All in all a great day and a really great day with the 7, the main problem is it’s got me thinking about racing…

Oh and someone recognised the car off Auto-Journals. Which was nice.

Photos courtesy of Kellie Bradley

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