"Seeing Red"

The longest day of summer was a fabulous, blue-sky day. I and 3 other MX5 owners nipped up to Silverstone to have a wee thrash around the "National" circuit. This is about a third of the full Grand Prix circuit, and comprises only 6 corners, all quite fast. While the full circuit includes some hills, this section of it is pretty flat and uninteresting.

I was a lot more apprehensive about this, my 2nd ever track day, because it was not an MX5 club day, but an EasyTrack organised event of about 65 cars - most a lot faster than mine (various Caterhams, Lotus Elises, Porsches, Mitsubishi Evos, Subaru Imprezas, and looking slightly out of place, a Fiat Tipo (!)). That placed my car as one of the slowest on the track, so I was concerned about becoming a "mobile chicane"!

This apprehension was not entirely misplaced. I could hold my own against many of the cars in the corners (especially the big heavy ones like the Impreza & Evos which powered up behind me on the straights and then fell way behind in the corners - but the Caterhams and Elises were pretty quick through the curves, especially those on slick tyres!). However, almost all the other cars had bags more power and so I spent most of the day keeping out of their way, which made getting a clean lap difficult.

The day started off with a hiccup when only a few laps into the first session, somebody fell off the track and the red flags came out while he was recovered. So of our 20 minute session, much of it was spent sitting in the pit lane. Once back out on the track I began to try to learn the circuit, so I was pretty slow, and spent most of the time driving off the racing line to let people past on the straights.

The second and third sessions were not much better. A load of traffic was roaring past me, making concentrating on the road ahead quite difficult. For much of one session, I was stuck behind a slow Caterham that equalled my acceleration in the straights, but held me up massively in the corners. Most frustratingly, the faster cars were passing both of us while I was stuck on his tail! Both sessions were interrupted by more red flagging, and the queue in the pit lane was becoming quite a familiar home to us. The second red flag was for an idiot (or perhaps a hapless and unfairly accused victim of a mechanical failure, but I prefer to just think of him as an idiot) in a Caterham who scooted out of the pits and ran straight ahead on the very first corner. And a charming chap in a rented EasyTrack car felt that it would be alright to overtake on the corners, barging past me in Woodcote (forcing me to have to suddenly pull my line a lot to the right to avoid a collision), and then diving down the inside of the MX5 I was following into Copse, forcing him to abandon his line into the apex. Hopefully this sort of inconsiderate, dangerous and "illegal" driving is rare at track days - I wonder if this would have happened if the person in question was in their own car. But I can't really blame EasyTrack, as they are somewhat at the mercy of their clients. Hopefully ex-clients! Ah, well... at least I am still in one piece, and was able to follow another MX5 for a few laps and work on my braking points and racing lines.

The end of the third session brought us to lunchtime, with a meagre 34 track-miles on the clock! Not a great start to the day! During lunch I nipped out from the circuit to fill up with petrol, only to get stuck in a queue at a red light for some road works! Arrrgh! Do I detect a theme here?!

The afternoon kicked off in a much better vein. I had an excellent session straight after lunch - I got my car out early near the head of the queue, so I was ahead of all the slow cars. I still had to keep out of the way of the fast cars, but at least I could take the corners at my own pace! Amazingly, nobody fell off the track so we finally clocked up a few decent laps. I started to push braking points and cornering speeds to see where I could improve my times. Most of the corners are extremely long, so it took a while to find the apexes, but once found, they were really quite easy to hit. The Brooklands-Luffield complex was the most fun - essentially a giant chicane - getting a good line through Brooklands makes a big difference to your speed through Luffield. Keeping the car settled in the switch from left to right turn also added an extra element to the corner. It felt incredibly long and slow, but by the end of the day my speed through here was about 55mph, which ain't exactly slow!

I hitched a lift in the silver turbo'd MX5, which was awesome, and this introduced some interestingly different lines - made possible by using the extra power of the car to drive straight out of the corner rather than having to obey any laws of physics and drift wide to the exit! It was also really nice to be in a car fast enough that we were passing many other cars while ourselves only being passed about once.

I was still having trouble with Copse, as I was braking way too early and going far slower through the corner than necessary (early in the day I was taking it in 3rd, but by the end of the day I was touching 80mph through here, which is where my car redlines in 3rd, so I stayed in 4th throughout). Each lap I pushed harder into this corner, and I soon discovered that in the turn-in to the corner, "over 80mph" was a touch too much - with all the weight on the front tyres under braking, there was no grip from the rear, so the back end stepped out, I corrected, the tyres suddenly bit (not a great idea at 80!), and we flicked around the other way, spinning out to the exit-point of the corner and fetching up pointing the correct way, but with my left tyres in the gravel, and just half of my right tyres sitting on the exit kerb. And some numbskull had forgotten to stick his foot on the clutch so we had stalled (bloody lazy passengers, eh? :-) I quite enjoyed the spin (especially the bit where it stopped safely!) but I was very concerned about parking right on the edge of the racing line - luckily I was able to struggle out of the gravel, and the 2 cars behind me saw me in time and slowed to let me get back onto the track and out of their way! We made our way round to the pit entry to find the session red-flagged again, and I felt awful that it was my fault - until we discovered that it was just a breakdown on the main straight! Phew!

I should note that while an 80mph spin sounds really scary and dangerous, it was actually an amazingly short and very safe event, and I was impressed that after I lost control at 80, I only travelled one track width before the car came to a complete stop. The only worry was that I ended up parked on the racing line for a few seconds.

The final session went much better - I managed to avoid most of the traffic, and stayed pointing the right way down the road all the way! I drove 49.1 miles in the final 3 sessions for a grand total of 85.1 miles - quite a low tally due to spending so much of our time sitting in the pit lane.

So how was it? I really enjoyed it, but ultimately it was a little disappointing because of the massive amount of time spent in the pit lane - but I can hardly complain about that when I came so close to stopping a session myself! The circuit was not nearly as interesting as Donington - no hills or blind corners, I only got to use 3rd & 4th gears, and due to the mix of cars on the day, I had to concentrate on my mirrors to keep out of the way of the faster cars. So it could have been a lot better, but I still had a brilliant day out. Can't wait to get down to Wroughton Airfield next week... :-)

More full-size images from the day are available here

Jason Williams, June 21, 2001