Trackday - Bedford Autodrome

I've now clocked up 1500 miles on the car, so far mainly over the winter months. The weather was now starting to get nice so I decided to look into booking a track day. By now I've also been to quite a few meetings with other Caterham owners and I've been to a mixture of meets. My main meetups are with one set of enthusiasts near Leamington and another near Coalville. Once you get to know fellow owners there are numerous opportunities for getting out and about in the Caterham with them. I used this opportunity to join a group of them at Bedford Autodrome for an entire day track session.

I arrived at about 7:30am, which was well in advance of when was needed, but there weas no queue to sign on and then I was able to head straight to the cafe for a cooked breakfast which was a great size and also not expensive. Once breakfast was done we had the briefing at about 8:30 which you have to attend otherwise you will not be going on the track.

Straight after the briefing you have to drive to the paddock/pit lane and they will then conduct a static sound check on your car at a fixed RPM (4000) For the record I have a 420R, currently stock, except I have a foam coned induction air filter under the bonnet. I passed the test and it was under the limits enough not to panic.

Once I got to the pits, I joined most of the other Caterham owners who were all in the process of removing their windscreen and swapping it for an aero screen (which I will also be doing, however my first laps will be with the windscreen so I can scope it out). I also setup the camera ready to record.

I'd also booked tuition which was the best thing I did on the day. I was able to go out straight after the sighting laps with them and learn the corner speeds and best lines.

Once the tuition session was over, I quickly swapped out the windscreen for the aeroscreen and wrapped my windscreen in some rubber matting which OI brought along to protect it with. Already my camera was a mess with flies and t his quickly became the most annoying thing of the day as I had to clean it between each session.

Once back at home I quickly prepared the videos which you can see below, this first video was my best lap on the day near the end. I could have gone faster but I was happy with how much I was pushing it and it was after it had rained slightly, I didn't want to make any silly mistakes now.

At one point during the day there were a few cars grouped up, but it was relatively easy to get past them, although there is a GT3 on this video that must not have seen me waiting behind it to get past.

We did have a rain shower just after lunch. These videos show just how slippy it can be in the wet sections (which you can easily see on the track based on the reflections)

At most trackdays, they also have track photographers. I bought a few of these to remember the occasion by: