Both Rockingham and Curborough were tremendous fun. What they both have in common is that they have some twisty hair pin bends so they really test the agility of the car. And I have to say that although slow/twisty turns are not the forte of 964s, I don't think the car was as good as it should be. I believe this is caused in part by the smaller/narrow wheels. With these fitted I'm finding that I have to work much harder to get the car to turn in (it's essential to use the brakes on turn-in) and there is a lot of understeer when back on the power (nail the throttle at the apex and will simply drift off the track). In short the car is short on grip in the corners yet the tyres, Yokohama AVS sports, are known for their good dry grip. So it must be a combination of the smaller width of the tyres and the narrower track that they create when on the car (outer edge of the rear wheels gets pushed in to the arches a good 15 mm more than when the 17 inch wheels are fitted).
Although some of the excessive understeer could be dialed out with a 4 wheel alignment (particularly by adjusting the camber on the front wheels), I'm loathed to do that at the moment because I'm aiming for new suspension early next year which will require it to be done any way. My benchmark is that the car handles the bends better when wearing its 17 inch boots. The problem here is that my 17 inch cup wheels are replicas and are quite a bit heavier than the 16s which impacts on the straight line acceleration. However, I recently picked up a set of Porsche original Boxster S 17 inch wheels which when fitted to my boxster will free up the existing boxster 17 inch wheels for use on the 964. So these will go on for the next trackday in a couple of weeks time and once the Conti rubber is worn out (should only take the day) I can look at putting some trackday rubber on these rather than the 16s.
Some photos from Curborough:
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