Ekona

Then the question is irrelevant, as you can't get MPS4S in 18" sizes. However, the regular 4 is better than the MPSS, and the MPS4S is better still. And then there's the MPSC2, which are near perfection.

It's only a car. Drive it as much as you can and park it wherever, no point owning something nice and never driving it. If if does ever get a dink then so what? That's what you pay insurance for. Life's too short to worry about stuff like that. Enjoy what you have, you work hard enough for it.

What size wheels do you have?

All the new cars look bloody awful, and that's saying something after the last couple of years. The Merc in particular looks massive!

Do you mean the little plastic trim clips? You can get a ton of them on eBay in all different shapes and sizes, dirt cheap.

Nope, unless you run your own policy you have zero NCB. I'll caveat that with the fact that some insurers will give you a discount on a policy in your situation, but then the next year you'll be back to 1 year NCB.

Better, or easier?

You need to go drive a fast Caterham, I suspect you'd absolutely adore the broadside-ability of the thing

Can't remember tbh. Prob Japfest.

That text reminds me exactly why I don't enjoy reading most car stuff written by Yanks. It's a needlessly aggressive tone he picks right from the start, and it's off putting to read as it automatically gets people's backs up. Not sure what his point it, tbh. Slow cars are easier to learn in? Well duh. Slow cars are easier to handle at the limit? Obviously. Fast cars are really good fun to drive fast? Most of the time... Personally I had more fun at Bedford in my MX5 with a whopping 130bhp than I did in a Cayman R on the same day. I'd built my speed up over the years too by starting out in slower cars before progressing, but the biggest amount of progression I ever made was when I owned the VXR220. Not because of the speed of the thing, either incredibly rapid compared to an MX5 or incredibly slow compared to a 458, but because it gave tremendous amounts of feedback. That's the biggest key to driving cars fast, is having a car that tells you what it's doing and then (and more importantly) being able to interpret that information into inputs. I don't disagree that it's better to learn in slow cars first, but only because stuff happens slower. If the choice was between a Clio 172 or a TTRS, you'd be better off in the Clio. If the choice was between the same Clio and a Caterham 420R, the Caterham would teach you far more IMHO. Just my thoughts any way. No right or wrong here, folks

And no disrespect meant to GreenLandy who wrote his car off there last year, he took it far better than I would have and I'm not convinced he did anything massively wrong after chatting with him on the day.

Aim for about 15mins before everything opens properly, that way you won't queue for too long but neither will you be stuck in the middle of nowhere. Eeep, sorry dude! All I will say is that make sure you're 100% happy with your track insurance, and don't dream of running the session without it. I've seen way, way too many close calls on these taster sessions at Silverstone across the PHSS as well as the big shows like Japfest, Trax etc. I'd love to get mine on track too, but I just won't risk it having seen the standards of driving. I'm sure half of it is down to the briefing/marshalling too, mind. What time are you running? Later sessions seem to be better than the early ones, especially as the section round by the pits doesn't get the sun until much later (and that's the worst part to crash, as there's a very solid wall there).

*makes mental note never to let AliveBoy drive my car*

Probably not, trouble is you never know until you try it I guess.

Hopefully the weather will be decent, although the track sessions are always carnage anyway so maybe a bit of rain will make them even more entertaining... Not that I want to see anyone damage their cars, but there's always at least half per session who have no idea that three abreast into a corner isn't a good idea.

Don't worry about it, just come along anyway, always tons of space at SS

I'll be there, not tracking though.

Lesson learnt, always read the instructions where it specifically says to mask stuff off. Respray time I'm afraid.

Told you I was going to waste it

:lol:

Oh, MPSS/Porsche/portrait vids etc.

I can still remember my first post on here, I think it was about a week before I bought mine and I'd found that it had the issue where the window wouldn't come up again. Bizarrely that issue that was really really common a few years back has pretty much died a death now, we don't get too many 350Z owners on here asking about that any more. Same with clicky axles, that used to be a daily routine almost. Actually it was Feb 2nd I picked the car up, I remember now as it was supposed to be the 1st but the useless buggers didn't get the paperwork done in time. Meant picking it up on a Saturday rather than a Friday night, IIRC. Ah, those were t' days, back when this was all fields...

Heh, I've assisted with my own MOTs before as well, feels very weird the first time!

I really like garages where they just let you walk in and have a look around at stuff. Center Gravity were happy for me to even get involved in doing some bits on my car the other week, and Roger Clark Motorsport made a point of showing us around when we took the Scoob there last week. My local indie BMW place is also happy for me to walk around when I'm there. Porsche Colchester were also excellent, and it was so handy to talk to the tech who was actually working on my car at the time so he could point bits out. I can see why bigger chains with more paranoid H&S people might not want to let you though, one more thing out of their control and a risk assessor's nightmare.

I'm going to deliberately waste it on purpose now