It is surprisingly hard to test a race car – especially if you have an open-wheeled/single seater – and it’s getting harder all the time.
A lot of the smaller (and cheaper) testing facilities seem to have moved focus towards hosting ‘driving experience’ days.
These are the circuits that you may or may not know about for testing:
Bruntingthorpe
Bruntingthorpe used to be great with it’s airfield runway layout and loads of run-off area, but this one is now out of the picture. They want you to produce your own liability insurance to be able to test there.
This liability insurance is the type of thing that trackday companies all have for their events, and your average Joe trying to get it for a day will find it almost impossible. If you have your own business, you may be able to find someone to cover you, but from my research it seems you’ll be looking at £250 for a day, then testing fees on top of that – so that no longer makes it a viable option. And that’s if you can even narrow down what SCOPE of cover you need – Bruntingthorpe are very vague when you ask any questions about this, and the impression is they don’t care or want you testing there.
That said, a few people do have cover for the year, such as Alan Harding from AHS – and if you’re in one of his cars you’ll be ok. He is not able to just let you do it on his policy, as insurance won’t allow this anymore.
I’m amazed that Bruntingthorpe don’t have their own insurance, because they are surely losing money?
Three Sisters
A forgotten little track up in Wigan, that I thought only did karts and bikes, but their website does indeed say that cars are welcome!
They seems pretty flexible, and will let you come and test whenever there’s nothing else on for £60 per hour.
They answered my email enquiry very quickly, and are helpful and friendly. There is also a fair bit of info on their website.
Llandow
Another small and forgotten track in Wales, around 20 miles West of Cardiff, where they actually used to hold Vee and Super Vee race meetings!
I sent several emails which were answered very quickly (thanks to Sharon and Louise!), and are also very flexible and relaxed over dates and times. Again, you can test there whenever they’re free, and they were happy for me to turn up “around 11ish” and book on whenever I was ready. It’s a bargain at £30 per hour, and although I was expected a boring but functional track to shake the car down on, I found I loved the place!
For less than a 50 second lap you get a very tight complex with flat-out high speed turns, a tight chicane, and it somehow has a million times more character than it should!
Short of these, you’re limited to paying through the nose for pre-race test days at £300-£400! Plus it will mean in most cases another night spent at the circuit, and if anything does fail it can be a busy old time trying to fix stuff so you can get out for qualifying the next morning.
If you keep your eyes open you might be able to squeeze into a test day for another series, so it’s worth checking out where Formula Ford, F4 etc are due to race. This can mean you’re out there with seriously fast machinery, and you might find you spend most of the time trying to stay out of their way…
If you’re in a tin-top you can take your pick of the many track days organised all over the place – but then you’ll be driving amongst a pack of Average Joe’s. Even worse is the added frustration of rules limiting where and how you can overtake anyone, so you might find you’re stuck behind a gaggle of Fiat Uno’s unable to pass for the entire session! The driving might also not be as predictable as you’d hope from MSA licence holders…
If you can get a few other Vee drivers to test with you, wherever you do it, it’s a massive bonus, because you’ll have some kind of reference point of how you’re doing. I blasted around Llandow all day thinking I was doing ok, but it wasn’t until I got to Silverstone that I found the other Vee drivers were gobsmackingly faster than me! You won’t get much from a test day where you’re not doing it right!
With an increased budget it would be great to cram in all the testing I could, because that’s the best way to get faster. At this stage I don’t know how much I’ll test this year, and most of it could well be turning up at a circuit and learning the track during the qualifying session – not ideal if you want to be competitive!
If I’ve missed anywhere, feel free to let me know! I hope this is of use to someone out there!
One of the main things you’ll learn about motor racing is that, much like the other ‘M’ word (Marriage), if you mention it, the costs for everything go up. So it’s best to try and ignore what you’re spending on it.
A few of you have commented on my claim to have a budget of £2000 to do a season of Formula Vee – and rightly so, because if you add up all the entry fees that alone comes to just over this figure!
Last year, I came into the UK Formula Vee championship very late, and only did the last 3 rounds. Added to this was a bit of testing, plus the non-championship Vee Festival.
So, the long and short of it is that it will cost more than £2000 to race for a season, but with a few large assumptions, it can be done for not much more than this.
