Due to an unfortunate “OFF” by a friend during a BLATT in his Z4 M series ……
(Blatt, n ... to describe the physical doing of taking a motor vehicle for a drive on some great roads...)
……I came to the conclusion, that the Caterham 7 kept me within my limits of driving…let me “Dance with the devil in the pale moon light” …or go as close as I dare to the limits, while never really getting into any serious problems.
If I came off, it would be due to not paying attention to what the 7 was trying to tell me. My Fault.
THE BLATT
PLEASE NOTE this was all done all at well under the posted speed limits …. Because you have to be born with the last name Schumacher to:
- A. Drive faster then that on these very twisty national park roads …and
- B. Afford to .. 1. Buy the car to do it, 2. Maintain it…..and 3 live with yourself if you do happen to wack it into a tree or two…….
Five cars … two Z4’s, one being the aforementioned M series, one MX5 (the new bigger better …may have lost its edge version), one Frazer Clubman (a very nice NZ reproduction / clone of the 7 concept) and my 1.4lt K series Caterham. (Do I hear laughter from those who are without knowledge …? Read on)
SUNDAY, eight am (ish)
We had taken off on one of those “English” sort of days, grey skies, sunshine, rain and more sunshine. We headed for the roads outside Melbourne, to the north east, in the hills around Marysville. This is rain forest, hilly, really twisty stuff we are talking about …. Like leave it in third gear and just bang away at the brakes and throttle …..
We swapped positions during the day, but first up, I was up front, having the time of my life. Second was Greg in the Frazer, coming to grips (or no grip) with those road / track tyres in the early morning damp conditions.
Third from memory was David in the Z4 M series, David two in the second Z4 (74% of Z4 owners are named David …. True) and Adam as tail end Charlie in the New MX5.
After twenty minutes (seems like five) of left and right wrist flicks we hit a “T” junction, I am 500 metres or so in front so I drop to the side as the crew come through. Just checking we still had everyone, as the road was a bit wetter then we would have wanted, and the previous nights storm had ripped bits off trees and scattered it all over the road.
Later when we stopped for coffee I found the compost mix the front wheels had churned up and spat at the rear guards of the Caterham. A Gooey one centimetre mix of bark, leaves and road kill….. Now I carry a spatula in the boot.
It was at this stop, after much conversation, and coffee with my fellow blatters, that it occurred to me, that while I was in a realm of up most joy flicking my Caterham from left to right to left, being one with the car, Having a sensory conversation with the front wheels through the small alloy and cow skinned steering wheel, listening to the rover K series engine do its best to try and wake the local nocturnal forest animals, feeling the exact location and direction of the rear wheels ( there is no other way to say this) through my arse, having my nose and eyes go through a rinse cycle so to try and make my face even colder, so as to complete the cycle to make my eyes and nose water some more, …plus add the occasional impact of a small water droplet at seventy odd kilometres and hour in the eye …(ouch)
…..my fellow friends in their more expensive (we will cover off what’s now more expensive in another article …..As the price of a seven has now …. Let’s say ….gotten a lot dearer) …..and, lets say … over engineered motor vehicles, …were at the same time, hanging onto their Air Bag equipped, bland plastic and fux leather steering wheels…. (The Air Bag will be needed soon) …. for dear life, squirming on there heated leather seats, (OK my Caterham has leather seats as well, so not a good analogy), hoping the electronic power steering will try to impart some knowledge as to the whereabouts of the front wheels and in which direction they might be thinking of going.
I digress again … as I assume at this point I have lost those readers who could be described as … “First timer auto lovers… looking for some fun on the other side (nee dark side)….” As they will not have understood the concept of being one with a motor vehicle, (sounds sort of weird) and they have just spent weeks convincing themselves that the cooking model BMW one series (auto) is a great first step onto the next rung of the corporate jungle ladder.
So for those that are still with me, please read on.
….where was I ….Yes …. OK ..they had heaps of horse power … heaps of it ….bucket loads even, but all to no avail on the roads we were on…you see, if you are hanging on for dear life trying to feel where the front wheels are, then having the rear wheels try and cut in on you in the middle of the dance at the next corner …it is more then rude, its down right scary.
So there they are, swinging left and right on the airbag, chins up, trying to see the road before it disappears, sliding across the cow hide with bum cheek mussels working over time to stop the slide, as well as send out reconnaissance signals for any sign of the rear wheels deciding to drop tools and go off in another direction. All with Jimmy Barns screaming from the I pod inserted in the centre consol, and then being cut off by the girl in the sat nav saying “where possible …. Please perform a U-Turn” …
Sorry…but that’s not fun …..and strangely enough …..Because a lot of people have never driven a Caterham (or a clubman) … they accept that all that hanging on, sliding bum numb feeling of driving …. Is good!! ….OK … I accept that on an open long stretch of road I would prefer to be in a different car, but we were out looking for some ultimate twisty roads.
So here we were looking for the drive of our lives… I thought I had just driven it, but my friends were a bit …. Shall we say ….off put by it all.
“That was a little scary …. Boy … don’t know how you were so far in front ….don’t know if I want to do that again!!!!”
Now in Greg’s defence the Frazer had OLD road/ track tyres, so yes he was not having a lot of fun, but he was still leading the pack of the other guys.
The sun was now shinning, the coffee and cake was great, and so in a brave move Greg tells us that up behind Healesville are some more great roads. I assume this was more or less a way of saying … hey that stuff in the wet was a bit poor, so lets hunt some bent tarmac in the dry …..This may have been our down fall ….
