We decided to go to a track day at Motopark with a couple Urho endurance racing teams to do some track driving. We were going to drive with both the race taxi and our "Urhon ajot" beetle. The engine of the beetle broke in the first event of the year after an hour. Pekka from the team KLR had promised to repair the engine before Motopark, but because the crankshaft was in two pieces it wasn't possible to repair the engine in time. The engine is being built at the moment, and Pekka already has a new crank. But anyways, back to the subject.
We left on saturday at about 8 towards lahti, from where Erno and Pete got temporary licence plates for the Race taxi. I drove the Golf with the gridgirls. The first stop was Pekka's garage at Kangasniemi, where we got the trailer. Erno continued with the Race Taxi to the track while we made a small roundtrip and got the trailer. They said it was raining inside the Race taxi? It might make a good greenhouse. During the trip we filled some holes in the wheelwells to make the water spray less in the cabin. We arrived to Motopark at approx. 13:30 hours. First we did was empty all the tools and spare parts from the Race taxi and headed to the race track. At this point we had driven it 270km (170mi).
The first thing at the track is to measure the sound level, which is metered as the car drives by. The limit had just changed to 95db and the race taxi made 105db passing the metering point, even though we had last week refilled the silencer with new sound deadening material. The clever racers we are, we headed to the dumpster at the track and found an old oil filter from a motorcycle. Adding the oil filter to the exhaust dropped the noise to 100db, so more was needed. Luckily we found another oil filter and adding it to the previous one dropped the noise to 94db. So track driving could begin.
I'll need to mention that the race taxi's sound after the wild exhaust modifications were more like a jet fighter than a race car. The exhaust back pressure was so high that we only got 0,4bar boost.
At the beginning it was quite wet, but it dried quite quickly. We had a fun time and gave a ride to a group having their bachelor party at the race track. Other Urho cars at the track were KG-Racing.
And KLR (their newest evolution doesn't even need any tires).
Also the Hyvinkää's group was there, unfortunately I didn't get any pictures
DWL was also at the event, but with other than Urho cars.
After the Motopark session we headed to Lappeenranta Midnight Cruising. We had to arrive at 18:00 so Erno had to jump back in time a bit with the Race Taxi ;).
We arrived just in time before the parking lot where the event was held was closed. There were many great looking cars there, and we found a nice place for the Race Taxi in a corner with many other VAG group cars. The event was well arranged and there were really a lot of great cars there ranging from off road cars to tricked out tuning cars. One car that really caught my eye was an 190 Mercedes benz that was really low and tuned with respect to the original nature of the car. Another nice car was a tiny VW Lupo just next to where we were.
After staying in the parking lot of Prisma all cars headed to an local gas station. There were loads of people by the road and we felt like stars when they all were loud and cheering for us (might be that it was the other way around, but I guess it depends on how you look at it). Hopefully the Jetta in front survived home after the steam show it had. I'll put pictures from the show as soon as I get them from somewhere.
