After a busy season working on customers road and race cars, and enjoying some late summer sun in our project chimaera. Mat managed to escape the workshop and find some track time, taking the chimaera for its first test at a Snetterton afternoon trackday.
To find a good base line to judge all our upgrades the car is still in fairly standard trim, just having been treated to a good service and fluid changes. The brakes are still standard other than using DS 2500 pads and dot 5.1 brake fluid to help the stoppers stay stopping!
The car ran perfectly with no overheating or other niggles you might expect for its first venture on to track after 70,000 miles on the road, obviously benefiting from a good service and a specialist checkover!
Mat was still running the tyres the car came with a mixed set of Continental on the front and Hankook on the rear. This combination provided understeer on entry and huge power oversteer on exit.
To fit in the car with a helmet on Mat had to run with the roof off, and it sounds like one of the first modifications will be to replace the seat with something that allows him to get lower in the car and also holds the driver in position, rather than sliding around the car.
Overall it was a great first test. a really good idea of where the car stands at the moment and what needs to be done to make it better. The driver also needs a bit of fine tuning as the learning curve from road to track is very steep! together with seat mods we will now start to look at improving the turn in and slow speed cornering. It will be interesting to see the impact of a matched set of new tyres on the handling.
We’ll keep you updated here with Mat and the cars journey from road to track.