I had the weekend off, I was high as a kite (for several personal reasons!), the weather looked OK, the car was fully fueled, so I jumped in and drove to the Ring. I asked the usual suspects if they wanted to come, but they were largely being gay that weekend so I was all on my lonesome 
There were a few guys I knew from the VX220 forum going, so there were a few other friendly faces there.
I took the CTR (last gen) for no particular reason. My Z has done 3 trips there, but given the CTR only does essentially work and shopping trips, after 2 and a half years and 32,000 of largely stop start miles I thought I might blow some of the cobwebs off and stretch it’s legs a little. Even better, I don’t actually own the CTR 
I had driven the CTR before for a few thousand miles but mainly in town, and a few motorway blasts. We hadn’t bonded yet.
To be honest, I haven’t driven a FWD car in anger before, and was looking forward to it hugely. I got the brake fluid changed the day before, along with slapping some redstuffs to the front. Tyres were new Toyo T1Rs all round, all with about 500 miles on them. Filled up with sweets, charged the TomTom, booked the Eurotunnel for Friday morning (bloody expensive as last minute) and was off. No local accomodation either, but I was on a mission!
The CTR has had some bad press about it’s NVH, and it’s steering feel. On a high speed cruise, it was noisy, and I am sure compared to the current generation of hot hatches it would be loud and a bit tinny, but I thought it was absolutely fine. The seats are magic – extremely comfortable, got out at fuel stops feeling fresh as a daisy, and to be honest, I found them more comfy than the Z, maybe because the side bolsters were very firm, whereas my Z ones have gone a little flat. It was also nice to have back seats to throw all your crap on to, and a glove compartment, and a proper boot.
It got to 120mph (where legal!) happily without feeling breathless, and accelerating to that speed is never ever EVER going to be something I get bored of. Hitting 8000rpm in third at 80mph ish and changing to 4th each and every time makes you feel like you’re in a BTCC car. The noise is just magic, the engine is schweeeet as a nut and the gearbox is snickety snick. Lovely. After 120mph it does fade a little – 140mph was what I managed to get to on a suitable bit of autobahn but 130 to 140 took a while. At 120 it was very stable, not light, not nervous, just happy.
Got to the ring Friday at 3pm ish, place was pretty empty as it had been raining. I waited a while and went out when there was a nice dry line. I did a slowish lap to remind myself how scary it was, pulled in after one to wait for it to dry some more. In the car park, I forgot momentarily how wide the turning circle is, and kerbed one of the alloys. The kerbage wasn’t a problem, it grazed the alloy where it already had a graze. The problem was the gouge in the sidewall of the hot T1R with a chunk of rubber missing. One lap, been at Nurburg for a total of 30 mins.
Aaaaarrrggghhh!
I reckon it would have been OK to limp home on them, or maybe even carry on using them for day to day stuff, but not something to be experimented with on track.
Tried a load of very helpful dealers locally, including VW (Golf GTI and R32 have 40 profile), Mazda (RX8 has Z sized tyres), Nissan (useless) and a couple of others – apparently 205/45/17 not a common size in Germany. The nearest Honda dealer was 40 miles away, and would have been my next stop the following day, but that would eat away into track time
I got a few addresses of places within 20 miles or so, and one had some Dunlop Sport Max in stock. I know nothing about them, but given I had just driven across Europe, any tyre would have done as long as it was new, and round. Incidentally, the TomTom 910 was just fantastic – I would have been sunk without it. The place I went to was in the middle of nowhere, but it got me there down the tiny little back roads without any fuss.
Tyres on, I eventually did 12 laps on Saturday and Sunday till 3pm. It absolutely pissed down every 3 or 4 hours, and it then took 2 hours before it dried (in baking sunshine), and then rained again. The CTR is a comfy place to kip in too, seat right back, feet up on the dash
Track wet enough?!
On track the CTR was great. It gripped and gripped, then understeered for ages, which I sometimes find comforting given my relative inexperience in track driving. Steering feel? Playstation. It goes where you put it, but there isn’t a huge amount of feedback. This isn’t a problem with normal road driving IMO, but when pushing on, I didn’t have as much an idea as I would have liked as to what the front wheels were doing. By Sunday afternoon (it was completely dry by then), I was getting more confident with the thing, the track was dry and the tyres hot. On a few bends I thought “hang on, have I just driven through oil or coolant” and the car was getting pretty slippery. It took a while to realise that I was driving through the understeer and occasionally lifting off, with some fun results that aren’t really suited to a track with no run off! Again the lack of feedback made it awkward for me to really explore this, and it wasn’t the right place to do it anyway.
As we all know, you have to rev the tits off the VTEC, and it’s fun doing it. Dropping below 5000rpm was largely a bad idea, and finding yourself in the wrong gear just was a pain – Ex-Muhle a particular example of getting it wrong.
Not finding accomodation locally was a bit of a bind – the hotel was a 40 minute drive away, but at least on Saturday and Sunday mornings I arrived at the ring with both a nice warm engine and warm tyres, ready to go. It was in a tiny town called Boppard, on the Rhine, which despite being very picturesque, was empty of tourists. Great views of the Rhine, great sunsets too, with that post-thunderstorm look. There were some fabulous roads around there too – tight hairpin after tight hairpin with good visibility 
Other highlights? A passenger lap in an M3 CSL on semi-slicks, in traffic, in the damp, at 8:24; 4 laps in a Z4M – very very composed; and a lap in a 996 GT2CS (on standard tyres), in heavy traffic, one yellow flag, in 7:57, flying past the ring taxi and the race prepared Viper as if they were standing still. One of the scariest and most exhilerating rides of my life. That won’t leave me in a hurry….
All in all, a great weekend, despite the tyre incident that had me panicking on the first day. A lot of driving for one person, and not something that I will do again on my own, but I felt the urge, and it couldn’t be stopped!
The CTR? A great car. Truly great. We bonded What it lacks in steering feel it makes up with build quality, reliability, that gearbox and that engine. It’s a good long distance partner, for the money and for it’s age. It’s a great track toy, that in the right hands is only 20 seconds slower than the Z (8:47). With a few suspension, diff and brake tweaks, it’d be a terrific track toy. Add in a Mugen exhaust and CAI, and the noise of the VTEC is supposed to be other-worldly. It makes you think how well Honda did when the CTR first came out, how much it raised the game, and how good the other Type Rs – Integra and the new CTR – are.
