Given I arrived off a US flight early in the morning I stopped in first at the Heritage Motor Museum at Gaydon UK, about 1.5 hours drive from Heathrow. It celebrates the British motor industry which had extraordinary success until brought down by poor management, weak Governments and labor unions in the 1970s. The facility is superb with extensive sponsorship by Jaguar and Land Rover. If you want you can take a Land Rover or Range Rover on an off road test drive in a purpose built 4wd trail on the property. I had a great time testing a LR3!
In the museum, there is a spectacular collection of cars:
An original Jaguar XJ13 with its dashboard
Who remembers Bob Tulius?
Then it was cross country to Donington. The circuit maintains a museum which has the greatest collection of Formula 1 cars anywhere on Earth. I can only say they may be under estimating. I left a trail of drool, dribble, sweat, tears, pee and sperm all over this museum….absolutely amazing.
You may want to hurry to see this collection. Tom Wheatcroft, who bought the circuit and established the museum passed away in 2009 and left his estate to his son who seems to be actively selling cars off to buy WW2 tanks
So then it was on to the track day run by BookaTrack. Normally very tightly organized, given it was the Friday before a weekend of racing, it really turned into a practice session for the racers.
The track:
We were running the National Circuit without the hairpin extension.
There were a range of cars – Radicals with RST V8s, BAC Monos, high powered Caterhams and Westfields, tin top touring cars, an absolutely amazing yellow Ruf Porsche 911, to hackers like me in a beaten up Caterham R300.
Rules are passing on the “straights” only on the left, ideally with a point by. However, that degenerated rapidly as the red mist descended. In the afternoon it seemed like you did 2 laps went to the pits under red flag and then went out for another 2 laps before another red flag and so on. It was amazing how many “race cars” were showing drivers with no talent. One Renault Clio race car was ahead of me at Radcliffe before running off the track, through the gravel trap, out back onto track off onto the grass on the right, over correct and then back left across the track into the gravel and eventually into the mud….muppet! A few of the Caterham Academy drivers demonstrated lack of fear and made numerous gardening excursions.
Here is one of the reasons behind one of the stoppages:
For those wondering what happened to my poor Caterham gear lever above, that was the result of it suddenly becoming a "flappy paddle" gearbox while going from 5th to 6th diving downing into Craner Curves at 85-90mph. Fortunately there are no photos of the "gardening" that resulted from my sudden surprise and confusion. Somehow all the gear lever retaining bolts had worked loose so the lever disconnected from gearbox. While I tried to limp to the pits in 6th gear I ran out of revs and had to be flat towed back for recover.
Looking towards Redgate corner:
Looking back towards the start finish line and the pits:
Going through MacLeans
Just about to turn into Coppice
Navigating Redgate corner:
A wonderful drivers track – definitely worth trying out.
I put together some video of the circuits. One thing to keep in mind - renting Caterhams is not cheap. You break it you pay to fix it (except when it breaks due to something not your fault - e.g. gear lever). Exceeding rev limits (6800rpm) is monitored closely and is punished with a fine for each serious transgression (100-500rpm over is a slap on the wrist and told don't do it again). This is fair when you consider that race cars have a hard life and the maintenance is steep and therefore costly. I have found Bookatrack to be very reasonable about things. They have a team that prepares the car, keeps it field up and helps sort things out when they go wrong. I think they are very good outfit to rent with should anyone want to try out one of the famous UK or European circuit.
With this in mind my mode for the day is to get to within 95% of the lap record for that circuit in a Caterham R300. In all cases I succeed by the end of the day and I have not risked the car or my wallet in the process.
The Bookatrack Caterham is a R300 spec car. 180hp Duratec, fully caged, stopped race car. CR500 on 13 inch wheels. Caterham 6 speed gearbox. Stack instrumentation but no speedo. They run both S3 and SV chassis. If you do not like the regular carbon Tillet seats or the larger B2 Tillets like I do not (major back pain results) then they have these specially made up foam seat pads to construct a seat that is very comfortable for a days run - this is what I use.
Camera is a pre-production Sony. Orginally recorded in 1080/60fps, 120 degrees field of view. Sound is mostly rotten as I was testing the internal mics for the maker. Data is recorded via Racechrono Pro with separate bluetooth GPS logger. I use Manfrotto clamps for the most part. Where the video looks like it is moving around and a camera mount may be loose then what you are seeing is actually the Sony SteadyShot feature which tries to compensate for vibration to improve image quality - I think it failed and will try it switch off next time. The large box on my left wrist is the camera control. The silver box on the scuttle is the GPS receiver for the data logger. Apart from the sound the Sony cameras were excellent - I could use the remote to turn on/off the camera mounted on the wishbone while I was belted up sitting in the car. You can also use it to check aim. The terrain change on these circuits is best shown by the altitude in feet change.
Donington National Circuit
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