The main assumptions are that you have your own car, you’ve already got a set of Hoosier tyres, you’re not testing, you don’t break the car, and you’re not actually attending every round.
The way the championship is scored means you drop your worst two scores, assuming you have attended and finished every round – because of this a lot of drivers with tight budgets will miss a round because it’s too far away or they don’t like the track.
The point I’m making here is that you can race in Formula Vee on a fairly small budget – but most people in the series don’t.
If you’re testing at tracks it’s great, and highly desirable when you’re new to it all, but you CAN turn up and learn learn the track in qualifying – as I have done for the most part. I would love to be able to test, but I simply cannot afford to, both in cash terms and time off work.
Whilst I’m spending £30 per race weekend on Shell V-Power straight from the pump (and isn’t it great that fuel costs are still down?!), a lot of the other drivers are using full-on Sunoco race fuel for £300 per weekend! Whilst there should be some advantage to the higher octane fuel, I’ll just point out that I’m beating people using this fuel – so there’s no way I could ever justify spending this! Or to look at it another way, if I had that money I’m 100% sure it would be better spent on a test day hammering around a circuit. Once I’m familiar with all the circuits this might change, but to a rookie there is no magical go-faster add-on you can buy that will help you win – you need time in the car!
If you’re hiring a car you’re going to be paying between £500 and £750 for anything competitive – but do bear in mind you can buy a car for £3000 and you’re probably going to do as well in that as a rookie as if you’ve spent £30,000 on a sparkling new AHS Dominator!
The great thing about Formula Vee is that you DO see people who are on a tight budget mixing it up with the more affluent drivers. I have the ‘honour’ of being one of the lowest paid drivers trying to race Formula Vee, and whilst that can be frustrating, it’s also very rewarding.
I don’t resent the ones with the big budgets – because whatever level of motorsport you do, you will always have teams with a bigger budget. And how much more satisfying is it to beat them?
Of course there are then travel and food costs – we cut that down by taking a lot of Aldi food (maybe I should get them to sponsor me?) and camping over at the circuit in the trusty VW Camper van! Others take tents or sleep in their car – those who can will drive back home or book into a B&B.
Another excellent thing about Formula Vee over a lot of other series is that it is, to some extent, gentleman’s racing. This means most drivers won’t go for silly moves to overtake you, and will do it safely. Of course that observation might change if you’re running in the leading pack, but it means you CAN put fears of being taken out to rest, and just drive and have fun. Nobody wants to crash, because that is expensive, and may well be your season over.
Perhaps equally importantly is that if it does all go wrong on or off the track, the other drivers and teams will do what they can to help you! We all want to be out there racing, and we want more people out there with us (as long as we can beat them)!
So, to revise my original claim with a bit more (reluctant) thought – you can race Formula Vee for a season with a budget of £3000. You won’t be able to be the best you can be, as you’ll have to worry about not crashing and barely testing (I have another blog about the cheapest ways I’ve found to test) – but that is still a Hell of a lot less than anything else you can do to race.
Happy New Year to you all! I hope you got what you wanted for Christmas, didn’t put on 3 stone in weight, and are looking forward to a great 2016!
One of my Christmas presents was a subscription to iRacing.
For those of you who are even later to the party than me, iRacing is an online racing simulation used by thousands of gamers and real life racing drivers from all over the world. You have to pay a monthly subscription fee (you can get this from $4 if you watch out for offers or take out a yearly subscription) which gets you some basic cars and tracks, and then you have to buy any extra cars and tracks you want for around $12 each.
One thing that had been holding me back is that I only have a laptop, which isn’t ideal, but at least I upgraded the CRT TV to a flat screen HD one recently! You can pay hundreds for specialist racing wheels and pedals, or even virtual reality headsets to really immerse yourself in it all.
I have an old crappy Madcatz 2 steering wheel for the Xbox 360 that I paid about £30 off Ebay. Surprisingly, when I plugged it into my laptop, it actually worked! It doesn’t have any feedback or vibrations of Ferrari logo’s, but it’ll do. A quick word of warning that my Xbox 360 controller doesn’t work with my laptop, for some reason…
I downloaded all the stuff I need directly from the iRacing website, and paid up with my voucher and details whilst that was downloading, and then after a quick calibration of my controller, I was ready to race!
