My day.... scrappy but happy enough
Underlying theme from the day was making the best from well worn flatspotted tyres. My car was in WP with the second set of 1B tyres and was too late to change by the time we realised
Flat spot isnt too bad but catches quite easily on the same spot (front left) into McIntyres and Hairpin (for me anyway). Livable vibrations at 100mph etcTo help with tyres (car sharing!) we only did half the sessions we could have done.
Practice 1:
Went out telling myself not to show true pace. As always I get a bit carried away and tried some different settings on Fee's car. Ended up using max boost a couple of times and doing a 56.2. Happy enough but was a bit worried about tyres. Time to be made pretty much every corner. Ended P3 behind David and Colin.
Practice 2:
Fee went out first this time so I got the hot tyres (
not good! ). Pushed a bit harder, and used constant CAL03 rather than pushing overboost button. Pushed the braking further on, and started to carry more speed through the base of Duffus and Butchers. I find I take a while to get into the swing of these corners and I havent driven KH in that car for.... for about 7months I think. Ended up with a mid 55 from memory. P2 this time I think.Qualification:
Again I was out second, and had to deal with toasty worn R888s :S Did very slow out lap with little braking and shallow angle corners
Chose to do 1 hot lap rather than 2. First lap I felt was shocking A few scrappy corners but I was prob carrying more speed. Buggered up the hairpin and turned in in 5th and had 0 grunt. Quick shift to 3rd and nailed it up over the line - 54.7 and a surprised smile. Second run felt better but was a 54.9 I think. I thought I'd done enough with the 54.7 and perhaps relaxed a bit. Didnt do the second hot lap on the second run, and came in thinking I'd be P1. BUGGER! Colin Dorward had done a 54.6 on his last lap. Great lap from him.... but I was still quietly confident I had a bit more to give, and hot noted he was setting his faster laps on 2nd lap.Qualy 54.7 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wBu1gcNG-k
Final:
1 hot lap in the final. Went out had a bit of a moment with Russ on my out lap (his super hot lap ) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14sXXKcwQ30
Not sure if this unsettled me a bit but seemed a bit slower out of the hairpin. I then caught Russ down Duffus and had a scrappy lap pushing a bit too much afterwards. Very sideways exit out of hairpin and up the line for a 54.96. Video of run 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIr2yInXsK0
Russ got a re-run for me getting in the way. Colin got a re-run for Russ getting in the way.... so I took a re-run for Russ too. I was sitting P1 anyway at this point but needed to make sure.
Did an OK lap, nothing special but the tyres were gubbed. Improved by 0.001 I think
and took the win 
Run 2 video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yh6W8KG5p0Qualy 54.7 was very messy with slow entries to a couple of corners.
Final *runs* were better but really struggled with the dirt at the hairpin I think. Lap data is showing a theoretical best of 52.99 from the final :O
Red - in 54.7 in Qualy - slow MacIntyres and Chicane
Purple is first run in final, slow over duffus with Russ
Green in second run in final - messy!!
Some general comments on the car.
It gets a bit understeery when tyres are hot and you try and push on. Some corners are easier than other to try and deal with this... trail braking into etc. On cool tyres it was fine.
Rear end grip is AMAZING, and the general neutral nature of the car is great. I was working back to the way I could take corners in my car when it had ~340bhp and could take 100% throttle on most corners from just before the apex
I'm really sold on the Syvecs ECU controlled Centre Diff now (now that I know to turn it on). You can really feel the fronts coming into play and changing what would have been a big rear biased slide into a gentle and controllable 4 wheel slide now. Nitrons - Night and day to the BC that were on previously. Thats not slating BC.... they are decent for the money IMO. Still need to fine tune a lot of things as I think we were perhaps running softer than ideal on the front to try and tame some of the tyres issues.
Quantifiable gains - 1 sec from Nitrons alone in my opinion..... fairly confident I could do a low 53 in this car on fresh MSA 1B tyres