\"Riding a bicycle in your sitting room\"
I thought some of you may be interested in a recent little escapade, which brought to mind the Nelson Piquet quote(above)which referred to racing an F1 car at Monaco.
I recently sold my (rather bent)Alfa racecar to a guy who runs the Dreamracers website and also is a helper at the Haynes Motor museum at Sparkford.He happened to see my 40, and immediately offered me a run at one of their trackdays that they hold at a circuit next to the motor museum.Of course,I said ‘yes please’, and turned up on what proved to be a very wet,late October,Sunday morning in deepest Somerset.Now,the word “tiny” doesn’t really convey how small,bendy and narrow the track really is.The 40 has always been a real handful in the wet,and with my 18year old BF Goodrich’s reaching concrete status,I knew this would be a real challenge (or more like blind stupidity).However,I managed 4 outing under varying conditions and only once forgot to wait for the wheels to be absolutely straight ahead before applying full power(for about 2secs!).Apparently,the resulting rapid spin looked quite dramatic,as I finished close to the armco, but I was too busy to notice!(see pic on the web page below). Old man Haynes turned up during the morning, presumably just to check we weren’t being hooligans – glad he didn’t stay!
My son also attended in his MR2 Mk2, and I also had a go in this and found it to be much more suited to the circuit.
The event attracted a very wide selection of vehicles from a standard Renault Espace to Minis.Not surprisingly,driving skills varied by the same margin!Some pictures from the day can be viewed on http://trackdays.dreamracers.net/gallery/20041024/index.php.Mark who took the pics,and also some video from my passenger seat, even managed a couple of shots with both me and son in view.
We also managed a quick visit to the Haynes museum (GT40 replica is under prep)and would encourage anyone to make a visit there.It contains over 400 cars crammed into a relatively small set of galleries – the target seems to be to have at least one of everything!
I thought some of you may be interested in a recent little escapade, which brought to mind the Nelson Piquet quote(above)which referred to racing an F1 car at Monaco.
I recently sold my (rather bent)Alfa racecar to a guy who runs the Dreamracers website and also is a helper at the Haynes Motor museum at Sparkford.He happened to see my 40, and immediately offered me a run at one of their trackdays that they hold at a circuit next to the motor museum.Of course,I said ‘yes please’, and turned up on what proved to be a very wet,late October,Sunday morning in deepest Somerset.Now,the word “tiny” doesn’t really convey how small,bendy and narrow the track really is.The 40 has always been a real handful in the wet,and with my 18year old BF Goodrich’s reaching concrete status,I knew this would be a real challenge (or more like blind stupidity).However,I managed 4 outing under varying conditions and only once forgot to wait for the wheels to be absolutely straight ahead before applying full power(for about 2secs!).Apparently,the resulting rapid spin looked quite dramatic,as I finished close to the armco, but I was too busy to notice!(see pic on the web page below). Old man Haynes turned up during the morning, presumably just to check we weren’t being hooligans – glad he didn’t stay!
My son also attended in his MR2 Mk2, and I also had a go in this and found it to be much more suited to the circuit.
The event attracted a very wide selection of vehicles from a standard Renault Espace to Minis.Not surprisingly,driving skills varied by the same margin!Some pictures from the day can be viewed on http://trackdays.dreamracers.net/gallery/20041024/index.php.Mark who took the pics,and also some video from my passenger seat, even managed a couple of shots with both me and son in view.
We also managed a quick visit to the Haynes museum (GT40 replica is under prep)and would encourage anyone to make a visit there.It contains over 400 cars crammed into a relatively small set of galleries – the target seems to be to have at least one of everything!
