Have had a fun past few weeks with cars! Started off when one of our subbies (I work for a builder these days) invited me up to Sydney to sample a Radical for an afternoon at SMP. Some of you may know of him - Kosta from Tilton Racing with the crazy WTAC Evo.
Anyway, I got 40 minutes driving the car followed by a couple of passenger laps. First time in a wings and slicks car and the grip was insane. I honestly wasn't too surprised by the braking given how hard even my little Clio can stop on a racetrack but the weirdness of just throwing on more lock and more throttle and it sticking took a while to get used too. Also the sensation of my helmet being sucked off my head down the straight with absolutely no sneeze factor in the steering was interesting to say the least! Even with an instructor getting me to take it easy I was 165km/h at the apex of T1! The passenger lap saw T1 taken without even lifting at all!! All in all an awesome afternoon but pretty physically exhausting for unfit me. Kosta's said I did pretty well for a first time out and he'll have me back next year woohoo.
The following Friday I headed back to Sydney to take advantage of the red balloon voucher my brother gave me for my 40th - drive supercars up the coast for the day. I ended up going up the old pacific highway to Gosford and back in 4 Italian and one Japanese performance car.
First up was a Gallardo. Had this one for the trip out of Sydney then a few windy roads after. Best looking car, sounded nice but horrid seating position, crap single clutch flappy paddle gearbox and dated interior. Was still cool driving a Lambo though!
Next up was some fantastic roads in an Alfa 4C. Engine was super responsive despite being a turbo - guess the lack of weight helps there! Loved how agile it was and the gearbox better than expected. Still throttle pedal placement was really weird and high - couldn't rest my ankle on the floor and the steering was too wayward. I'd take an S2 Exige if I was after that sort of car.
The run in and out of Gosford was undertaken in a Ferrari California. Sounded so good but everything else was a bit meh. Very heavy. Gearbox not as good as I thought it would be. Steering was nice once you got it loaded up though.
Back to the awesome roads and I jumped into a GT-R. Fuck me. Fast. Real fast. Second gear would just go and if you breathed on the throttle in third you were well into licence losing territory. It just held on in corners too. You could feel the electronics doing their magic and masking the weight. Super stable under braking. Only criticism I could level at it is that it would be boring at legal speeds...
Final car was a Maser Gran Turismo MC Sportline. Actually really nice. Not a sports car but a better grand tourer than the Ferrari. Engine sounded brilliant - best of the bunch. Not a hope of keeping up with the GT-R in front of me - ESC had to keep the back in line a couple of times! But very nice car to cruise back into Sydney in after a day of hard driving. Plain old torque converter suited the car to a tee.
Out of all of them I'd probably take the Maser as a daily but the Nissan really blew me a way. For a stock road car to be that quick at that price...
And to cap off the last few weeks, I've picked up a new ride myself. First change of car in seven years and, sadly, I'm saying goodbye to my Clio. She's been a gem and still puts a grin on my face but time for something a little bigger and more modern so I've grabbed a Czech built, Korean car - an i30N! Only picked it up yesterday so running it in but I drove a couple of demos and they were awesome fun. I backed to backed against the new Megane and came out liking the Hyundai more. It helped that the Renault was quoted at $12k more too! Easier decision in the end than I was expecting.
Anyway, that was my car filled month. Somewhat made up for the two years it's been since I played a sim (same age as child number two funnily enough)...
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