trackday – Safer on Circuit

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I looked at buying or building a track-adapted car several times, including BMW 3 Series Compacts (750 MC championship eligible) and Renault Clio 172s. The price was about £3-5,000 for a built track car, apparently road legal. In my view, the problem with buying a track-prepared car is that you don’t know how reliable it is, or how legal for MOTs. If I were building a track car, I know I would have to make decisions, and possibly compromises about taking equipment out (such as airbags or electronics) or adding specialist parts that may cause difficulty for a road-going vehicle (such as lowering springs or camber).

I had the Porsche sitting in the garage depreciating slowly, so I decided to switch it for a factory-prepared race car, rather than buying a cheap track car as an extra to the Porsche. I found that the Caterham 7 and the Ginetta G40 were the two main options. I wasn’t, initially, considering the race championship options, although both came with that option.

I looked at the Caterham in the factory in Crawley, but I still find them a bit old-fashioned in appearance, and lacking a roof. If I’m spending the amount of money they ask, I want a car that ticks all the boxes, and Caterhams didn’t do that for me. I was looking at virtually the same car in the 1980s when I visited the factory in Caterham.

And so to Ginetta, and the G40. I have been watching these cars as they support the British GT Championship, and although they seem a little tail-happy to drive, they are exciting to watch. I liked the strong, tubular chassis and the clamshell hood for efficient access and quick repair of front-end race damage.

I filled in a form on the Ginetta website to enquire about the road-going version of the G40. The response was instant, and by phone from the Commercial Director. They said they can provide a G40 road car, which has a bigger 2.0 litre engine, but why don’t I sign up for the racing version, with the 1.8 litre engine? The race package was cheaper but the car is not so powerful. The 2.0 litre road version is also suitable for track, but can’t be used for the racing.

I decided to go racing, as it was now or never. The GRDC package included car, race licence application and entry into four rounds supporting the British GT Championship. Now that’s a quick way into a professional race series if ever there was one. But there’s a steep learning curve ahead, as I’ll describe in the next posts.

Ginetta G40 GRDC as advertised for sale in 2016 at around £30k including a year of racing

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This is the first article I intend to write about my transition from road cars and track days to motorsport. I haven’t competed in any motor races in my life, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to do, and now appears to be the time to make the move. Here’s the story, and in future posts, updates on how I’m getting on.

So what’s my experience of cars and motorsport? I’ve always wanted to get on track but in the 1980s, when I started driving, I didn’t seem to have the right contacts and certainly no money. Track days didn’t really exist, and karts were just something you found at fairgrounds, and not something you could buy or try out. How things have changed, for the better.

My first experience on track was in Finland in the 1990s when a friend introduced me to his hobby, which was mini racing and karting. I was hooked and soon bought myself a Dino Kart with a 100cc 2-stroke Yamaha engine, from Henri Lahokoski’s shop in Tampere. Before I could use the kart more than two times, I moved back to England, and the kart had to go due to other priorities.

Back in England in 2000, my sister bought me a Formula Ford track experience at Donington Park. This was a good one, and lasted the whole day, with a qualifying session around an oval of the Melbourne Hairpin, and then out on circuit for lead-follow laps. I surprised myself by qualifying at the front, so I was setting the pace down through the Kraner Curves, with very little experience of what to do, but loving it.

My next time on track came in 2013 at Lydden Hill, when I had bought a Porsche Cayman 987.1. I had upgraded to faster and faster road cars after my return to England, and I thought the Cayman was the ultimate, most expensive car I would ever buy. I had a great time at Lydden, but… I boiled the brakes, broke a tyre, etc. And there starts another phase of getting hooked… You upgrade the brakes and possibly the engine mapping, and then you think of suspension modifications, and on it goes. Soon you find that it might be better to invest in a more capable road-track car, or just convert something cheap into a track car.

In my case, I found the money (via a bank loan) to buy an even more expensive car, which I thought was the ultimate road and track car, the Porsche 911. Mine was a 997 Gen 2 basic Carrera, purchased from Paragon, close to me in East Sussex. It’s a fantastic car and Paragon are brilliant at supporting their customers, helping them with ideas, including advice for track excursions. I took the 911 to Goodwood, Mallory Park and Brands Hatch.

Each time I went on track, I realised that I had to do something to make the 911 track-suitable, like spare wheels and tyres just for track, camber adjustments, anti-roll bar adjustments, upgraded brake fluids, and more. I stopped at doing the “more”, like lowering springs, and reluctantly told myself that the 911 was too valuable for me to take on track, and it was never going to be suitable for the tough track driving I was starting to experience.

So I was looking for a solution, went to a hill climb at Firle, saw lots of specialist cars, spoke to a couple of friends about options, and made the decision to change the 911. I wasn’t using it much on the road, was nervous of breaking it on track, and it was mostly preserved in the garage. This was not my way to get on track.

Tag: trackday

Transition to Motorsport (2): Buying a Track Car

Transition to Motorsport (1): How it Begins