Track Day

Not much writing going on - so I might as well Blog about what is distracting me.

WARNING - This Blog contains graphic car specifications.

I was down at Wakefield Park (race track near Goulburn) for a run in the Lotus today. The embedded photo was taken at another day at Eastern Creek. To the right are some pictures from Wakefield Park - not as good as the  Eastern Creek photos as I took them myself. 

There were some very nice cars at the track including a Ferrari Testarossa 512 TR (4.9 Litre, 12 cylinder, 0-100 in 5.8 secs, max speed 290 km/h), a number of Porsche 911 GT2's (3.6 Litre, 6 cyclinder, twin turbo, 0-100 in 3.7 secs, max speed 329 km/h), a Porsche GT3RS (3.6 Litre, 6 cylinder, 0-100 in 4.0 secs, max speed 310 km/h), a Mitsubishi GT 3000 (3 Litre, V6, twin turbo) and a gaggle of other cars including a V8 Ute!

The Lotus Elise (1.8 Litre, 4 cylinder, 0-100 in 6.1 secs, top speed 205 km/hr) did pretty good - although I spun it 3 times trying to keep up with the Porsche's. One of my spins was at over 100 km/h - lucky there was lots of grass. I had to wash the car again after I got home (and change my underpants). I could keep up with the Ferrari, the Mitsubishi and the standard Porsche (911 Carrera - although I suspect the driver was taking it easy) through the corners but then would lose them on the straight. Luckily Wakefield Park has lots of corners.

The Porsche GT2's and GT3RS were another matter. They totally blew me away and left me eating dust - literally. Still they are 5 times the price of the Lotus.  It was a good day. 

Vintage 2009

The ferment is proceeding to schedule (more or less). We are at 2.0 Baume which is a measure of the amount of sugar in the must. It started at around 12.5 which indicates that the final alcohol level of the wine will be about 12.5%.

Pressing is now slotted for Monday.

The winemaker (Matt) needed to add some acid to the wine. If the wine acidity is too low the wine tastes flabby (and in extreme cases has a slimy mouth feel). The legal wine additives in Australia are listed in Food Standard 4.5.1 (for those really interested).