GT86 5000 Mile Review

[Lauren]

Other things I've been up to!

'Five years, five years it's taken for you to do a sprint'. The words of chief and proprietor of the Toyota Sprint Series, Adrian Smith. Adrian set up the sprint series in order to provide competitive and importantly affordable way for us car nuts to get out on track and prove our mettle. I admit my excuses had previously been the lack of a suitable car, my AE86 that I bought some two and a half years ago (predictably it's been on the road for less than half of that time), is just not up to the job handling wise as a few trackdays had established. But, now I had the GT86, I didn't really have any more excuses.

The format is that you arrive, have two sighting laps, two practice laps then eight timed sessions. The cars are divided into various classes in order to bring on the competition and twelve cars in the GT86 class certainly got the competitive juices flowing. Being a sprint, it's a matter of paying your entry and then buying a competition licence which you can buy for a fiver for the day.

After some banter and following a few drinks in the bar, I could tell there was much expected of me. No pressure, then! My cunning plan was to watch everyone else get drunk and keep myself in good shape for the early start the following morning.

After a brief encounter with scrutineering, sign on and a briefing followed. After I'd covered my car with my race number and some series sponsor stickers I was ready to go. The course at Blyton Park is technical and twisty. Fortunately there isn't that much to hit, though a good friend of mine in his car that I was going to be co-driving had contact with the barrier which put an early end to his day. We have to remember of course there is always a risk. Having tracked my car a couple of times already I felt confident and was pushing my car straightaway. The start of the layout for the sprint was incredibly tight and I admit, I was having fun drifting a bit around the cones. After an impossibly tight hairpin I was hard on the power in 2nd trying my best to drive out of the slide whilst losing as little momentum as possible. Sprinting is all about going round in the shortest time of course, there are no points for style or holding the biggest slide. This was something I could have done well to remind myself at the beginning of the day. Still from there it's flat out round a fast left hander trying to be smooth with the shift up to third so as to not unsettle the car mid corner.



I can only describe the next part of the track as nasty, as there is a very tight chicane that requires you to stand on the brakes at a little over one hundred miles per hour and then flick the car left, right and stamp on the throttle in second. This is the tricky bit where my friend got caught out as I was finding the car would slide on the exit and it took a little nerve to keep your foot in and drive through the slide. What follows is the tricky left hander of Bishops which required a later turn in than it first looked. From here's there's a short straight to sort out the oppositte lock and then the tighter entry into Bunga Bunga. I admit, I'm not convinced I got this right all day. In essence when you're sprinting there is a very different focus to trackdays because making mistakes costs time. I found my car would slide a fair bit on the exit, but being of the stubborn disposition there was no way I could do the injustice of lifting through here. At this point there is a fast fourth gear run into the tricky Port Froid. Entry is easy, but the exit proved far more difficult. Like a hamfisted baffoon on one lap I tried to take it flat in fourth. No chance, basically, but again, you have to try things, just in case they work and all of a sudden you find time. It's a quick run from here to Trubshaws and then the seemingly impossibly tight left turn into the K7 section which is very easy to outbrake yourself on. The final part of the circuit is the seemingly endlessly long left hander onto the short finish straight where you can see your time as you cross the line.



From my early times it pretty obvious that the competition was going to be tough to beat. Whilst I was in a couple of seconds of first place after the first run, I soon learnt that finding time on subsequent attempts wasn't as easy as it looked. At this point, I have to remember it's seven years since I last raced competitively and I'd never done a sprint before. My next excuse was that my love of trackdays might have meant that whilst I can always put on a show of the sideways variety, it was actually costing me time and as usual when I get competitive I tend to overdrive the car. It took a fair bit of concentration to actually slow myself down and put in quicker times. Whilst this was all well and good, everyone else was getting quicker too.

The line up of GT86's:



I was beginning to realise that there was more to this sprinting lark than I first thought. However, all said and done it was a refreshing change to feel the competitive spirit coming back and I could feel the tension as I tried and tried to find ways, anyway would do to improve my times. At one point I even tried a scandi-flick to try and drive the car round the impossibly tight hairpin where you turn left at Carmen. Damn, not enough of a weight transfer on the way in and more understeer! What I did notice, perhaps because the stakes seem higher (ie my reputation) my focus on the minutae of detail put every part of the track under scrutiny. In the end I made fourth place out of twelve a second behind second and third place who were within a hundredth of a second of each other. Nigel Greensall needs a mention here for somehow finding two seconds out of nowhere and finishing a whole two seconds in front of second place and three seconds quicker than me. Of my fellow competitors who had little in the way of experience it was impressive to see how much their times improved over the day.

What struck me, though was the sense of camaraderie. I have to say having done tintop racing before, I found the sprint a friendlier affair in many ways. It just seemed a bit more relaxed. This is doubtless I would suspect for having a format where you are up against the clock and not swapping paint into the apex of corners. But the best thing of all is that this is affordable to anyone. It doesn't have to cost the mega bucks it does to race. You lose most of the risk and you can as I did, just turn up in your daily road car, don a crash helmet and get out there.

In the queue for another run:



Thinking back, it was a fantastic day, great fun, there was a great sense that we were all in together and whilst Nigel's secrets for his bonkers quick lap may have remained a mystery despite my efforts to unearth them, there was a good amount of banter and plenty of prizes for the different classes. There is a part of me that will have to admit, yes I do like the Gerry Marshal way of driving, which involves a lot of drifting, so in a way after years of hooning on trackdays I felt a little out of my comfort zone as pleasing the crowds wasn't helping my times, but I very much enjoyed the competitive aspect too. I learnt a lot about my car too when I was asking it handle differently and trying different techniques. I think I just might need to do a few more!

A big thank you to Adrian at Fensport and Colin and his team at Javelin. It won't be another five years!