For a supposedly superb modern (F1 LEVEL!!!!!!!1111) facility, I have found COTA pretty terrible for actual.. facilities unless you're in the garages. Even in the second paddock (or even the back of the main paddock) you're into plastic box territory and no running water for washing hands (or anything else). It's…

Am I a product of the deeply cynical internet age or did that car have something of a sudden acceleration from rest? It seemed to get to rolling speed pretty quickly and then not accelerate more as it went out the garage door.

Various - IMSA Lites, World Challenge, GT3 Cup, some SCCA stuff and I used to do things like FBMW (back when I tested at CMP regularly) - all kinds of stuff. Lots of other series in Europe/UK too.

Race Car Engineer and driver coach.

CMP is a great rack and was one of our favourites for testing, especially with young drivers. Good selection of corners.

The commentator was obnoxious. It would have been an awesome chance to explain how and why the car is able to do that - how does it know the lines, through GPS position or through sensors, for instance. Instead we get some breathlessly OMG LOOK AT THE CAR IT HAS NO PERSON IN IT UNPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bullshit.…

I thought that. Being as it hit the ground with no one steering it it is surprisingly intact.

It's hardly a slam dunk when you compare their results, to be honest. There's not much in it.

My mum is better than Chilton. What's your point?

Either way he won't be back this season. I can't imagine there's a Doc out there that would be ok with him getting in a car within 7 weeks of that injury even with an utterly statistics defying miraculous recovery, which is all the time he has left.

Or any race the rest of the season, either. So there is plenty of time for Rossi to get in and yet be respectful of Bianchi's likely career ending injury (which I'm surprised he even survived to be honest).

In fairness, though, Rossi isn't very good and probably doesn't deserve to be in one. If he wasn't an american you lot wouldn't even know his name nor care about him getting a drive. His results are... not so awesome in the lower formulae (particularly when he got into the more competitive lower levels).

Agreed. It seemed like half arsed lighting - not enough of it and/or not in the right places. Weird. But then it's hardly like COTA to fuck something up by not asking the established industry experience how best to do it and ploughing ahead on their own and making everything harder for people.....

Both the GT3 Cup races that weekend were superb. The Porsches have many more overtaking opportunities at COTA than spec/similar downforce cars. Some great racing, although even with the big screens in pit lane it was hard to see what was going on as it got dark - the TV cameras were blinded by the headlights a bit.

Is it just coincidence the video is 46 seconds long?

One of my drivers had his fire extinguisher go off while driving around Church corner at Thruxton - a long flat out corner taken in top gear. It was an open wheel race car so he was blinded by the foam going everywhere and it was only because he knew the track so well that he was able to bring the car to a stop before…

Far, far too late and too slow/small a correction. They weren't aware of the oversteer early enough nor of the multiplying effects of the car being rear-end loaded when it lost grip over the kerb.

"just like dining out, air travel is a luxury."

The McLaren was playing, or the driver sucked. The lines were terrible and he was just dropping the hammer on the straights presumably just to have fun. Whereas the Mono was mostly full on it when he got past the Mac.

That's Club straight, not Hanger Straight. They're on the Club circuit (they turned right halfway through Becketts).