First Test Day at Donington Park!

On a cold day in January, we headed off to the Donington Park circuit. Overnight we had heavy rain and it was still raining when I met the Parr Motorsports Team at 8 am. The track at Donington Park is renowned in the wet as one of the most slippery circuits in the UK. This is because planes take off and land from East Midlands Airport right over the circuit. They drop fine spray aviation fuel on certain parts of the track, in fact, the end of the runway sits next to Coppice Corner. 

The team mechanics had fitted the car with a new AIM Dash System which aids you in making quick and precise gear changes. The unit sits on your dash and has three colours which are set up to suit your eye, I chose white, green and blue. When it is green you need to keep pushing and only when it flashes blue do you change up a gear, you may have seen this in cockpit shots of Lewis Hamilton’s car as it’s the same technology.

After being briefed on the system I headed out onto the track in the pouring rain with just a handful of other cars that dared to come out in this weather, so a very quiet day and perfect to test the car’s limits in the wet.

I had set myself a target time for the day which after the first few runs, I thought was going to be impossible to achieve, but each time I came into the garage Paul Robe (Team Principle) and Declan (Technician) from PARR Motorsports downloaded the cars VBOX data and pointed out areas where I could improve, guiding me towards more ambitious braking or earlier full-throttle points. 

The morning session went well apart from a 360-degree spin at the top of the notorious Craner Curves but I managed to keep control and stay on track. The multiple trips to different skid pans with my trainer Nick Arnold last year definitely paid off. Then finally during the first session after lunch, I managed to not only meet my target time but I had beaten it by one second.

I came off the track!

Five laps after hitting my target time I out braked myself into McLean’s and went backwards at speed into the gravel trap. This was my first experience of properly coming off a track and also causing the circuit to be stopped while a rescue truck pulled me back onto the circuit. The safety response was amazing, fire rescue and the tow truck were with me in under a minute. Subsequently, our garage had more shingle in it than Brighton seafront as the mechanics un-picked the gravel from every orifice of the car. 

These two incidents did not un-nerve me, I wanted to know exactly what I had done wrong to make sure I didn’t do it again and wow the VBOX data told me everything. It would seem that ambition got the better of me! The faster you go to find your limit the finer the threshold for errors become so you can’t go faster unless you have some mishaps along the way, best just suck it up and carry on. Most drivers hate racing in the wet but I love mastering the changing conditions, however, as you may have seen watching F1, the risks are far greater. 

Although we were all a bit wet and cold by the end of the day, the whole team finished on a high. We were all pleased with the car’s performance and also that I had advanced several techniques to a higher level. As I left I was looking forward to the next Test Day in February to build on this further and hopefully stay on the track too! 

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