Track Day - Page 2: 4x4, Caterham 7, Go-karting and more

Rising at 6.30am on a Sunday is not always my idea of fun, but as this was for a track-day at former Formula 1 circuit Brands Hatch it was in a good cause. I meet up with several press colleagues at Victoria Station in London and people from the More Than press and PR office, who are hosting today’s event. Click photos to enlarge them

Not many people know that Brands has had an off-road section, as well as a rallying track, for several years. Even though it was mercifully dry, their off-road is effectively a bog interspersed with lake-like puddles and apparently unfeasibly steep muddy banks. We are fortunate to have an experienced 4x4 instructor in John Bloy, and the original and still the best 4x4, the Land Rover Defender, a vehicle that is still closely related to its original 1947 mud-plugging forebear. They are short-wheelbase, equipped with 135hp 2.5 TDi engines. However, their key advantage over the “pretend off-roaders” that we see dropping off kids at Hampstead prep schools is their ultra-low range gearbox. This enables enormous power at very low speed.

We negotiate the tipping test (see right) gingerly. We have to drive the car very slowly with one side high up on the bank. This requires care; the vehicle will tip over at 46-degrees; we manage in the late 30s. Then we have an odd sort of speed trial, where the goal is not to do the distance in a minimum time, but also not to take too long either. As John told us, when you’re driving 4x4s for real in difficult conditions, going too fast can have catastrophic consequences – busting an axle miles from home and water is bad news.

The Defender performs amazingly and frequently goes up – and down – impossible inclines and through extremely deep water – luckily they are equipped with snorkels! “Which 4x4s get round this and which don’t?”, I ask John.

“All the proper 4x4s manage it with no problem; All the ‘proper’ Land Rovers (Defender, Discovery, and Range Rover) have no problem, since they all have the ultra-low gearbox and high clearance. The Freelander won’t make it. Neither will the namby-pamby off-roaders – the BMW X5, the VW Touareg, the Porsche Cayenne, the Toyota RAV4.”

Interestingly enough the only “school-run mum” 4x4 that will do the course is the one that seems most improbable: The Renault Scenic RX4.

The Caterham Seven is a seriously excellent car. It is a largely unchanged version of the Lotus 7 of 1957. It is a very small 2-seater sports car, but powered by a 1.6 K-series Rover engine which gives out a modest 115 hp. But – and it is a big but – while an engine like this will usually push a car around that weighs around 1400 kg, this little Caterham weighs just 550 kgs – less even than an F1 car. Thus even this bottom-of-the-range will hit 60 in a shade over 6 seconds. Mr Toad would have loved this car.

No wonder then that the fastest Seven, with a 230bhp race-derived 1.8-litre engine, can reach 60mph from rest in 3.4 seconds – only a McLaren F1 will get faster than that. However, these cars were designed for average 1950s man – and I am 6’3” and, not for the last time today, I find that racing cars do not like lanky people one little bit. Indeed, I feel initially that I will not make it at all, but luckily once I get my feet deep into the bonnet I’m in business.

I’m lucky that my instructor and co-pilot for the session is experienced Caterham-Captain Graham White, who also races them. He teaches me the importance of the racing line – when to make the turns and so on – and also that crucial point that many find counter-intuitive – that it is in fact much safer to pile on the power halfway through a corner than to ease off or worse still, use the brakes. Power half-way through the turn helps to cement the tyres to the asphalt.

I build up confidence and soon am thoroughly enjoying the exhilaration of wind through the air, road just inches below, (making it seem like we’re going much faster than we actually are), soaking up the surprisingly bright November Sunday sunshine. You can push this car into the corner at a good speed, and such as is the grip of the tyres, and the fundamental physics of the car (it has such a low centre of gravity), it just goes around without a murmur.

It doesn’t have a roof, so if it rains you are either stuffed or you have to drive so fast the rain can’t get you – which may or may not be an option… You can even build a Seven yourself which will save you a few grand. It is not the most practical of cars, but like many impractical cars it is a lot more fun than the normal ones!

The go-kart track is an exact scale model of the Brands Hatch circuit, which means in theory you know the track before you even drive on it. In reality the tracks are the same apart from one key difference – the kart track has none of the terrifying (at speed) descents and uphill swoops of the grown-up circuit. Which is just as well as hotrods the karts are not: 6 hp lawnmower-engines capable of no more than 25-30 mph, with acceleration that is dismal.

