The first use of the trailer + Tesla combo went well. @pricetta and I had our first trackday of the year up at Snetterton, in Norfolk (~90 miles away). The journey was uneventful really with only one snag (seen below in pics). We charged once on the way and unhitching at the Supercharger was easy enough, taking only a minute.
We used approx double the amount of energy than usual, so that left us with about half range. The car wasn’t very good at estimating range before setting off, but that’s not unsurprising considering it doesn’t know how heavy the trailer is (could assume max allowed weight and adjust from there though).
Claire and I both need to learn HTF you reverse a trailer, as we had a go and got it totally wrong. All thoughts of “how hard can it be” quickly went out the window. Think we need to go on a brief trailer course driving 
The trackday itself was good, in that we came home with both bikes in one piece. It rained in the morning, but we elected not to go out on track as wet + cold is not really a condition the tyres will work well in, even with tyre warmers. That turned out to be a most sensible decision as every session was red flagged and the recovery truck guy really earnt his pay that day as he was bringing bashed up and muddy bikes back all the time.
We stuck the car on trickle charge at the circuit, though the three-phase (blue) socket was only outputting 10amps, so it didn’t really help a great deal (think we got 50 miles in the end). We fell asleep in the car with the heating on and when we woke up it was after lunch and dry! Yay!
So we had a special couple of sighting laps with the instructors and got out on track and got in a solid three full sessions and had a great time!
Packing up is sooooo much easier with a box trailer! The roll-on/roll-off ability is a god-send when you’re tired at the end of a trackday, and being able to stand up in the trailer is a real boon.
The drive home was a breeze as well, with just a single charge required.
Things that went well:
- A very comfortable drive with adaptive cruise-control.
- Effortless acceleration with the trailer out of junctions and into traffic due to immense torque.
- Pre-heating the cabin in the morning of the trackday from the hotel room. Toasty.
Things that could be improved:
- Charging time could be reduced if the battery pre-heat feature extended to ad-hoc navigation to Superchargers. It seems to only work when the car knows you’ll need energy to reach your navigation destination, though of course as you’re using 2x as much energy like this, it thinks you don’t need to charge, so you have to navigate to a Supercharger yourself, and battery pre-heat doesn’t seem to work in this scenario, or at least it didn’t for us, twice.
- Circuits could have one or two fast chargers for EVs.
Stopped at services for a comfort break. No charge needed at this point.
Discovered a snag. The trailer electrical cable had dragged on the floor a bit and worn the outer protective layer a bit. Some cable ties from the trackday kit held it up for the rest of the trip. Will have to come up with some kind of velcro tie solution I think.
Quick charge on the way to the hotel.
Somehow managed to reverse it more or less into a good place. All trailer security added.
Waiting for the rain to stop and the circuit to dry! Switched to paddock stands for Claire’s bike this time as the ConStand we have for her bike is too fiddly for use at a track. The per-bike mount for it seems problematic, despite much adjustment.
Loved seeing this. Did not love seeing it come back all bashed up in the recovery truck later.
There were three of these very custom Yamaha R1 builds. At first I thought they were Moto2 replicas, but not, big boys! Very nice bits of kit, but I dread to think how much they would cost to repair after slipping off.
Custom Yamaha R1 cockpit.
Suzuki Classic Racing were there with this very nice SRAD. Very slick outfit. There were also a few other SRADS there, with VERY enthusiastic owners.
