Driver Training Day at Ruapuna
(March 28th, 2009)
Words & Pictures by Ed Cook
On Saturday 28 March the Canterbury Fiat-Lancia Club organised a highly enjoyable Driver Training Day out on the Ruapuna Raceway. It so happened to coincide with my birthday so it would’ve been irresponsible to turn down the opportunity of taking our Fraser out for a birthday spin. After all – what are our toys for?
Early scrutineering on a beautiful sunny morning showed 30 various Euro cars out for the days entertainment, with a strong showing of around a dozen Lotus cars of various models. It was great to see such a strong turnout from the McGregor workshop, offering support and helpful advice to the Lotus entrants.
At the briefing, the drivers were split off into 3 groups depending on driver experience, and while the cars were being prepared, the novice drivers were taken out on to the track for one-on-one instruction and familiarisation. Following this, the track was split into two courses with two training themes included. An emergency braking exercise was held at various speeds resulting in some fantastic displays of smoke-technics, and the comparison to the modern ABS equipped vehicles was quite startling.
The second exercise involved emergency obstacle avoidance at various speeds, which also showed up the strong variances in vehicle construction and driver ability. It was on this exercise that I discovered the unfortunate condition of the rear tyres I’d fitted the night before – they’d been sitting in storage for some years and were just not up to the performance of the new tyres on the front. The result being very playful and loose backend traction issues that were to make the rest of the days' motoring surprisingly unpredictable!