It takes a while to learn how to drive a simulator, so don’t expect to be able to jump on and win everything. There is also a good/bad (haven’t decided yet!) rating and licence system, which in theory means all the nutters only into knobbling everyone else will stay racing against like-minded idiots, whilst anyone trying to race a bit more realistically has an opportunity to upgrade their rating so they are also put into sessions with equally sensible drivers.
The only problem here is that it’s very hard to get your rating up, because you either bin it as you’re learning to stay on the track, or you get taken out by idiots which lowers BOTH of your ratings – your fault or not.
Even with my controller, it feels pretty good straight away. If you get a slide on, it’s extremely difficult to get it back without spinning – but that’s what it’s really like in real life! This might put off a lot of gamers…
After my first few days of playing, my Rookie rating had taken a serious bashing (down to 2.19!) but my racing was definitely improving! Today I finally had a clean race where I finished 3rd after a great battle with someone I had a brief chat to after the race, and that endeared me to it all a lot more.
At my level all I can really do is race an MX5 around Lime Rock Park (nice little track!) on the hour every hour, or race ovals in the Pick Up Cup. I haven’t really driven any of the other tracks, yet.
Ovals are a bit crap – especially when you’re trying to stay out of trouble to get your rating up. The good news here is that there are two separate licences for ovals and road courses, so you could quite happily leave the ovals to the ‘Merkans.
You can also do Time Trials, where you have to do around 8 totally clean laps minimum within 30 mins. This is harder than it sounds if you’re used to Forza and other games!
I will have to buy some of the UK tracks to see if it helps my Formula Vee racing in real life, and the closest car in the game to a Vee has to be the Skip Barber car, so that will also be getting bought. I am looking forward to getting that out around Oulton Park, Donington and Brands Hatch. Snetterton should be in the game soon, and having just checked, not only is Silverstone there, but so is the International layout!
There isn’t any other game with those UK tracks on them, and there really are some cracking tracks from all over the world, with more being added all the time. There are also a load of instructional videos that apply to real life just as much as iRacing, and so I figure it can’t harm my race preparation.
If you’re on it, then please feel free to add me on there – weirdly enough I’m on there are ‘James Cater’.
If you’ve got any tips or advice for me, I’m open to it all – and feel free to ask me any questions, too!
Here’s all the action and moments charting the story of sliding into the cockpit for the first time, to blasting away from a race grid in a National championship!
Hope you enjoy it
You can’t believe how much work goes into videos like this – I had to go through every bit of footage, noting bits to include, train myself up on video transitions and stuff, spend hours compiling it all and getting it to fit, then scrapping so many cool overtakes that it broke my heart! Then another few hours processing, checking, and uploading it!
A lot of work – but I loved it!
Feel free to comment with any suggestion, improvements, likes or dislikes!
“Just throw it into the corner, and sort out whatever happens afterwards!”
I’ve done 3 championship race weekends (plus one non-championship festival) on a very tight budget, proved I can actually drive a proper Formula Vee race car, and realised my childhood dream!
2015 has been a pretty good year in terms of my personal development.
I’ve had huge help from Glenn Hay who’s basically carried me along the way, but have also overcome my own fears, doubts and lack of skill along the way!
Since coming to my epiphany of how to drive a Formula Vee quickly at Silverstone in my first race (hence the title, “Just throw it into the corner, and sort out whatever happens afterwards!”), I’ve realised it fits quite well with my attitude on life.
Take that gamble. Get off your ass and DO IT – and then deal with the consequences be they good or bad.
If you’re not pushing forwards into the unknown, well, you’ll never know what might have been possible for you.
I’m looking forward (bit of an understatement!!) to driving for Glenn next season, but am also acutely aware that I can’t really do this forever.
I still believe that it IS possible to do a season in Formula Vee for £2000, but I’m not sure it’s sustainable.
In my current job, that’s about all that I could spend. One big crash and that could easily wipe out my budget. Without Glenn to help me, I don’t think I’d have any chance of carrying on. Even if I keep improving and do everything right, realistically, I can’t afford this.
