Arrived at Anglesey to be met by at least 40mph winds plus horizontal rain! Don't be put off though (as if!) as this is fairly normal. With the see a mere jump off the cliff away Ty Croes is fairly exposed, but once you are in the car and belted up it doesn't really matter. Anglesey is small but perfectly formed. The first corner 'School' is perhaps the ballsiest as it's a very long initially downhill right-hander which switches to uphill halfway through it. Alan Head was fortunately to hand as he is a bit of a veteran at Anglesey. Apparently the way to do it is to miss the first apparent apex and go out wide then turn in to make the second obvious apex and run out again to the outside in preparation for Abbotts. 

It has to be said in the pouring rain it was all a bit academic as merely staying on the tarmac was quite a challenge. Just to add to the fun there was plenty of standing water at the braking area into School which resulted in the odd locking of the wheels and feeling like you may just go straight on and over the cliff into the chilly looking Irish Sea! Ok, it wasn't that bad, but lets just say there were a few scary moments. Abbotts the gooning corner of the circuit had rivers running over it's apex which certainly made turn in interesting! Radar (an uphill left-hander which is flat at the top) was certainly a leap of faith. Mind you maybe half the circuit was a bit of a leap of faith as a wet track turned into a river! No surprises for guessing that an early lunch was had considering you couldn't actually see where you were going (which didn't bother me too much in all honesty)!. Priceless though was the amount of serious gooning to be had around the hairpin, endless slides with the diff locked up was just so much fun. 

images/anglesey03/anglesey_video1.wmv (200Kb clip of me going down the start./finish straight

Still wet, but it's stopped raining! Crossing the Start/Finish line after lunch

After lunch though the sun came out of nowhere and the track started to dry at an alarming rate! 

Looking down the start/finish straight toward School corner with the Irish Sea as a backdrop

Within an hour the track was bone dry and the speeds had increased considerably. Unfortunately for me, understeer was starting to get a tad annoying as I just couldn't get the front end of the car to bite on turn-in. I think this may have something to with the existing F1s being on their last legs, so will have to wait till I get some new tyres on to see if i'm going to need to fiddle with the geometry to improve this. I tried letting a few psi out the fronts, but largely to no avail.

With Alan on board though and me trying the understeer was not a major concern. I was really trying to attack the circuit in the afternoon as now the rain had cleared it was getting seriously quick. Slightly scary moment was running out of road at 80mph or so on the exit of School into Abbotts where I put an outside front into the mud, though the car did still turn-in which was fortunate. I managed to come a cropper twice coming out of the Radar complex though, once I was on the power to early and didn't make the turn-in so had to take an alternative route straight over the grassy bank which was bumpy but okay. It's worth mentioning here that it is always better to admit defeat and hit the grass straight rather than winding on more steering lock and ending up hitting the grass sideways which could roll the car. Second time round I came a cropper at the same corner and got the turn-in okay but just gave it too much power and had an excess of speed. I managed to correct a very lurid slide, but it quickly became impossible to recover, so off I went backwards into the infield which made rather a mess of the car! 

After a bit of rallying coming out of Radar

It was the nearside that took the brunt of the Anglesey mud

DJ looking well abused, which is just how it should be!

All in all, a brilliant day and a brilliant track. Thanx to Alan Head for his excellent demonstration of the correct lines and J5 for being a total git and gooning my car better than I can!