My first race in almost a year, sharing someone else's car, and starting from the back due to setting no qualifying time...
We've all seen those 'start from the rear and charge through the pack' type videos, but I'd never had chance to do one before... Massive amounts of fun!
One of the most rewarding things was lap times, averaging around 2s faster than the last time I'd driven this car at Anglesey in exactly the same spec - proves hands-down that driver improvement is the main source of lap time reduction...
Part of my development is constant testing - both on the road and track.
I love a winter track day - cheaper, less wear and tear on the car, and much more fun sliding it around all over the place.
Here's a quick video playing around with a mate in his tuned NC 2L Sport track car - the little 1.5L does a great job of keeping up!
Tom's car had previously been tuned by another MX-5 specialist, but he has a ton of modifications which need to be carefully considered for remapping. After looking at some of his datalogs, I thought there might be a bit more on the table...
Turns out there was! Both top end power and smoothness / driveability throughout the rev range were improved significantly.
Listen to his exhaust and intake sing all the way to 8000rpm, while grabbing gears faster than your average MX-5!
I approached Gavyn at Red Hen Racing early in 2024 after seeing he had a few niggles with a map / tune he had on his 2L ND2.
After a few weeks of revisions, he compared my tune to one from another company. We were both surprised by the results!
Here's Adam driving his XE-powered Westfield at Blyton Park in April 2015.
The car was frequently used on the road and had done a couple of commutes and a ~50 mile run to the local Westfield meet in the week running up to the event, but it came straight off the trailer without any changes apart from tyre pressures and an anti roll bar tweak to change handling balance. Despite this and it being Adam's first ever sprint, the car was competitive against some seriously track-focused machinery and we ended up with the 2nd fastest time of the day!
The car has custom developed geometry and spring rates, corner weighting, custom made anti roll bars and rear diffuser.
Close and exciting racing is the norm for MX-5s, as shown in this video!
Adam was carrying maximum success ballast of 30kg for this race as he was in the lead of the championship at the time, which equated to around 0.5s a lap around here. Starting 5th and finishing 4th was a great result!
More sprint action from Blyton Park, this time on Toyo 888 tyres but still in the road legal category.
I had sold the car by this point so was double driving with the new owner. Once again, plenty of road driving was done the week before to get used to the car and it was rolled off the trailer straight into action!
The result was a class win by around 4.5s and also finishing 2s ahead of the car's owner.
This is what track days are all about - 2 mates sharing a car, roof down, chatting away with the radio on and giving it plenty of beans!
The day was mostly dry but we still managed to get the it sideways often as you'll see :-)
The car is my daily driver and has custom developed geometry, RX-8 anti roll bars, BC coilovers and Federal RSR-595 tyres as well as a few map / exhaust tweaks.
CleaR Motorsport is based just a few minutes from each of the M6, M61 and M65 motorways, with plenty of off-street parking and good access. I am often away from the premises though, so please give me a shout in advance if you would like to pop round for a chat.
Address:
Unit 4
Club Street
Bamber Bridge
Preston
LANCS
PR5 6FN
Phone: 07834 534612
Get directions