It gives me great pleasure to announce that not only have I completed my first ever full track day – my car came home in one piece, ready for another day!

With a dry track from dawn until dusk, I managed to hammer in about 100 laps in my VW Golf R with no real dramas or problems to report. Just consistently lapping faster and faster throughout the day until the brakes and tyres screamed no more and I headed from the M25 home.

As planned, I started the day with 20 minutes of one on one tuition with Tony Halliwell. He was a really good instructor, very encouraging and happy with what I had to offer. I videoed the full thing as a reference, opting for a centrally mounted dash cam angle for this session.

As you can see, things started of quite smooth and quite slow to begin with. I was processing a lot of information through my ears, whilst contending with all the information that was coming through my eyes, hands and back side (yes you really do compute every single bump in the road and slip of the tyres through your bum!), but as the session past I got much, much faster.

As the day wore on, my confidence in the car and in my own ability started to sky rocket – my lap times started to tumble. I tried out two different angles on the GoPro in the afternoon for your viewing pleasure:

I could have done so many more laps if it wasn’t for how hot the brakes and tyres were getting. This is my daily whip after all! It makes me want to get the Lotus Exige sorted out ASAP ready for spring 2018 so I have some options!

So 2017 is nearly over – I have something pretty exciting to announce and look forward to very early in 2018! Stayed tuned.