Sprint 2010 - Keith Attwood

Words by Keith Attwood

Published: 03/01/2012

Pre-Season Woes

I started out this year with zero trackdays under my belt, one sprint to my name and a written off Lotus that I was supposed to tackle this year’s Bristol Speed Sprint Series in. So not the ideal basis to kick off my season. First off I had to sort out the car. Well how to go about sorting the car. In August 2009 on returning from an 8 months deployment on Op Calash I had purchased a 2003 Lotus Elise, which someone had handily shoehorned the engine from an Audi S3 in the back…. and then uprated it so it was pushing out 280bhp up from the standard 120bhp Rover K Series that the car left the factory with.

This was taken at the Colerne 2 Club Sprint on 31 Aug 2009.

Unfortunately a week later I was off on a trip to the Alps where I had a rather unfortunate incident wroadside barrier when the car aquaplaned and that was the end of that.

However during Christmas 2009 after the insurance company and I had settled I was on the hunt for another Lotus. Audi powered ones are very few and far between and I was under no illusion that I would be able to find a like for like replacement. Now the Lotus community are a rather resourceful bunch of people and there is a niche within a niche for engine converted vehicles and it just so happened that a friend knew of one available. Now this one was a slightly older vehicle in a more effeminate colour, however it made up for it in other areas. First off is had 35,000 less miles on the clock, but it also had a more race orientated flavour to it with 4 point harnesses, upgraded AP brakes and Nitron suspension. The engine had been swapped out for Honda K20A that would normally reside in a Honda Civic Type R. This produces around 220bhp in standard trim, but is a lot more rev happy than the Audi unit, and will quite happily spin up to 8300 rpm. The previous owner had also been a little more generous in the modification department and had a supercharger slapped on the side, which handily adds around another 100bhp to the mix. So now the car is up in around 320bhp at the flywheel.