My apologies for not writing this up earlier. The 300+ emails in my work inbox had to be attended to first.

We continue the story on Saturday afternoon. We have left the free McDonalds wifi and driven back to the track, this time in a clean car. It didn’t take long before the rest of the team arrived, and they sure know how to make an entrance!

The trailer doesn’t hold any cars, but it does fold out to form a tent and a seating area. Neobrothers’ families were kind enough to provide us with first class catering!

After socialising for a few hours the cars were tucked in for the night and we headed off for a nearby bed and breakfast.

After a good night’s sleep and a small breakdown in communication between us and the BnB we were quite late and ran the risk of missing the security briefing. This resulted in what could be described as a special stage of the British rally, only that it was in a Toyota Landcruiser full of people. We eventually made it to the track in time for the security briefing. After the briefing we set about changing the seats to the earlier mentioned Sparco seats and the tyres to 18″ Toyo R888′s.

Having driven Saabs on trackdays before I can tell you one thing: Race seats really make the experience that much better. No longer do you have to brace yourself against the center console or door when cornering.

Out on the track we faced competition from Caterhams, KTM X-bows, Ariel Atoms, a variety of Porsches, Audis, a Ferrari, Renault Twingo Sports and a bunch of Minis, among others.

All in all the 9-3 held up quite well, but the clear winner of the day was the blue and silver Porsche pictured on the fourth picture above. In total we covered about 250-300 kms on the track and the car never skipped a beat. It’s a proper trackday car, you can drive it 1800 kms, drive 300 kms on the track and then drive the 1800 kms home without any problems.

A massive thanks goes out to Neobrothers for inviting us to the trackday, the 60 or so guest vehicles that attended, and – of course – all of you who have followed us during the trip. We will continue to update the blog, albeit not as frequently as during the trip. If something special happens at MapTun HQ you’ll be the first to know!

If you have any questions for us you can contact us on info@maptun.com

Do you have any pictures from the trip or the trackday? Don’t hesitate to send them to us!

I just talked to Henrik by phone and all is well with them. Right now the car is on the track and perform fast lap times.
We will get a full update tonight, when they have access to WiFi. I just received one picture, via MMS.

/Anders

At 5:30 this morning we got the wake-up call. It was time to go up and roll off the ferry on to UK soil. Immediately upon exiting the ferry terminal we remembered that England is a part of the small world that still has imperial units and left hand traffic. We promptly brought out the Racelogic, set it to speed view mode and changed the units to MPH.

Having driven left hand traffic before (although in a RHD car) it took some getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road. Regular driving is now fine, but roundabouts are still puzzling. It feels extremely awkward to go the wrong way around.

Since the ferry arrived very early and Snetterton cirquit is only an hours drive away from Harwich, we decided to do some seightseeing and take the back roads to Snetterton. The English countryside is very beautiful in springtime.

Since the amount of traffic on the country roads was very low, Henrik decided to have a go at left hand traffic in a left hand drive car. He had the same basic reflex as I still have; anytime you meet someone in a corner you have the instict to immediately move over to the right side of the road to avoid a collision. Of course, that won’t work.

Since half the point of going here is getting here in one piece, I took over the driver’s seat. After getting some contradicting information from our two satnav systems we finally arrived att Snetterton Circuit to find there was another trackday going on, one for motorbikes. It’s hard to believe how fast you can go on two wheels, and it made us a bit nervous about the driving we will have to do tomorrow.

Not wanting to spend the entire day waiting for the others to arrive, we once again set off. This time in search for some place to eat and get the car washed. The near 2000 kms we had behind us was beginning to show on the condition of the car. We took the A11 heading to London and stopped in Thetford for a spot of lunch and a car wash. The Sainsbury’s car wash was of course closed, so we had to continue our quest further towards London.

After a while we came across something you never see in Sweden. A drive in hand car wash. The price was £6. A done deal! Back in Sweden you can’t even get a basic machine wash for double the price. 10 minutes after pulling in, we left with a clean car and £10 lighter in the bank. The £6 wash and £4 tip was well worth the de-tour.

As I’m writing this I’m sitting awkwardly in the car outside the McDonalds in Thetford. It turns out we have no data coverage at Snetterton and there’s no wifi, so this is about as good as it’s going to get. We won’t be able to do any blogging at the track. Hopefully we’ll be able to put a report together later at the hotel.

Now it’s time to go back to Snetterton, have a quick nap and wait for the others to arrive. Last word is that Fredrik B has touched down and cleared the passport checkpoint at Stansted airport. He will be picked up by Neobrothers and driven to the track.

The Stena Britannica to Harwich, to be precise.

It was a close call, but after some spirited driving we actually made it. The stau lasted far longer than expected, we lost five or six hours of useful driving. As you know, we were supposed to visit Autobedrijf Tholen but we had to eliminate that stop because of time constraints. The day actually started quite well. After removing some excess ice from the car we covered 350 kms in three hours. But then, the stau..

It was not all in vain, though. We found different ways to entertain ourselves. Platespotting, half-assed car washing and funny company names:

Entering Germany saw the advent of a nice surprise; Useful fuel. Only the best for Team Maptun!

I must keep this brief. While the complimentary internet connection on the boat was a nice surprise, it’s very sketchy and keeps dropping out. In short, it’s very hard to get a blog post done.

The 9-3 got to prove itself on the de-restricted Autobahns. While there was only one actual race, it kept much more expensive cars at bay. The race was with a tuned Golf GTI of the latest generation. They got a head start with a few meters before we got going, we then closed the gap in a matter of seconds and left them in our dust. Not a fair race, but a race none the less.

Time for us to finish our beers and get some shut-eye. It’s been a long day.

We have now encountered our first “stau”, a german autobahn traffic jam. Movement is measured in geological terms and it shows no signs of clearing up in the near future. Time lost so far is 25 minutes.

We have now entered Germany and are about 100 km north of Hamburg. Weather is about the same as when we started this morning but at least the roads have dried up.

UPDATE: De-restricted autobahn!

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