The unseasonal weather made this a really cold and soggy start. It also chased away many of the casual entrants we were expecting for the day! I was looking forward to driving the track again after some years since I last competed there in the Reynard during the NZ GP.
Pukekohe was at its wet weather best, with most of the track workably grippy, but the front straight was pretty slippery. We had the dampers backed right off to chase some grip but it wasn’t fun.
The big lesson of the day for me was the letdown of the pagid RS14. They make lovely fast road pads but were not up to track work. You couldn’t get them to bite and I was losing quite a lot of braking zone as they came on. It will be interesting to see what happens on the shorter tracks where the temps stay up.
Rebecca did a several lap session that was only her third drive in the car since we bought it. She had fun in spite of the cold and rain. This was our first track excursion with the Exige and was a great learning experience.
We had a pretty drive to Whangamata. The highlight was when we finally blasted past a slow car we had been stuck behind I turned to Rebecca and said “Now we have a clear road, a great car and it has stopped raining” but then we crested the next rise into solid fog!!
After the track day at Pukekohe we did 120km in convoy to the delightful surfie town of Whangamata for our overnight stop at the Cabana Lodge Motel… just say no!
The forecast for Taupo tomorrow is max 11 and snow down to 400m so who knows!?
