ZWARTKOPS RACE TRACK

TRAINING SESSION

22 January 2003

(pictures at the bottom)

Although only 4 members "dared" to put their Audi's on the track (André, Chris, Nick and Philip), we were a total of 12 altogether. André (S6), Chris (A4 3.0Q), Clint (TT) who came with Gert, Gerrit (S3), Hermann (S3) with his brother George, Nick (S3), Philip (S6), Raschald (A4 1.8), Sherwin (BMW M3) and Walter (with his now fixed A3 1.8T).

That was great as we had plenty people to time the laps and take pictures.

It was very hot, in fact extremely hot with +/- 35º C ambient temperature, which meant the track was very slippery and the lap times were four to five seconds slower than on a cool day. Everyone there, including pro-drivers were complaining how slippery and slow the track was that day. The best lap time (1'21.8) was done by André and Sherwin who have both been at Zwartkops before. Both have done much better times on cooler days, hence it is safe to assume that with better conditions they would have lapped around 1'17.4.

Philip and Chris also did very well. Philip (with ContiSportContact tyres) being only 2.4 seconds behind André's time (with Bridgestone S-03 tyres). Chris' performance was impressive, improving his lap times from the first session to the last by 7 seconds! and ending up only 2.9 seconds slower than Philip. Nick also improved during his lap times by some five seconds.

André and Sherwin were doing almost identical times, which considering the S6 has a tiptronic box and is 340 kg heavier than the M3, is no mean achievement and proves the S6 deserves to be respected as a high performance car/sedan. (or any Audi for that matter ).

On the other hand with the heat and the stress, the front Continental tyres on Philip's S6, lost chunks of rubber, some so deep that the metal casing could be seen. This is actually quite unacceptable from a performance tyre. Needless to say that a few days later Philip had his four tyres replaced with Bridgestone S-03's.

Gert brought is Racelogic V-Box (GPS/DGPS) which was fitted in André's car. André and Clint did some laps to plot the track. After that André drove with the V-box which recorded all the data of the afternoon, such as lap times, G forces, speeds at any point around the circuit and so on. The V-Box is an invaluable tool for those who take track racing seriously. The V-box is also used to get performance data when road testing cars or any other "moving objects". 

Sessions like we had at Zwartkops have much more to do with knowing and learning about your car and your driving abilities than with racing. As we witnessed, those who had never been on a race track before have been able to substantially improve their driving skill, which in turn makes them better driver on public roads.

It was very nice to see all of you mentioned at the top and we will certainly repeat this sort of event during 2003. It seems as though everyone enjoyed themselves, specially the "drivers".

Once the track was closed, some of us drove to "Fat Arnies" for a couple of drinks afterwards. Nick was waxing himself lyrical about the good times he had on the track ...... Actually we were all waxing ourselves lyrical about the past afternoon! 

André van den Heuvel

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