Near my workshop is Curborough Sprint track. It's a lovely little place, no grand facilities, but a pleasantly green place to go to watch a few interesting motors. Quite by chance, I happened to spot that they were running an "Introduction To Sprinting" day, where you could turn up in your road car and give it a go. Anything for a chuckle...
Sprinting falls into the same bracket as hillclimbing - it's solo against-the-clock competition. The day (and most of the events at Curborough) are run by the Shenstone and District Motor Club, who are a lovely bunch, and the whole place has a really nice vibe to it - a bit like Shakey County. There's nothing pretentious about the place, but there's a tea wagon, some half-decent bogs and not too many potholes. The track itself is racing-grade asphalt and really nicely prepared.
There were plenty of people there to try out this free trial offer, predictably loads of Minis, Super Seven-type things, Subarus and Evos, plus a couple of frighteningly fast Honda hatchbacks, but there were dozens of people just out for a giggle in the daily. The guy behind me had a Rover 820 on LPG, and one guy was there in a Mondeo and hadn't even bothered to take the bike rack off the roof. There was a nice Rover-powered Pop but I didn't see the owner and didn't see it on track.
We were all grouped in batches of about 12, and first off we were told all about sprinting, the hows, whens and wheres. Then we moved on to another guy who talked about all the paperwork you'd need - sprinting requires an MSA Class B licence - and club membership. Then onto the scrutineer, who gave us a bit of gen about the rules and regs using a Volvo marked up with dayglo arrows! Very effective. One thing that struck me was that, in roadgoing Production class, you've got to run road treads from a prescribed list of manufacturers; no slicks, else you're bumped up to Modified and have to have a roll cage and all that jazz.
Some of the regular competitors were there in their road cars, and we got to jump in for a couple of trips around the track with someone who knows what they're doing. I got shown around by a single-seater racer in his Passat towcar - a diesel, automatic estate - and his sightseeing "lap", conducted whilst talking over his shoulder to the newbies in the back seat, was probably quicker than me in the Mustang at full chat.
Then you get to have a go in your own car with the instructor sat next to you. You sit at the startline until the light goes green, then tonk it up the long double-apex left, a shallow right, then into a sharp right-left called the Molehill, then a deceptively tight right-hand hairpin and there's a quarter-mile straight back to the finish line. In your head it takes about five seconds; in reality, the course record is something like 27 seconds, my instructor's tarmac rally Escort does it in 33, and I probably did it in about 50.
I had a couple of goes, and it was proper good fun. It also highlighted that the uprated springs and dampers have made a mighty difference. At a messy approach to the top hairpin, I approached too fast and was late turning in. The instructor said, "You're going to go off, you're going to go off... " then the car turned in beautifully, I powered it out of the corner and he just said, "Oh... okay then."
These sprints are damn good fun, but they ain't cheap. After your race licence and club membership, it's at least £70 per day for a sanctioned sprint meet, and you should get 4 runs - two practice, two timed - or more if it's not a packed schedule. That doesn't seem like a lot of track time, but I suppose £-per-minute it's not that different to drag racing... I did enquire about track days, and the secretary of the course told me about private "club test day" hire... but more about that later. The venue's website is www.curborough.co.uk if you fancy a gander.
Eugene
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