The obvious next step is to find some sponsorship.
I have a lot of ideas, but am also realistic in what I think it’s even possible to get from sponsors in this day and age, and in a race series that’s far from the BTCC or F1.
I may reveal my methods if they yield some success, but for the obvious reasons of competition, this may be the one thing that I won’t be very open about on my blog.
If you read this and would like to help me or the team out in any way at all, from fees, parts, to just getting your hands on at race weekends, then please get in touch!
For 2016 Glenn will be stripping the excellent engine in the Sheane, remounting the front shocks, and then working at getting the Ray and his championship winning Scarab back together, too.
Why?
Because 2017 will be the 50th anniversary of Formula Vee in the UK! We aim to have as many cars out as we can, and it should all be a huge year for Formula Vee, and for British racing!
My aim for 2016 will be more of the same. A steady improvement, and moving up the grid. I’ve proved that I can be quick even with a damaged car and injury, and I was still able to drive around these problems and get, for a total rookie, some pretty fine results!
I’ll be aiming to finish in the top 6 – especially on the tracks I’ve already been to. If I can afford to test before the races I’ll take full advantage so that I can hit the ground running. If I knock out my mistakes I can do well – if I can grab the car by the scruff of its neck and get confident with it at the limit, I can maybe surprise a few of the front runners!
I’ve had some support from JooVuu.com, and hopefully I’ll also be using one of their brand new JooVuu-X cameras. I’ve had a sneak peak of the prototype that arrived just too late for me to use at Brands, and it’s a proper quality bit of kit with loads of amazing features, and it should be huge for them. I’ll also be running multiple cameras where I can to capture all the track action!
Glenn is modifying the front shock positions, so that should also take care of anything I bent getting airborne at Donington, and then the car should be good to go.
Before that, the Vee Centre are holding their annual awards night this Saturday, with a lot of the drivers doing a bit of karting before! I’ll take a helmet camera for that, but with skinny kart experts out there I don’t expect to be winning anything there.
MSV run a yearly festival for Formula Vee at Brands Hatch, with some of the Irish Vee drivers shipping their cars over and getting out there with the UK spec cars.
We should be extremely grateful to the five drivers who made the trek this year, as not very many UK drivers entered – without the Irish it would have been very poor, and possibly been the last time MSV asked us to race…
That said, they were all really bloody fast, so without them, I’d have definitely got much better results!
Part of the poor turn-out may be because it’s mid-November, and it was so cold I thought I might actually die spending a few nights in the VW camper van in gale force winds, pouring rain, and temperatures close to freezing! How James Harridge survived it sleeping in his car next to us is even more of a miracle!
I’ve never been on track at Brands Hatch before, and not being able to afford the testing on Friday, I was planning on treating the weekend like a test session to learn the track for next season.
Qualifying
Despite the promise of a dry qualifying, it rained just as we were going out on track, and by lap 3 any chance of a fast lap was over. To highlight this, I spun on the exit of Graham Hill Bend, ending up facing the right way but on the grass. As I went through the next corner, the mud on my tyres combined with a cold, wet track resulted in a huge tank-slapper that I held on to – but the forces involved had done something to the car that wasn’t immediately obvious… I’ll come back to that later.
From there it was survival, with cars off all over the place – every time I touched the throttle the car went sideways. This was not ideal to learn the track.
All of the fastest times were set in the first few laps, and so I was pleasantly surprised to be 12th on the grid for the first race, when I fully expected to be last. Over from Ireland with his newly built UK spec Sheane, Adam Macaulay snatched pole over James Harridge, with another of the Irish – Joe Power – taking third.
The Irish Vees run on what looks like a dry track day tyre, and I thought they’d have no chance in the rain – but I was very wrong! For those who don’t know, Irish spec cars are 1600cc as opposed to our 1300cc, but they have smaller wheels, which changes the gearing and it all balances out quite well.
In the gap between races, I finally got to have a bit of a chat with Paul Taylor and his lovely other half (noticeably missing from my thank you blog as I hadn’t managed to get around to them earlier in the year). I don’t think it was related, but his car then burst into flames in the garage (nobody was harmed), which pretty much did for his weekend due to a few issues once they’d scraped the powder off!
