2018 - Caterham at Brands Hatch Indy Circuit

Caterham Track Day at Brands Hatch Indy Circuit

Continuing on my bucket list journey to try all the tasty great race tracks in UK and Europe, I was at Brands Hatch this week with a Caterham from my friends at BookaTrack UK.

It has a great history, holding the British GP between 1964 and 1986. I was running the shorter Indy Circuit given it was mid-week and noise restrictions are a major hassle at this circuit now. So the GP circuit was off-limits.

I was not concerned as this is a brilliant little circuit – flows beautifully with great elevation change. It is probably the best circuit designed for a Caterham that I have ever been on.

The photos do not really show the elevation. Below is in the foreground the turn into Paddock bend, then into the dip and up the hill to the 180 degree Druids corner

Then it is down the hill into Graham Hill bend

Before sweeping left into Cooper Straight and left into Surtees

Then sweep right into McLaren where you brake before setting the car up for the sweeping right Clearways (around where the vacuum truck in the below photo).

Clearways is the critical corner as the earlier you are on the power gives you the best run long the “straight”.

I had the Caterham 310R. I had driven this at Silverstone and Donington this year. It has the 1.6L Ford Sigma engine – so around 150hp. Black pack. Aeroscreen. 13” Apollo wheels with Avon ZZRs. Great little package. Works well at all but power circuits.

Brands Hatch was nippy. Morning was 35 degrees F when I arrived and frost everywhere. Needless to say that is tricky for Caterhams. And so it showed by one Caterham spearing off on Graham Hill bend on the sighting laps. Even I found the car pushing at 35mph in that bend. Another Caterham triggered the red flag on lap 1 by nosing into the tire wall because it understeered off on the frost.

On the restart, technically lap 2, the silver Caterham in the photo above (same one I had at Sp-Francorchamps in March 2018) lost it out of Clearways by excess throttle and spun along pit wall denting every corner - luckily pretty much cosmetic.   So up to 11am I tiptoed around the wet patches, letting all the heavy cars past - Ginettas, Ford Focus (Foci?), etc. - as their weight gives a more consistent contact patch cutting through the surface frost/damp. But after 11am there was enough warmth and grip for the equation to reverse and the Caterhams to once again be ascendant. Temps topped out at around 50 degF.

The nice thing about the track is that you did not need a high hp car to be quick. Its tight layout compressed the hp differential between cars. There are no stop start types of corners and so the flow helps the lower hp cars while being tight enough to restrict the high hp cars. Now if you opened up to the GP layout then that long straight turns into a high hp track. But I was very happy on the short Indy circuit. The only other circuit that I can think has this characteristic is Cadwell Park. Even Oulton Park has too many straights.

Noise at the circuit for the day was 98db. It was tested in the pits before joining the circuit (static test 98db at 4000rpm) plus a drive by limit on the circuit at 98db.

You got one warning for noise and then you were expected to fix it. Second time you were booted from the circuit.

So how was the driving? Brilliant. Perfect for a seven. It’s a 3^rd and 4^th gear only circuit although you could go down to 2^nd for Druids for a marginal benefit if you needed a little extra time.

For video we have two options:

360degree video (with lots of wind noise) is linked below. You can click and drag the video around to look forward, behind or sideways.

For the conventional look forward camera with some engine sounds, this is below:

Despite Brands Hatch being likely to be my most epically expensive track day ever (as I bought a Caterham to keep in the UK - oops!), I am committing to going back to Spa-Francorchamps next March. Should be fun.