[nikkinokkinoo]

PistonHeads Sporting Tour

In Brief
Was it fun - yes
Would I do it again - no

Hello, so I did the Sporting Tour avec mon Bro who was the co-driver for the event. The mainstay of the event is to follow a predefined course using something called Tulip navigation language, something like this. You are obviously not allowed to race as it is public roads. At the lunch stop there were two timed events. You go off in the sequence which you booked. Were 90 so had to wait until 1030, which is ok as we just checked out the other motors. Some real nice stuff there, 911 GT3 RS, R8 2WD, M4, E92M3’s, FK8s’, Mclaren, Lotus, Integra, M2, Hawk Eye and a Legacy from the Scooby stable. Off we went @ 1030. The Nav was not too bad, we did get caught by a Fiestia St on the route and whilst your not supposed to race, you kind of do a bit so tried to shake him of with whilst keeping it semi legal. The terrain was mainly single track or narrow lanes, I really thought my carbon splitter was going to be a casualty of the day but it survived. The first leg was at least a couple of hours and a bit later on we caught up with a gaggle, McLaren, 911, Bentley and a few others. Made it to the lunch venue which was an air field. Test time. TBH the test’s could have been way better an longer. First test was through a few cones and back to the start. I nailed the start. Big old bump near the first cone but got round it and just got as much power down as I could. My time was 17.1s which was 5th fastest overall. Beaten by the R8, 911 GTS, EV0 8 and something else I can’t remember, out of 120 cars that was pretty good. I think the 4WD helped get it off the line. Similar kind of test for the second. You had to go round a cone twice and then round a further cone. I could see others doing it and they were loosing a lot of time just understeering. My sensible head said just go slow and I think that would have been the way to do it. My I’m going to win this head said set the DCCD to the rear try and get the back out and just gun the throttle. So I went with option two. I think I have only used the DCCD once in the snow. So I gave the beans and off we went. My plan of the back coming round failed it just pushed on making a massive understeery circle around the cones as the clock ticked. Would not have mattered any was as I went the wrong way round a cone…..Bit annoyed, but no harm done. It was in this state of mind that I binned off the rest of the tulip navigation in favour of getting home - it was more of the same in the afternoon and I’d done enough in the morning that I wouldn’t get anything extra out of the afternoon stage. It was around Suffolk so a 2+ hours to get back home. It was good, could have been much better with less nav and more timed events and for longer.

On to the next driving thing, whatever that may be………