"Low-flying cones"

June 30 was meant to be overcast but dry. It turned out to be mostly sunny and quite windy, with a couple of brief showers to get the MX5 crew scurrying to raise their soft-tops! The venue was Wroughton Airfield, near Swindon - a windswept area of tarmac set in a picturesque green valley, with a course laid out in traffic cones, with a few hay bales and tyres for good measure. It turned out to be great value for money compared to my day at Silverstone (costing a little over £70 with passengers, instruction and a separate autotest slalom course all free).

Instead of running fixed "sessions", we had an "open pit lane" - 8 cars at a time were allowed on the track for a self-regulated 6 laps each, and we queued in the pits to be allowed onto the track as other cars finished their laps. This worked extremely well as everyone was very cooperative about not hogging the track, and having a reasonable rest between sessions.

Waves of attacking cones
It was alleged that the Airfield venue meant no Armco barriers to hit, only cones. Which was true. But I feel I should set the record slightly straighter - At Donington and Silverstone there is Armco, but it is 30 or more feet away (and often on the far side of a nice soft gravel bed) at almost all times. On the airfield, there were only "soft targets" to hit, but they were inches from the racing line. A small slide, and you could clip a cone - this usually only leaves (at most) a small scuff of plastic on your paint which can be wiped away, but psychologically, I found the cones far more intimidating than the wide open spaces on the "proper" tracks. This was underlined fairly early on in the day when 2 MX5s were damaged by extreme conical collisions.

(In hindsight it is not nearly as bad as this makes it sound!! - The friendly & helpful EasyTrack staff running the day pointed out that they had never seen such damage before, but this did not entirely avert the worry! Fear of cones also helps to concentrate the mind, and so long as you don't try to go too fast, the cones are totally harmless and easily avoided - so just take things easy! By the end of the day, I had no fear of the cones at all... read on for details)

These images illustrate the problem: First, the scary one - the unlikely but unfortunate result (it's hard to see here, but there is quite a dent!)


Next, well, here's the more usual result - my car's only injury from the 3 cone-clips I managed in the day. This wiped away totally with application of some elbow grease


I must also add that the cones involved came off considerably worse than the cars! :-)

Track antics
The morning started with me finding the cones most intimidating, especially those in the chicanes, the tightest hairpin where they were backed up with hay bales and tyres. I found an OK line through the chicanes, but had to fight the car slightly to get around the cones, and a couple of mistakes and pushing too hard led to me knocking down the cone on a chicane twice, and harmlessly running over its base frequently! My fears were not helped when a car (a Manta GTE?) ran into the bales and lost its front bumper, and later a BMW skidded sideways through the tyres (damage unknown).

To add to the day's variety, a brief shower wet the track, allowing me to try out my new Bridgestone SO2 tyres in the wet - and I soon learnt that they really do grip well in the wet (unlike my previous tyres), and my wet-driving confidence was massively boosted. I felt the wet made the corners more fun - the car seemed to slide more easily, but predictably - or perhaps it was just that the speeds were lower so the cones were less frightening! The down side of the rain turned out to be that with the soft-top up, my helmet banged repeatedly on the roof frame. Thankfully I only had to drive about 6 laps like this.

Due to the wind, the track dried very quickly, and I was soon hairing around again, screeching the tyres on every corner (like most others!), and found I was at least on a par with the speed of most other cars, and catching & passing quite a few.

Extra drama was added by a constant stream of people spinning in the hairpins. The "off of the day" prize has to go to the AC Cobra which fell off the track on the big corner, and literally disappeared into the grass beside the track - one second it was heading off the tarmac, and the next second the long grass swallowed him whole!

Just before lunch, I was lucky enough to have an EasyTrack instructor to take me around the course (which was free, and well worth taking advantage of). First, I drove 2 laps to give him an idea of how bad I was, and then he took over and slowly drove 2 laps to show me improved racing lines and stressed how I should smooth my braking and steering to get around the course quickly. I then drove another 4 or 5 laps and he gave constructive comments about how I could improve my driving.

