Nah, it's not a diesel...
Anyway, Pat's Elise is amazing, and German keyboards are annoying, so forgive me if a few major typo's appear...
I don't have much time at the moment, but I can assure you all we're in for a real treat when our cars finally arrive. The steering is nearly telepathic. Pat's car has upwards of 225hp and loads of torque. It's also got Nitrons which are supposedly stiffer than stock, but not at all objectionable. I probably logged upwards of 7 hours of seat time in it over two days, including sideways at North Weald, English B-roads, motorways and even central London. The car was excedeingly well behaved and I never got titred or sore from driving it.
I also did a couple of laps in Simon Cullen's stock S1 and found it quite easy to ring out compared to Pat's highly modified monster. Though obviously no where near as quick.
Andy Walsh of 1st Lotus has agreed to come over in the winter and do some Elise driver training. I'll keep you all posted on that one. He's a genuine talent, and probably has more Elise track time under his belt than any one else on the planet. You probably all would know his name, except that he had a rather bad F1 testing accident ( the rear wing came off at speed) while competing for a seat at Benetton with some guy named Michael Schumacher. Yeah, he's that good.
More later, I'll be at the factory next week, and meeting with more suppliers while I figure out what you all need to make your cars faster...
Robert