Today was my first track day, and what a track to start on at Oulton Park. Or not. Well actually it isn’t as bad as it sounds. While they don’t recommend going on your first track day at Oulton I had driven Rockingham before with instructors and also done a number of driving experiences so I wasn’t a complete novice, so the friendly chaps at Lotus on Track (they allow other cars on track too) said I can come along but book two sessions of instruction which I did.

The day before I had already spoken to Mo to get some pointers for tyre pressures and general running of the car so it was sat on the drive with a new set of Toyo Proxes R888s, the right about of oil for driving on track and a topped up coolant bottle. Everything is ready to rumble.

In the morning things didn’t look good. The car started OK, but after a few miles developed a splutter under hardish acceleration. It was a cold and damp night so I thought maybe that was to blame, but it never went on the drive to the track. I stopped off at the Shell station nearest the track which was full of Lotus cars (hardly surprising really considering it was a Lotus track day) and after that the problem seemed to be cured. I gave it some beans, maintained high revs and there wasn’t a splutter to be heard. Excellent.

My mood was dampened slightly on the familiarisation laps when the splutter returned. I called Mo to see if he had any pointers and checked the obvious things, but did notice one of the HT leads looked like it had seen better days. The car seemed to run fine for about 3 laps and then develop the splutter, but a short cool down would let it run for another few laps. I kept this going until dinner time before going in search of a solution, or rather a new set of HT leads. Unfortunately Halfords didn’t have them in stock and nor did the local Toyota dealerships, but with the car being so old it wasn’t unexpected. I decided to head home and drop the car into Ric Wood Motorsport who also looks after my Monaro.

The highlight of the day, or rather the brown trouser moment of the day was at Druids after I made a bit of a mess of the entry and got a little sideways. Much to my delight, the driver of the car behind found me in the paddock afterwards and said he had it all on camera. In high definition. Oh great.