After an unusually long month off, it was time for the next round of TimeAttack at Oulton Park, before we needed to shoot across the Pennines to Cadwell on the Sunday. Another busy weekend!
I would only be bringing the RS3, and this time Luke was driving the Ibiza. The TT would be waiting for me at Cadwell when I arrived (hopefully!).

Below is the layout of Oulton Park, we would be doing the full International Layout, which is what we normally do, and the first time the Championship had been here since 2013.

TimeAttack uses TSL for timing, which is where all the data is taken from. The Lap Records we were aiming for are also below. Everyone expected them to fall pretty easily being over 11 years old. I was not so sure on the Club Pro Record. It looked pretty quick and Marc is a good peddler!

Full Weekend Vlog

We have a full Vlog from the weekend, with snippets of the runs:

Testing

The Friday trackday was fully booked well in advance, so we were going straight into Warm-Up on Saturday!
The various classes are split up into 15 and 20 minute sessions. We were in Club Pro for the RS3 and Clubman in the Ibiza.

Warm-up

I'd given Luke the same instructions as Tom last time out, build up slowly, do the right lines and worry about the speed later. It seemed to work, as he was around where we expected to be in the first session, not bad considering he'd never driven the track before! We now had our aims on the 2:05s!
Rob from Area decided to bring his Mk8 GTI out to play, they'd cheated and done the test session the day before, so was immediately on the pace, putting in a 1:48.7, with Luke not far behind and Dave making it a VAG and Area 1-2-3! I now had a target for the RS3, I couldn't let a road car beat a race car, could I?
As I was sitting in the pitlane waiting to go out, the RS3 was not running very nice. Since fitting the big Injectors and Turbo, it never really likes being sat idle, so as I exited the pits, it was in limp mode. This had happened a few times before and a reset solved it, so I came in, reset and went back out. As I was doing my first lap, a warning flashed up mid corner, I didn't see what it said so carried on. My first lap was a 1:49.058, way off where I needed to be, but I didn't think it was too shabby considering I've never driven the RS3 around here.
On my next lap, I got a good visual on the warning that popped up - Low Oil Pressure! Back to the pits for a check.

With almost a second different between his best and actual lap, Luke just needed to stitch it together to improve a fair bit. I only managed 1 lap, so no idea where I should have been really.

Luke was losing most of his time in the long middle sector, but his sector 1 and 3 were 12th quickest, two higher than his overall 14th and 4th in class.

Despite being well down on power, Luke's speeds were pretty good. Mine were pretty far off in all but sector 1 where I just pipped the Caterham!

Practice

Between sessions I had the data from the VBOX HD Lite Data in Luke's car, and we could see a few areas he had to improve, more from a speed perspective than line, he just needed to carry the momentum through the long corners a little more. He knocked over 2s from his time, settling on a 2:06.163
We changed the Oil Pressure solenoid and hoped it was a simple fix, but that didn't work, so tried the Oil Pressure sensor, to see if we had any issue with that, but I was still getting the issue. It was not looking good.

Luke did his best sectors all on the same lap, which was great. So close to the 2:05s we were aiming for!

He'd improved a lot in sector 2, which had bumped him up the overall order, even though he stayed in 4th in Clubman Class.

You can see just how much slower the Ibiza is than his Clubman rivals, 8mph in S1 S2 and nearly 9 in sector 3! He had no chance of catching Cowley and Buckingham!

Qualifying

Luke improved again, this time by only 0.1s and still not in the 2:05s and still 4th in Class!
We'd done a compression test on the RS3 and it was not good, Cylinder 1 was way down (110PSI vs 160PSI) so the plan was to try for 1 lap in Qualifying, then pray for rain in the Final. I tried to do a lap but it was now smoking far too much. I decided to call it. Gutting, 1 lap all day!

Luke's lap showed another potential 0.2s so he wasn't praying for rain to get into the 2:05s!

Considering he'd improved his time, others in the Pocket Rocket Class had also, so the sector times were slower than others now, again still P4 in Class.

His speed stayed more or less the same.

Final

This is where it all mattered for most, the final. The RS3 was already in the trailer ready to go, the only positive I could get from it was that we would be on our way to Cadwell an hour or so earlier than planned.
The weather was looked pretty dodgy, rain had been promised all day but then kept shifting as time ticked by. It was looking like Luke was going to experience a wet Oulton for the first time right at the end of the day. We'd brought some new A052s for the front so put those on just in case.
It was dry for the first few laps, but Luke struggled to find space, then when he was in clear air, it rained just enough to grease up a few areas, bringing the times down quite a bit. He was lucky that quite a few drivers didn't set blistering times early on, so he didn't drop too far down the order and maintained the P4 position. For a while it looked like he might be on the Podium before the Scirocco punched in a decent time.

I'd done my ideal in the session, as had Ben. Josh was a fraction off, but it would have not been enough to pip me this time. Had we done a full session, I am sure I would have been behind him.

Luke's sectors had dropped off. He needed to push in the first few laps!

He'd brought his speeds closer to the top 2, but they were still a fair way down!

Laps

All the fastest laps from Round 3 are below, not many for the RS3!

The lap records for the circuit were released after the event as well:

The Championship points are below, I am still in 3rd but will be missing the next 2 rounds at least, so that won't last for long!

A day to forget for me, but it was great to see Luke enjoying himself, improving his driving and taking on board all the advice given. Thanks for the guys for supporting me, shame we didn't get any decent laps in. Hopefully tomorrow at Cadwell would be better!

Photos courtesy of Time Attack and RTS Photography

All the details and dates for future races we are entering can be found on the Darkside Motorsport Page.