However, they are a lot of fun, and the only time today that we actually genuinely get to race against other people. After some closely fought heats, there was a serious incident at the McLaren bend when More Than’s Graham Hollebon careered suitably enough into More Than’s motor insurance boss, David Pitt. Unfortunately Graham injured his wrist and a suitably hard-core racing-circuit ambulance was summoned – an MG ZT-T 260 V8 estate complete with twin-twin exhausts.

Fortunately he was not badly hurt but had to retire from the rest of the proceedings. David was disqualified somewhat harshly after this incident and after some chaotic scenes in the grand final, More Than PR Boss Jon Sellors emerged as the winner, with Emma Rigby from the internet trade-magazine Revolution in second place.

This is by far the most crackpot vehicle I have ever driven. It is equipped with not one but two Honda lawn-mower engines, and has two seats. It has two levers which control each engine which in turn drives each wheel. To go forward you push forward on both, and to turn you pull back on one while pushing forward on the other – and myriad combinations in between. A Challenger 2 has similar controls, though they look somewhat different. The Powerturn is enormous fun; If you rev too sharply from start the front jockey-wheel soars into the air, and the flexible engines are hard to control, ensuring some extremely sharp manoeuvring which is great for the slalom course but proved extremely disconcerting for some of our party!

Back onto the proper track again, and 2 quick circuits with a co-driver in a MG ZS. Now the MG ZS is better known as a Rover 45 AKA Rover 400 AKA Honda Civic circa 1993. Despite this aged providence, these cars have a major bonus – a sweet 2.5 K-series V6 engine mustering 180 horses. Again I was lucky with my instructor, racing-driver Ryan Hooker. He gave me precise instructions on how to pilot the car perfectly through the curves and most importantly, when we swapped places and I was doing the driving, gave me huge confidence to really push the envelope and make sharp turns at high-speed – like any good racing driver he likes a bit of welly and gratifyingly told me to floor it at the appropriate moments, when the sweet 6 really takes off and surged us past many of our colleagues. Ryan usually works at Brands’ sister track, Bedford Autodrome, and usually races in the British GT competition, in a 450hp Chevrolet Corvette. You can visit his website at

This is Brands Hatch’s very own racing car, and at first glance looks a lot like an F1 car. They’re designed to give visitors the closest experience they’re ever likely to have to a proper racing car. Equipped with a 200 hp engine out of an Audi TT, they’re incredibly light at just 520 kgs, while a TT is 1400. They are also a total nightmare for anyone as tall as me. I thought getting into the Seven was tricky – getting into one of these was almost impossible. Even when I had somehow managed to shoehorn myself into it, it remained incredibly uncomfortable, made worse by the high-tension racing harness we were strapped in with.

Now I know how it must have felt to be strapped into a Spitfire during the war, a feeling heightened by a large red button on the dash disconcertingly marked FIRE EXTINGUISHER. I wasn’t going to be jumped by any 109s, but this car – irrationally no doubt – had trouble written all over it for me.

Oh yes, not only did my height make for enormous problems, but so did my size 12s. I found myself frequently pressing the throttle and brake at the same time which is very cool when Steve McQueen did it in an auto-box Mustang in San Francisco but is decidedly uncool in a manual racing-car on Brands Hatch. Oh and the gearbox is also designed for people several sizes smaller – my arms were literally too long to easily get to the tiny little lever that passed for a gearstick – So I just stayed in 4th all the way round 10 laps, which proved surprisingly fine as this engine has a lot of legs.

I wanted to throw it around as I knew it was more than capable of dealing with just about anything – the enormous slick tyres and low centre of gravity ensure superb handling, but I couldn’t ever get into the groove – everything just seemed too tricky, unnatural, claustrophobic – I found myself yearning for a world I understood – the world of the MG ZS, or even the Seven – not this road-going fighter plane.

Track days are wicked; they are not entirely for the faint-of-heart or dare I say it for those of a non-petrol disposition, but the rest of us should get stuck in; the day gives an example of a broad-section of motorsport, from simple go-karting, through 4x4ing, to the madness of the Formula Brands car.

They also let us free on a circuit to do what is increasingly impossible elsewhere – to drive fast and to concentrate hard on the road ahead while not, for once, keeping en eye on the rear-view mirror or for the dreaded Gatso ahead and avoiding sundry muppet-motorists. Track-days at their best epitomise for me what motoring should be all about: wind-through hair, sunshine, clear roads, and going as fast as conditions reasonably allow: the essence of freedom and fun.