On the 24th of September over 3 million pounds worth of some of the worlds best supercars turned up at Edinburgh airport for the “Race the Runway” event.

48 Cars took place at a price of £250 a head (and limited spectator tickets at £50), which helped raise over £16,000 (25,000 USD) to go towards supporting the The Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice and St Columbia’s  Hospice, and will now doubt help raise the quality of life of those suffering from devastating illnesses.

Amongst the all-star lineup were.

Aston Martin DB7
Aston Martin DB9
Aston Martin DBS
Audi S3
Audi RS6
Audi R8
Bentley Continental GT
Bentley Continental GTC
Caterham R400
Corvette Z06
Ferrari 360 Modena
Ferrari F40
Ferrari F430
’32 Ford HotRod
Ford GT40
Ford Focus RS (2009)
Ford Mustang GT
Ford Sierra Cosworth
Honda S2000 (supercharged)
Lamborghini Murcielago 670-4 SV
Lotus Exige
Maserati GranSport
Mercedes SL55 AMG
Mercedes S63 AMG
Mercedes CL63 AMG
Mitsubish Evo VI & VIII (Wallace Perfomance Time Attack Cars)
Nissan Skyline GT-R (R33)
Nissan GT-R (R35)
Porsche 911 GT3
Porsche 996 and 997 Turbos (quite a few….)
Porsche Carrera 4
Rolls Royce Phantom
Subaru Impreza WRX Sti
Ultima GTR

   

And me finding myself the rather out gunned in a ’91 R32 GT-R, which isn’t surprising considering my car was probably the oldest car there bar the ’32 Ford and the similarly aged Ferrari F40. But I just took the whimsical approach of “it’s for charity right? and really, how many times do you go all out without the boys in blue pulling you over?”

Funnily enough as all the owners stood in the car park waiting to get past security it was the supercar owner’s asking me “exactly how many horsepower is that thing running?”. I guess its only natural, when some Japanese Guy turns up in a 18 y/o Skyline to play with the big boys you’ve got to assume he’s running some wangan bashing sleeper… not a stock trim, semi stage-1 with the boost only dialed up to 0.85bar.

Walking around the car park was a real treat, with cars spilling out onto the side streets in some sort of strange  supercar traffic jam, it gave me a good chance to get up close and personal with some phenomenal cars. So armed with my trusty SLR i decided to have a peek at what people brought.
To me there was only a handful of cars that really piqued my interest, first off it was the F40 i spotted as pulled in, and even though it’s not the first time I’ve been around one, even now surrounded by more modern,  faster cars i can help but smile inside when i see one. The second was the ’32 Ford Hot Rod, even as a self confessed ricer i have a soft spot for hot rods, and muscle cars, I’d probably have turned up in a 77 T/A if I didn’t drive a Datsun, And the sound from that V8 was phenomenal… setting off my car alarm which was parked a good 50m away. Lastly it would have to be the LP670-4, mabye it was the garish orange paint job, or the monster carbon aero parts, it stood out making the GT40 parked next to it a little to pedestrian.

At this point, i headed back to the security office to see if it was time for me to check in… just as a R35 GT-R  pulled up behind a Midnight Purple R33 GT-R making me do a double take on the car park to check if a R34 hadn’t turned up to complete the collection of modern GT-Rs.

The day ran from 3pm to 8pm at night with the cars divided into 3 groups, while 1 group would take to the runway,  the other groups would either visit the ATC or take part in a firefighting exercise in the Airplane Fire Simulator.

I was in the second group (blue) which would put pedal to the metal at around 5, so we were bundled into a waiting bus to head to the air traffic control tower where we were given a tour of the systems used to manage the traffic in the skies. Towards the end we were taken up to the balcony of the tower and able to have a look at the views of the airport and the surrounding land. Needless to say quite a few folk were distracted at the action on runway 2  where we could see little insect size cars racing up and down… and i think most if not all of us were itching to get back to the action.

When we got back we were ordered to collect our cars and take them to the gate that would get us airside, so I hopped into my car and proceeded to line up at the gate.. where we lined up 2by2 and headed back into the office of Greer Aviation for a briefing on how the day would proceed.

Once briefed and dressed up in Hi-Vis jackets, we headed back to our cars to await being escorted to the runway.  Of course at this point it has to be said, the cars had been sitting for a few hours and had to be warmed up, and if anyone is looking for proof that boys never grow up, it didn’t take long for the sound of idling engines to turn into a symphony of throttle blipping and “who’s the loudest” silliness. It’s allways handy having a straight through exhaust system at times like this… but even my RB26 couldn’t compete with the growl of a Ferrari V8 coming from next to me.

