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Caterham R300

It's been a frustrating month or so for the Caterham, as we've all been too busy to exercise it in its natural environment, the track. Now that the evoactive season is over we'll have to investigate a few off-season events - a Caterham is arguably more fun in the wet anyway. As ours is primarily intended to be a road car, it'll be interesting to see how it performs on the circuit as Caterhams are so sensitive to set-up. On the road it feels about right, with gentle understeer followed by nice predictable oversteer if you want it, but track work might highlight a few areas that require change.

By Jethro Bovingdon

October 2004

It's been a frustrating month or so for the Caterham, as we've all been too busy to exercise it in its natural environment, the track. Now that the evoactive season is over we'll have to investigate a few off-season events - a Caterham is arguably more fun in the wet anyway. As ours is primarily intended to be a road car, it'll be interesting to see how it performs on the circuit as Caterhams are so sensitive to set-up. On the road it feels about right, with gentle understeer followed by nice predictable oversteer if you want it, but track work might highlight a few areas that require change.

The R300 has been back to the factory for its 1000-mile service and while it was there a new rear diff was fitted. The original was very noisy - an issue that Caterham had highlighted before we picked our car up initially, but we wanted the R300 in a hurry and agreed to live with it for the first month or so. Frankly, though, the whole car is so loud that the aural benefit of the new diff is hard to determine. Earplugs remain a good idea.

The bonnet stripe we mentioned a couple of months ago is imminent. Some of the evo team think it doesn't need it, but we'll give it a go and if it looks trite we'll revert to pure white.

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