Some have described it as the UK's mini-Nürburgring and they are not far off. The difference being that you stand half a chance of getting to know Cadwell and its 2.17 mile lap.  Also, Cadwell contains a corner that blows the socks off anything at the 'Ring in the form of the Gooseneck and the awesome approach you get to it through Chris Curve.   Coppice/Charlies is very intimidating and no corner at the 'Ring has barriers as close as they are at Cadwell's Hairpin.  Tight bits, fast bits, sweeps, swoops, jumps and drops. Pure magic.

The Lotus Seven Club trackday last year was my first visit to Cadwell and the repeat event this last Monday was my second.  I seem to remember that John Reeves' surreptitious stopwatch last year recorded me lapping in 1:46.7.  This year I let the datalogging do the work and I have a record of the 39 laps I drove in the day.

A bit of scene setting is required.  Following the mechanical traumas which emerged during the Nürburgring trip the week before, my car had been under the surgeon's knife.  The engine had only gone back in during late night garage sessions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and to make life particularly easy I had a commitment to be in Switzerland on Saturday and Sunday.  With three nights of four hours sleep in a row I found myself on a plane to Basle. 

Returning on Sunday evening it was 8pm before I got into Heathrow, 9:30pm before I was reunited with the Seven in Winchester and 10pm when everything was packed and ready for the off.  Another litre of synthetic oil was duly tipped into the engine, the repaired starter motor nestling within its new heat shielding cranked the engine with unaccustomed vigour and the engine started first time.  Healthy oil pressure failed to deliver a puddle onto my hosts brick driveway, but following Caterham's very specific instructions after two minute's idling I stopped the engine, let it settle for 30 seconds and then checked the dipstick.  This was my first experience of the oil/air separator's effect on the oil circuit capacity and with seven litres (call it UKP50) already sloshing around in there it was still demanding another litre.  For the first time following a week of major surgery the Seven moved under its own power and with the oil pressure light illuminating at every hint of a corner I tip-toed to the nearest garage and poured another UKP10 of liquid gold into the gaping, bottomless oil filler.

10:30pm and time to get to my hotel in Lincolnshire; a dull journey, navigated by memory that deserves no comment.  After a luxurious 5 hours' sleep I woke to a hearty, power-to-weight sapping breakfast and a half hour's drive in the sunshine to Cadwell Park.  Cadwell's 'paddock' stirred last year's memories - for those of you that don't know Cadwell, the paddock is a grassy carpark with some ribbons of haphazard tarmac snaking through it.  Chuck out the tools into a pile on the grass, sign-on, get briefed (information transfer confined to being told that our clerk of the course was "internationally qualified"), unbolt the headlamps and line up to be the first session on track.  Everything feels very familiar.  A lap behind a pace car; everyone ignoring briefing instructions to return to the paddock before being let out for real; the experienced drivers in the red session warming everything up gently (very impressive discipline); four laps of gradually building commitment; four laps trying harder and feeling how the car's balance (unchanged since the Nürburgring) handles the twistier confines of Cadwell; chequered flag, warm down lap and back to the paddock.

It all sounds pretty controlled in that description. I think I should probably expand on the "four laps trying harder" description:

WAAAAAH-HOOOOEY! Coppice flAAAAAAAAAAAAAt wheeeeee! Oops.  Where's the tail going?   Aw, it will come back. AAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEAA (Charlies 1) OOOO WRAM OOOO BRAAAAA (Charlies 2) AAAAAAAAP WOM BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP (Park Straight) EEEEEEEEE WRAM BRAAA (Park) AAAAP WOM BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAA (Chris Curve) OOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAA (Gooseneck) AAAAAP EEEEEEEE WRAM WRAM BRAAAAAA (Mansfield) AAAAAAAAAAP WOM BRAAAAAAAAAAP EEEEEEE WRAM WRAM BRAEEEAAEEEEAAAAWIMAAA (Mountain) AAP WOM BRAAAAAAOOOOEEEEEAAEEEEEAAAAAAOO (Hall Bends) EEEEEEE WRAM WRAM BREEEEAA (Hairpin) AAP WOM BRAAAAOOOOEEEEEAAAAAAA (Barn) AAAAP WOM BRAAAAAAP WOM BRAAAAAAAAAAAA (start/finish)

If you read that correctly it should have taken you 1:43.24.  The car was tail happy, but not uncontrollably so.  One year of ruminating on memories of the circuit had netted me a three second improvement in lap time and I still had the rest of the day to hunt out a bit more slack time.  Check tyre temperatures/pressures, check oil, drop rear ride height by a half turn, fill up with fuel, laze around in the sun chatting, line up for the next go....

...screeeeeeeeeescrunch. The paddock comes to a standstill.

An unhealthy sound emanating from the Hall Bends.  Some poor soul in the novice session lost the back end coming past the clubhouse and couldn't help but drive into the wall; helpfully he chose to park his car in an area offering grand views for the crowd of onlookers; thankfully the damage was confined to the car; he was already out and surveying what was left of the front end by the time I arrived to theorise on the sequence of events that led to his troubles.  The session was stopped and the recovery truck went out. Not a lot was going to happen until after lunch.

So, a 1.6 Superlight can lap Cadwell in 1:42.05 in my hands.  The analysis software shows a fastest theoretical laptime (made up of the fastest individual segment times) of 1:41.42 so I was just over half a second adrift from that.  The log shows that on my quick lap I was slow down Park Straight having overcommitted to Charlies 2; slow in fast out would have saved me 0.3s.  Although my line through Chris Curve and Gooseneck was fast and fluid, the engine revs were way off optimum in fifth gear and I probably should have been holding fourth rather than short-changing up to fifth.   Going any faster would have required some fundamental changes in my driving style.   I am encouraged that the datalogging trace in the Autosport Guide shows a laptime of 1:38.91 and looks suspiciously like a trace from David Walton's Vauxhall Caterham racecar.  The obvious places where I was losing time to that trace were under braking for Park and in the middle of the Hall Bends, although the trace was showing superior acceleration, corner speed and top speed pretty much everywhere. 

For the last green session of the day, Jo took the wheel and took me on board as passenger and instructor for a session of eight laps.  I haven't yet told Jo how to disable the datalogging, so I have a record of her first experiences of Cadwell as a driver which make for interesting comparative reading.  The best of her laps came in at 2:02.2 with a top speed of 100.3mph.  We have a signalling system for teaching the racing line and she very quickly got the basics right.  Jo's lines on the faster sections were intuitively good although she needs to practice letting the car run to the full circuit width on the corner exits.  In the slower sections, she could have done with driving deeper into the corner using a slow in/fast out line.  To make the next step, Jo needs to learn to heel and toe.  There were no heart-stopping moments which gains her graduation to any number of future events and she overtook a couple of cars who'd had all day to practice.