26/01/2020 - Donington Park Trackday
As I'm sure most of you know, the club recently attended a trackday at Donington Park, thanks to @VAD17 for organising. This was to be my first trackday of 2020, at a circuit I've never driven before desite being the closest circuit to where I live at less than 30miles away. Knowing that it was a January trackday I didn't have much hope for the weather, thankfully the morning was dry but very greasy. These conditions meant it was very tricky for even the most experienced drivers and I don't think I've been to another trackday which had as many red flags as Donington did in the morning. Which was a shame as I didn't get alot of seat time, my longest session was about 25 minutes. I litterally left our pit garage only to be stopped at the end of the pit straight as the track had just been red flagged, however this meant I was to be the first one out in the next session. It helped that there was a couple of very slow cars right behind me, so I could get some space on track with no one else to immediately worry about. I made sure I got as much seat time as possible during that session, and eventually the track started to dry out. Below is a video of that session, taking it easy whilst trying to learning the circuit.
(This is footage taken from the new GoPro Hero 8 which I'm testing - unfortunately the free video editor I'm using didn't use the best export ratio, which is why the footage is square)
The rest of the day was abit of a mess, I think I only had one more clean session as there were numerious red flags or the condition changed. It started to rain just before lunch and the afternoon was very wet. Unfortunately the AD08RS don't really like greasy conditions, they are fine in the dry or full on wet, but in between not so much. @Adi had has instructor there for the afternoon and I listened whilst the instructor and @Hokum discussed what lines to take during wet conditions, this helped massively during my next session.
Overall I think I managed 6 or 7 sessions during the day, mostly because of the number of red flags and people needing to be towed back to the pits. However atleast I can now say I've done Donington and I'm eager to go back during the summer.
Here are a couple of photos: