AMOC Speed Series - Round 8 – Hethel, Norfolk, Sunday 8th September.
Today's event took place at the Lotus test track in Hethel, Norfolk. The AMOC were, once again, the guests of the Borough 19 Motor Club, facilitated by the Lotus Motor Club. The latter are the link with the Lotus factory. We are grateful to both.
The test track is a well-kept secret because as a rule you only get to drive it if you are about to buy a new Lotus. It is part of the Lotus factory complex, and it is quite long, very fast with an absolutely fabulous tarmac surface which is kept in tip-top condition.
Participants from the AMOC were Guy Staudt in his late model Vantage 4.7 Vantage with Sportshift 2 (Luxembourg), Mark Chandler in his supercharged 6 cyl DB7, (North Wales) and Nigel Grice (The Smoke), your author in the venerable DB2/4Mkll - pictured above.
The weather, which threatened rain, actually held up, and it turned out to be warm and dry – perfect sprinting weather in fact.
Guy was accompanied by his wife Huguette, who you would have thought, given that she was there last year, would have found something better to do, since there is absolutely nothing at Hethel other than the mobile catering, lots of new Lotus cars shrink-wrapped for delivery, a few portaloos, and a whole lot of anoraky (if that is a word) and obsessive car enthusiasts whose idea of a good time is to compare different grades of grease.
Mark Chandler is of the old school – technical and hard-charging, a mean man with a lathe – though with a surprising soft spot when you get him talking about his donkeys – he was accompanied by his lunch of tomato and feta cheese (they are dead sophisticated in Wales). With me were two trusty scotch eggs, just in case.
But down to business. Anne Reed at HQ had set our targets – which were re-configured after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing and argy-bargy about it not being fair, etc etc. More gamesmanship if you ask me. Anyway, the amended target times were confirmed as being Guy – 93.00, Mark 95.34, and me 112.14. These were based on our fastest times set in the previous year, albeit Guy was in a different Vantage, with the steering wheel on the wrong side, and it was black. Would that make a difference? We did not know.
Practice – which does not count in terms of results – was a sighting run to remember the lie of the land and work out which way the corners go. At that point, we were all well off the pace, the fast boys each just over 100 secs, and yours truly at a frankly pedestrian 115. Shows you how fast the circuit is though – maximum speed in the old banger even when new was 118mph, and I reckon it has probably lost a pony or two since then. The Vantage and the DB7 must have been doing at least 150 mph by the end of the main straight before the chicane that Mark drove right through via the grass – but perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.
Two runs before lunch saw Mark with a strong first run of 97.84, but the second run involved the afore mentioned going-straight-through-the-chicane-via-the-grass and the result of that run was disallowed. Guy and I nibbled away at our times, hoping to nail things after lunch.
To cut to the chase, I did one run of 110.97, a full 1.17 seconds ahead of target, but could not get any faster on the later runs. But chuffed all the same. Guy on his last run managed 92.86, a whisker faster than his target time by 0.14 of a second. Very chuffed. But Mark would never get quicker than his first timed run – it turns out that pivoting through 180 degrees and/or blasting through chicanes via the grass is not the fastest way round the circuit. Muttered something about tyres having gone hard and un-grippy. Mildly dis-chuffed.
But we all agreed that we had enjoyed each other's company, we had enjoyed walking the circuit, enjoyed spotting the passing Spitfire (they seem to follow us around) and talking to the other competitors, and had generally had a cracking day out. And we all marvelled that Huguette's novel, with which she made some satisfactory progress, was not in German as the last one was, but in French. There is clearly no end to her accomplishments, even if her judgement leaves something to be desired.
Report by Nigel Grice
Photo by Andrew Manston, M&H Photography