After play time was over we proceeded up to the runway to line up and get organised into who we were going to be racing. Initially i was next to the F430, and i was thinking to myself this could be fun, but lo and behold it’s the R35 GT-R that pulls up next to me. (apparently the race order was based on each cars performance… maybe I should have explained to the organisers a R32 GT-R is not the same as a R35 GT-R) As he stopped, down came the windows, and GT-R driver and myself chatted as we waited behind a RS6 and the S3. Eventually it was our turn, so we travelled up the runway to the start point, and parked up at the staging area where the marshalls double checked everything was good to go, and one of them cheekily remarked “so.. what do you reckon against that thing”,  i had to laugh and say “no chance if he uses launch control, have you not seen the 0-60 on those things”

Of course i was going to use launch control…which was going to turn bad.

We lined up, and i flicked my safety switch that engages the second stage limiter on the handbrake, and blipped  the throttle a few times to check it was bouncing of the 5k limit… then i waited for the marshall to set the lights, as he got ready to set the lights, i loaded the drive train, right foot down, clutch just on the bite, and the car rocking back and forth only held by the handbrake…. complete with WRC style pops and bangs coming from the exhaust as i hit the limiter (allowing me to launch at full boost, with the unburnt fuel’s mass spooling up the turbos)

red

yellow

green

and bang, I’m away.. and a second later hitting the limiter, so thinking “gosh that was a fast launch”, shifted to second, again on the limiter, so again shifted into the 3rd, at which point the realisation the car wasn’t doing more than 100km/h and hitting 5k limit of the 2 stage limiter,  and not the ecu limiter…so i shoved the handbrake down to make sure it was fully off, which disengaged the 2 stage, and away i went hitting the 8k limit and producing a mega backfire as i went past the bus load of spectators. into 4th… then 5th normally and it was all over 1200m later.

The peak hold speed meter showed 215km/h on that run, which at the end of the day isn’t that impressive….

so back to the queue of cars to wait for run two…

Eventually i was up again, this time against one of the 996TTs owned by a nice guy i had been chatting to earlier about Porsches.

I decided after the rev limiter fiasco i would avoid going for a full bore / full boost launch, just in case.. I didn’t want a 8k backfire happening again, especially if the fuel decided to ignite in the turbos (not good). So i just blipped the car a few times, took it to 4k and dumped the clutch… and then bogged down (quite the opposite of the almost rocket like propulsion of the first run). Needless to say at this point i wasn’t best pleased but decided just to keep my foot down and go for it… in the end hitting a top speed of 246km/h (150mph) which was better, and 160km/h (100mph) in around 10secs (not bad, at all when you consider the rather slow launch), (telemetry was recorded using RaceChrono + PerformanceBox).

I did kick myself a bit since i really wanted to be fast, but I look at it as a learning experience for next time. I really should have ditched the spoiler and N1 boot lip if i was going to Vmax the car, since the phenomenal amount of drag they produce after 120mph is like trying to race a brick, and not really helped by the gear ratios of the stock 5-speed. I guess if i had been serious, the spare, stock tool kit, bag off other tools, wrenches, breaker bars and other crap that fills the boot should have been ditched in effort to lighten the car, and if i was on top of my game I should have swapped over to the 17x9s wrapped in Direzza Sport Z1′s I have lying in the hallway of my place… 

On the bright side, at least i was only weighed down by 1/4 of tank of fuel.

After parking the car back up and leaving it to cool down, i decided to watch the remaining guys do their runs..  the Time Attack Evo’s were spanking everyone in my group, but at least the GT-R was redeeming itself by coming in a good 3rd. Later the GT-R owner said the one guy he wanted to race was the 996 turbo which got knocked out just before the final.

After the racing we all headed back, parked up and went out to the airport fire station to take part in a fire fighting exercise were we kitted out in full fire fighting gear and taken to a mock up plane complete with smoke and real flames to experience what it’s like as a fire fighter. It was a really good experience though walking around in blacked out mock up plane full of smoke is rather disorientating when you can’t see what you are doing.

Once all the groups were done racing and their other activies we headed back for food, prizes and speeches from he organisers.

The fastest recorded speed of the day was 177mph, posted by one of the Time Attack Evos. With the fastest time being made by the GT40. Needless to say the day had its casualties, the roof of the Z06 decided to get airborne,  one of the Time Attack Evos ran into problems from a cracking brake disc, and the Ultima gave up the ghost, but even with a few folk suffering from issues it was smiles all round, and i look forward to taking part again next year!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 10:43 pm and is filed under Other Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.