The next session I went out to try to put my lessons into practice, and found that (a) I could go around the entire track without squealing my tyres, and (b) I was still keeping up with all the other cars - I could follow that silver Lotus Elise through a corner, and while his tyres shrieked like banshees all the way around (as before), mine were now almost totally silent - but I was not losing ground to him! The other immediately noticeable difference was that through the chicane I no longer had to wrench and fight the car to avoid cones - by braking and turning in more smoothly, I was able to shift the balance of the car and its momentum just carried it safely through the corners on exactly the right line. The cones suddenly stopped being intimidating, and yet I was going much faster than before through that section. By the end of the day I was doing around 70mph though the chicanes, passing within inches of the cones on either side.

After an excellent pub lunch, I was raring to go, and tried to practice and refine what I had learned in those few laps with the instructor. I followed perhaps 12 to 15 different cars which were squealing and shredding their tyres, yet I found I could easily stick to their tails through the corners without burning nearly so much rubber! ... Well, all except for the big corner at the bottom of the map - this was just awesome fun to go around in 2nd gear, squealing the tyres and sliding the back end out, even though I could go around it almost as fast in 3rd without tyre squeal! - Something A.C. was obviously practicing in his 10th Anniversary MX5 as he kept spinning here until by the end of the day he was powersliding it beautifully:

I clocked up 72 miles on track (quite a lot when you spend the entire day in 2nd and 3rd gear!). I managed just over 11 miles per gallon - a third of my normal mpg!

Auto-test
In the afternoon, an area to the side of the track was set up for a simple autotest - drive up a slalom of 4 cones, around 3 cones at the far end, back through the slalom, and stop within a rectangle of cones - all as fast as you could. You were allowed 3 runs.

For my practise run I started off "normally", then changed up to 2nd, and went though quite smoothly, but not thrashing much speed out of the car, especially losing time in the turn at the end. For my second attempt, I revved to 4000rpm and dropped the clutch, squealed away from the line, and tried to negotiate the cones - but in 1st gear, I found it difficult to control the throttle, so I "kangarooed" a bit! But I still knocked a second off my previous time by burying the throttle to redline around the far turn. In my third run I was able to balance the throttle much more smoothly, using little bursts to help settle the car between the cones, ending up with a time of 27.45 seconds - the instructor said he would do the course in about 27 seconds in his peugeot 205, so I was chuffed that I was "on the pace". And this turned out to be the fastest time for the day! I felt this was not bad for my first ever autotest!

The instructor then had me run to the far end of the course, try a few donuts, and back for a handbrake turn to stop. The less said about my dismal donuts the better :-) But my first ever handbrake turn was a perfect 180 degrees, and apparently looked spectacular as I arrived in a cloud of tyre smoke! Unfortunately, my photographer was asleep, so I had to make 2 more attempts at handbrake turns for the camera. For some reason in the first I tried to turn into the skid (idiot!) so the turn ended at about 100 degrees. The second was going well until my tyres spontaneously decided to grip mid-spin and the car shot forwards, ruining it - maybe I forgot to hold onto the handbrake!

Finally
My day was completed by Gary very kindly acting as a one man firing squad in retribution for accidentally allowing myself to be overtaken by an MGF last week (it had a 40mph head start! There was oncoming traffic! I was so astonished the MGF had its hood down I forgot to accelerate! Ooh, look over there! Puppies!).

I was glad at this point I had brought a dry shirt in case it rained! :-)

This turned out to be a fab day out - It was far more varied than previous track days (in weather, available activities, etc), and the opportunity to get a bit of helpful instruction and try out some new things like the autotest was excellent. This time I managed to talk to more of the guys, which added to the friendly atmosphere of the day. The track layout was a lot more interesting and challenging than Silverstone, and it was great to drive on a track where many corners were taken in 2nd gear... optional powerslide heaven! I enjoyed the day 10 times more than Silverstone, yet it cost less than half as much - Result!

Right. So when's the next one?! Bring on those cones! :-)

Jason Williams, June 30, 2001