well it was the Lotus Club day so it was fitting to finally experience what the fuss was all about on the light weight British sports car is all about.

an exact replica of the Lotus Super 7, a Caterham classic 7. only has about 80 hp but with just 1100 lbs to push around, it's still decent. close ratio 5 speed gearbox. I short shift it at 5000 rpm, don't wanna blow up somebody else's 30k baby. never the less it was very fun. sitting way at the back feels a little funky at first bt you quickly get used to it. I thought it had weak brakes at first but turns out it was one of those un-assisted ones thus require pushing on the brakes hard. it's a fun car. the pedals were really close together and takes time to get use to, skinny racing shoes are almost required. chassis felt soft, good communications on the steering. it has a very quick rack and doesn't require much steering input. balance of the car is just a hint of understeer. not enough power so WOT a lot. certainly can use ohh easily another 100 hp. another 200 hp, it'll be down right wicked. a good candidate for a monster 2 liter honda engine. Drove about 8/10th.

Lotus Elan (the one purists don't like too much, turbo FWD). I'm not sure what mods were in the one I drove. I think supsension was stock. It had a blow off valve, so it was very fun sounding. Pretty good accleration actually. As with other FWD it understeers, but not by much. Light understeer I would call it. The car had SP9000 on it and grip was adequete. Not as unique as pure light weight Lotus but still very fun. Very easy to build speed on, and when driven well can kick *** IMO. Better than I imagined! It has a short shifter, but the gearbox was somewhat clunky and the shift pattern isn't as crisp as a Honda which are usually ranked very high. I pushed it around 7/10th.

Lotus Europa. I only got one precious lap in it (end of the day, checker flag came out so it was not that fast, just couple of corners) Pretty damn nifty if I may say, John's had the car for about 20 years. 1500 lbs, and it has a ~175 hp motor. It has a super nice cage he built himself and he also built many other stuff on the car. I did sat in for a session as a passenger. very impressive car! car feels sorted, and has lots and lots of grip, good brakes (light pedal!) hopefully i'll get more time in it in the future. Drove it 6/10th on couple of corners.

Lotus 340R, a RHD. I only rode in as a passenger. But man, what an incredable car. The chassis is SO stiff and solid. 1350 lbs, some 170 hp or so. The car can carry SO much speed in the corners. Going through T1 at around 80-85, most cars would feel like it's working pretty hard but this car... it's a walk in the park. The owner's only been out 4 times but he drives very well considering how little seat time he's had. He's got the lines down good, and drives at a pretty good pace. The car is impressive in all aspects. Corner speed though, is the name of the game. Read the recent (last month?) of Road and Track on world's best handling cars. Bryan Herta drove lots of cars hard and gave super insightful and detail analysis of the cars. Look at the corner entry and mid corner speed in the Lotus, it just spanked everything else (including F360, 911 TT, Z06... etc). Light weight is GOOD. Hopefull I get to drive one some times, I think I can haul some serious butt in it and spank a lot of things. I estimate it was driven around 8/10th, maybe 8.5/10th. I didn't time it, but it was pretty quick already.

993 TT. Just a few laps to show the owner the lines, and get a feel for its torque curve. While still very powerful, you can definate feel the torque difference between 993 TT and 996 TT. 996 is much stronger in the low-mid range. I'm not sure if it's this particular car or the 993 TT's in general, but the car turns in pretty fast and it feels like you really have to use the throttle to plant the rear (not a problem with a responsive torquey engine). It's almost like you always drifting slightly... and that's just going at moderate speed. Perhaps the tire temp/pressure isn't right. would love more seat time in it. Rex is local in the SF Bay so hopefully more time in the future. Herta's analyst of 996 TT is, oversteer on entry, and power understeer on exit, he felt that when drive hard 996 TT requires a bit of driver's effort. Interesting! This particular car almost feel like it would do that, I didn't power out of the exit hard enough to get a feel for what it would act like. Can't go wild in other people's cars until a trust is build.

a great day at the track. i was busy all day but not over worked. when i first looked at the odometer in my car I was like wow i only got 65 miles on track?? hmm, that's not a lot. but then i realized i was out drove other cars and also sat in a few so...

of course now is some info you wanna know. how the civic did. honestly it was quite boring, it just doens't have enough power. i always had a passenger so i didn't really get to experience if the corner weight really helped balance the car that much. the alignment had -2.8 F -1.9 R camber, 0 toe front .04 LR .05 RR toe in on rear. i wanted zero but he said slight toe in will stable the rear in high speed. the car felt fine, but definetely rotate slightly less than last week. i'm not sure if it's because of the toe, or because now i have camber in rear. with 560 lbs springs all around and 24/19 mm bars it didn't have any problems rotate but now with more track oriented alignment it seems to push slightly now (not much) i guess that's why eventually track Honda's go with a much stiffer rear spring. i was on g-force t/a kd street tires. i'll try my old Yoko A008RS on sunday and see how they feel on these alignment settings.

i met austin and bob from here too. sorry bob we didn't get to hook up, couple times i looked for you but you must've been on track with someone else. austin went out for a session with me, i think that session we played with a Porsche 911 RS America. civic kept up prett well, considering we were on street tires. The 911 walks away in the straights but civic was right with it through the turns.

ohh yah i used the $50 pep boys raybesto ceramic enhanced pads. tried to bed them in last night and on the way to the track this moring but i guess i didn't get it hot enough. 1st session on track i thought damn the brake sucks ***, then i started smelling it a little bit, then it felt a little better after than. not very high friction compare to carbotech's but still better than stock. the "mystery" pad that was on this hb before had better bite. couple times it felt like there was a slight brake fade, but not bad. overall "ok" pad i guess. track worthy. just don't expect to be able to out brake people.



[Modified by frank@b16a.com, 1:10 AM 7/6/2002]

 

posted at 4:02 AM?
jooh crajee

good review frank!

 

It was nice to meet you agan Frank...I showed up in time for 2 rides on the track, one from Bob, and one from Frank.

Taking a ride with the 2 of them showed me that I need to use the brakes a lot harder, and to trust my tires. Although I have not yet been able to spend much time on the track...just need more seat time and some good instruction.

Thank you again for the ride Frank...bummer that the session as cut short.

Austin