We bugger off out of Healesville, Greg up front in the Frazer, Adam second in the MX5, David “one” in the Z4 M series, David two in the 2nd Z4, then myself (Gavin If you have forgotten) in the Caterham at the rear.
Now the dry is a big change in the thought process, and one you have to talk to yourself about as you try to keep up.
“You are only in a 1.4lt car, you cannot expect to keep up”….David “one” has 250(something) Killer watts at his disposal …. The new MX5 has over 100kw (someone will contact me and tell me the exact figure …. Me … I could walk over to my collection of EVO magazines and quote the figure, but hey … who really cares).
Man …. Those boys were looking for some fun …
The BMW ECU’s would have been chatting big time to all the sensors, and then relaying back to the steering systems, the throttles and the safety boys (EDS …DSD…PSEFG… I dunno …they are traction & Braking controls as far as I know) in the Z4’s all the necessary changes required to keep those big pieces of metal on the thin strip of black top we were now on.
Now we were in a formation of five, twisting and turning through the hills behind Healesville. We would have looked pretty neat. I have a pretty vivid imagination, so there at the back of the pack I thought,
“What if …”
What if a bunch of SAS guys were doing some sort of training day in the bush … they would be all kitted up, hiding in the quite country landscape ….. when all of a sudden the quiet would be removed and replaced with the sound of five cars being driven at pretty close to the limits “of the drivers” (not the cars) …. One by one, barely a cars length between them at times.
It didn’t even cross my mind what happened next.
Brake ……. Right foot down … twist left …. Flick right …. Brake … down to second …on the gas ….back to third …..
All I saw, really from my point of view, was David “two’s” rear of his Z4, and at times I would question his brake lights …
“Why brake there?”...
It was at one of those “why brake here ...” moments that I realised everyone WAS braking, and braking hard ….
This all happens really quickly now … so stay with me...
What happened was …
Greg up in the lead, must have thought he was holding the boys up … so in a small clearing, just before a small bridge across a dry cutting / gully, Greg pulled the Frazer in, held up his arm and waved everyone through …
Adam in the MX5 was behind Greg, and pulled in with him …. This left the road open for David “one” to plant his right foot into the foot well of the Z4 M ….and blast past …
David “two” must have thought …”what the ….” And pulled in behind Adam ….and Greg...
This left me to rock on into the middle of this changing of the guards … I saw three cars to one side, David “one” was now in front of me … when I saw Greg with his arm just waving us through, I knew all was OK … it was just a rotation of positions ….
I was now 2nd behind the Z4 M ….
I had not been anywhere near the Z4 M all day … but at times during the day, I heard its low bellowing exhaust note, and pop and crackle as David lifted off the steam in a corner …
My Only thought was …. This is going to be the best day ever … topped off by the last bit, being behind an “M” series BMW at full song …. How joyous can that be …?
Wrong ….
No more then three or four turns from that point of the changing of positions ….
Note … these roads are cut into the hill side, so you have a reasonable drop to one side, and just hard earth and rocks in the cut away to fit the road in …
The Z4 M was well within my sights, but had pulled away ….Fast gentle right ….point left …. Across the apex of a fast gentle left … (we were going gradually down hill now) ….the Z4 M was now at the next corner, which for all intents and purposes looked from my position to be a slowish right … would have to brake hard …..
Bang …
The red Z4 M was trying to climb to the top of the cut away hill ….
Within seconds I was at the scene, and was passing David … the Z4 had continued on for another 50 odd metres …
As I passed the still moving Z4 …. I looked across to see if David was alright ….
He passed a sorrowful glance back at me he does not remember … but it said heaps …..
In his face … and surrounding him was white smoke … and it was smoke not powder … that was from the discharged airbag …. You could clearly see the white bag hanging from the steering wheel.
Now this position on the road was not the best for five cars to pull up, so Adam and I had to proceed around the bend to find a bit of space to pull over ….
Once I had run back … it was evident David was OK, but was shaking his wrist like it hurt a bit …. His glasses still a bit lop sided on his face ….
The Z4 M looked very sad indeed ….not a lot of front on damage, but the front left (passenger side) wheel and strut were now pushed back into the passenger foot well. …..
I wont go into the pulling the car out on a flat top story as it has no real interest, other then any good car on a flat top like that is a sad sight.
David “one” was OK, and that was good ….
So this brings me back to what I said at the beginning …after much discussion with Greg, we had come to a similar train of thought …that the 7 kept us within our limits of driving, ………or let us go as close as we dared to our limits (note … we say our limits and not the cars limits as the cars would dearly hang on way past the point we dirtied our pants), while never really getting into any serious problems.
Our assumptions were the Z4 M ended its life (it was written off) due to the simple mistake we all could make, of applying a bit too much go pedal when you should have been braking ….
Massive understeer …. Rear wheels pushing the car straight off the corner into a tree stump that was a left over from some long ago widening of what must have been a single lane road to a one and a half lane road it is today ….didn’t matter if David was pointing in the right direction or not ….also was not enough time for the ECU to bark any orders to the traction control / braking control safety systems …. I suppose it just went F##K and ignited the explosives in the steering wheel to let the airbag out. Applying power when you should have been braking, hoping the car would hang on through the bend, and a very tight bend …. Will not work ….bingo … end of story ….
Made a great day turn sort of glum ….. We all went home on a low, when we should have been buzzing ….ready for the boring work week ahead …. (That pays for us to be able to do this ….)
But …… another blatt calls …… even if it will be a bit slower then previous ….