Race 1
The camber of the track at Brands Hatch is like Rockingham – except it’s not a constant through a corner, and even the start straight has all kinds of crazy undulations that I’d never even noticed as a spectator. From my 12th place on the grid, I was pointing downhill, and had to grow an extra leg to operate brake, clutch and the loud pedal all at the same time. I actually use heel and toe braking in my road car as second nature, but not in the race car (which is what I learned it for!).
I didn’t make the greatest start, and Alex Jones stalled on the grid immediately in front of me, so I had to get around him, and Michael Sammon and Jamie Harrison both beat me to Paddock Hill bend. I tucked in behind them in a gaggle with Tony Mitchell and Colin Gregory, and whilst I was just about holding onto them, I wasn’t able to bother them at all.
I got an excellent view of James Jones getting very sideways on the power after an incident at Druids, and then with Joe Power still stationary there and Alex Jones throwing it in thepit wall, I had my very first experience of a safety car.
The course car was very slow at first, but it was a million times better than the red flag that would otherwise have been thrown, and after a couple of laps it pulled in and we blasted into the spray once more.
Tony Mitchell got a slide on out of clearways and slammed into the pit wall at the front of the group I was trailing, sadly ending his weekend (he was fine, though). Colin Gregory then spun coming onto the back straight, with Tim Probert doing the same a few laps after.
In 8th place, I could see Tim reeling me in, but there was no chequered flag to save me with MSV allowing us longer races than usual, and when he caught me with a few laps to go, I waved him straight through rather than try and block him when he was clearly much faster.
And that meant my first ever top 10 result, following Tim home to a 9th!
Better yet – I then found out the grid for race 2 would have the top 10 places reversed, meaning I’d be starting from the front row in 2nd place!
Ian Jordan brought it home first for the Brits, followed by Gavin Buckley and James Harridge.
Race 2
After having a quick chat to Colin Gregory, who’d be the pole man, about tactics and survival from the front row, Glenn Hay pushed me back out of the garage into the (still pouring) rain, but I had no gears. Fumbling around, I found something to get me down to the holding area, and Glenn got on the spanners trying to get me something driveable before we headed onto the grid.
As they waved us out, the 2nd gear I thought I could manage with turned out to be the first time all year I’ve got it into reverse gear! With the reactions of someone who realises they’re looking like a Knob-Head, I narrowly avoided putting Glenn through the fence, and found something to get me moving forwards.
I took my place at the front of the grid, hoping someone was getting some photographs, as it may be a while before I get there again – but as they waved the green flag for the sighting lap I found I was now in 3rd gear, stalling it and hoping all the rest of the cars saw me waving frantically.
I found 1st gear and blasted away, wondering whether I should be reclaiming my grid spot for the start of the race, or whether I should start at the back? Struggling to find any gears, it became a moot point, and faced with starting in 3rd gear or reverse ahead of everyone else, for safety I reluctantly peeled off into the pits. I figured I’d either find a gear and do a pit lane start, or retire so we could fix it for the final race.
Watching all the grid blast away, the marshal finally waved me onto the track. I had a pretty lonely race, but had fun with the car and finished 10th.
At the pointy end, an ecstatic James Harridge took his first ever win in the Maverick Vee built by him and his Dad, Dave – it’s still far from the fastest down the straights, but makes up for it all in the twisty bits! I don’t think the winners cap left his head for the rest of the weekend – and rightly so! Snapping at his heels was James Jones, on his first time at the track, and his fellow Irishman Gavin Buckley running at the front again.
Race 3
After a very windy but dry (apart from the Irish lads in the Kentagon bar!) Saturday night, the final race on Sunday afternoon seemed set to favour me a bit more. I’d be starting from 10th on the grid, but these would be my first dry laps of the track, and I wouldn’t have the luxury of a few laps practice to get used to it – the lights would go out and we’d be straight into the race!
Except the lights went out and I went from 1st gear to 4th, as even though we had all the gears back, they weren’t quite where they had been for the rest of the year!
This dropped me right to the back of the field yet again!
I passed a few as I got used to the track in the dry, and then I could see Alex Jones up ahead of me. After a few laps I wasn’t getting any closer to him – so I dug deep and started pushing harder.
