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At Cadwell the static noise test is 105dcb`s at 3/4 max revs, the noise tester was very understanding of the older cars and I achieved 102dcb at 2/3 revs. Clothing requirements are no exposed arms or legs and a helmet is compulsory, many regulars prefere to wear a fire protective suit for trackdays. Your car has to be in good order and safe to drive, roll over protection is not compulsory as many people turn up in standard cars.

It was a really good afternoon/evening the weather was excellent, sunny and dry for the duration. When I arrived there was still some practice sessions and racing going on from the Tour Britannia Series so for about an hour it was a petrolheads heaven. It`s not very often you see such a cross section of classics on the same grid, from a Hillman Imp to a De Tomaso! Cars ranged from a good field of various 911`s, Elans, Alpine Renault, Mustang, MGB, Cobra, Escort`s and many more. The De Tomaso narrowly won the race, with a 911 and Elan very close behind, power is not such a big advantage at Cadwell as the 911 and Elan looked as if they were stood still on the straights, but made up lost ground through the twisty bits.

Track time started at 4pm and there was a good attendance of various cars, Elise/Exige, Caterham R`s, BMW 3 series, Metro`s, Nova turbo, Porsche`s, $%!`s and many more and a solitary red Marcos! Well the car ran really well, after a few laps and a bit of fine tuning of tyre pressures, damper and ARB settings I could push on progressively and get a feel to the "new" car. It does feel quite different to how I remember it felt three years ago when I was doing trackdays more frequently. What`s new? Well it has 4" wider track now, higher spring rates, the ARB`s have a greater range of adjustment and it has a LSD. I have an infa-red laser thermometer which I use to measure the temperatures across the full width of the tyres when I`m setting it up, it`s the only way to check whether or not the full width of the tyre is working for you. Eventually after a few laps and pressure adjustments the tyres are running pretty close temps across the full width except the fronts where the temps are a little higher on the inner edges. Initial impressions, there is a touch too much understeer, the rear end feels like it`s glued to the tarmac and the LSD has cured all the tight corner wheel spinning. Not a bad start, but it`s all relative to how it was before, it is now quicker it`s just handling a little differently to what I was used to. I quite liked the fact I used to be able to provoke progressive oversteer and could steer it with the throttle to a certain extent, the down side to this was you are wasting power and forward motion! The back end is now firmly planted and has a reluctance to budge that much before the twitching effect of the LSD starts to become noticeable, one of the disadvantages of a plate type LSD over a torque biasing one.

At the end of the day it had been a lot of fun and it was good to get out in the car again after 3 years of occaionally working on it and not driving it! While I was there I also met another local Marcos owner who has a Mantara, a LM400 and 2 Mini Marcos, hopefully he will come along to the local meeting.