Tampered Motorsport Track Days at Winton Raceway

Recognising that speeding is illegal on public roads, I sought a place I could get the most out of my cars.

2008

The first year I went the car was as I bought it plus a boost controller and with newish tyres. This included front mount intercooler, exhaust and external wastegate. However the car still had factory turbo, never been rebuilt and has an internal water seal leak. The car had a great tendancy to get very hot, then on the cooldown lap spray the contents of the radiator out the overflow and all over the bonnet since I was traveling at speed. The turbo also got hot enough that at the end of the first run, when driving slowly and hence low airflow through the engine bay, the boost control hoses ignited and proceeded to burn themselves open. This lead to some emergency repairs which made the car drivable, but boost control was not possible. The day was a lot of fun, there were some cool cars about worthy of mention, which are pictured below with captions on the larger pics. Long track lap times started at 2:16.7800, and best of the day was 2:02.1600.

2009

The Second year I went the car had a few improvements: Replaced clutch with organic plate, but 880kg pressure plate, coilovers, bigger radiator and slotted rotors with bendix ultimate pads and this year the boost control T was made of brass and hoses routed as far from the turbo as possible. The car still had factory turbo, never been rebuilt and still had an internal water seal leak. The car still overheated to crazy levels even with the bigger radiator. But otherwise no problems and a slightly improved time. The day was a lot of fun, there were some cool cars about worthy of mention, which are pictured below with captions on the larger pics. Long track best time was 2:01, however an unexplainable timing error had me as best of the day at 1:23 which is an epic time. Was funny because everyone was looking for this fast car that didn't exist.

2010

The third year I went the car had few improvements and some revisions: Front and rear whiteline adjustable swaybars, wheel aligntment with toe out for faster turn in and the front mount intercooler was removed and the factory one reinstalled. This allowed much better cooling on the street, but still overheated to crazy levels on the track. I believe this is due to the interal water leak, which had been patched and improved with some silver seal but still may not allow the system to build pressure, I had a similar problem with the 1300 when the head gasket blew and it could just not stay cool no matter what. Fixed head gasket and was always sitting at thermostat temperature. The car still had factory turbo, never been rebuilt and mostly factory condition. For these reasons only 3 runs were completed, after each it spewed all it's coolant out like normal. But otherwise no problems and a slightly improved time of 2:00 flat. The day was not as great fun as previous ones and there were not very impressive cars about, fairly boring and that's why there are no photos or videos. Before I return I think I will need to rebuild the engine to fix the internal water seal issue, and install the microtech computer I've purchased.