Tuesday 20 June 2017

Home of the trouser press

This weekend I drove my kit car to Guildford, picked up one of my old schoolfriends and we drove to Leicester to visit another schoolfriend whom we haven't seen for 20 years. We went to two different beer festivals, a curry house, a Turkish café and a track day at Mallory Park. It was a fantastic weekend.

My new hobby is driving my kit car to racing circuits, but luggage space is sorely limited. At the absolute most I can take: A friend, two crash helmets, two coats, a small "greatest hits" toolkit, footpump, pressure gauge, 2l of service fluids, drinks, biscuits and 18l of personal effects.

Almost everybody I meet at track days has a similar but more luxurious hobby. They tow a fast car to a circuit behind a larger and more comfortable vehicle. At Snetterton last year I thought I had seen the height of luxury when there was a man making cups of tea from his track-day-kettle. At Mallory Park one of the towing vehicles was a large builders' van and the occupant was sitting around on his own track-day-patio-furniture and listening to his own track-day-ruggedised-radio!

Just in case you're interested in the driving:
The hairpin is very difficult to find a good line around and very difficult to drive neatly. I was black flagged and had to temporarily leave the circuit because I was making too much tyre noise trying to accelerate away from it. "Gerrards" is a 180degree constant radius right hander. We found that as long as you were going fast enough for 4th gear (65mph or so) then my car is gutless enough that you can't spin or lock the rear wheels and it would flatter your driving by taking you all the way round almost as fast the racing machinery.

Richard "luggage space" B

No comments:

Post a Comment