This worked, and I found myself right on the back of him through Clearways. I knew I was still being too slow and gentle on the throttle around there, so upped my game a bit and got some great drive from the Sheane’s brilliant little engine down the main straight, pulling just in front but not able to hold the outside into Paddock, and then I made sure I got well out of the way as James Harridge blasted through to lap me into Druids.
Surtees was the only corner I’d got nailed, taking it flat in 3rd, and showed my nose up the inside but backed out when Alex kept his foot in as well, setting me up perfectly to cut back on a tighter line around Clearways. I also gave a thumbs up to the black and white #18 flag being shown for exceeding track limits at Graham Hill.
I was getting faster into Paddock, but still braking far too early, and Alex latched onto the back of me down the hill, diving to the inside into Druids (another corner I’d been pretty useless at all weekend!) and then had to back off again to let Adam Macauley come through on the lead lap.
Again my improvements around Clearways put me ahead into Paddock, and I held onto it this time and braked in the middle of the track into Druids on a defensive line even though I thought Alex had gone off, but he appeared out of my blind spot on the grass to the inside and slithered past me again!
I kept all my wheels on the track for once around Graham Hill, so I didn’t pick up a penalty, and still managed to launch well down the straight to pull alongside Alex. I moved to the right to leave him racing room as I tried to take as fast a line as I could into Surtees, but the curve of the track caught me out a bit (I actually thought Alex had moved across into me, at the time) and I had to jink left very hard to prevent our wheels touching. What I didn’t know is that Ian Jordan was also there ready to lap us (I thought we’d get through Surtees before he was on us and then I could let him through at Clearways), and he had to take to the grass as well.
I pulled out a bit of breathing room, waving Ian and Paul Taylor through when they lapped me, and then got my head down for a few laps trying to drop Alex, who was around a second behind me.
He then pulled his fastest lap of the race out of the bag on the last lap, closing right up on me through Graham Hill before I got very sideways into McLaren bend, just managing to hold a slide leaving big black lines on the track. I knew he’d move to the inside, so just straightened up and headed right for the outside of clearways to get my speed back up, before easing back over to block the tight line against the pit wall, and crossed the line 4 tenths of a second ahead for 11th place!
As an overall race weekend, it feels like I wasn’t really on the pace – but having said that I was only around 3 seconds off the lap times of the winners, so maybe it was just that all the racers who turned up were fast!
The gear selection problem was just an unlucky thing to happen, and it is very tricky to sort out gear problems on a Formula Vee because the gearbox hangs out the back of the car, and the mechanism is so long back to the gear stick that a tiny change somewhere in the linkage has a massive effect. For Race 2 I had to literally use my fingertips to change to 3rd and 4th gears up against the chassis tubing. Added to this, when I let go of the steering wheel, the car turned left, and so there must still be some damage from Donington that we need to find. Luckily, my wrist was much stronger, and was only hurting lowering myself into the car.
One bonus for us was that MSV allocated the pit garages to the open wheel cars. This is a massive thing to us, as we basically have a camper van and maybe an umbrella, and when it’s pouring with rain there is nowhere to shelter or do any work to the car. The Formula 4 boys probably weren’t quite as grateful, with their 40ft trailers and partition building teams on hand, but it makes life so much easier not to have an open topped car sat filling up with rain between races!
The festival is always good – loads of track time, great racing on a great track, and even the food is pretty decent at MSV tracks! Hopefully next year’s event will attract a lot more of the British drivers. A grid of 16 is far too low for a championship that had 37 cars at Silverstone, and again we can’t thank the Irish lads enough for not only making up the numbers, but giving us a bit of a hiding!
Massive congratulations also to Ian Jordan for his win, and James Harridge for his first ever two wins.
And so we go into the long Winter… I’ll still be finding things to blog about on here, but we won’t be expecting to turn a wheel until March.
If you want to get involved in Vee by helping us out at races, we’d be honoured with any sort of help! We’re still doing this on a shoestring budget against people spending ten times (and more!) what we are, and so any sponsorship you can offer, big or small, would be greatly appreciated – and we will work something out so all parties benefit.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed my blogs this season, and hope to see you all out there again next year!
Much as I love my floro yellow Koden, the move to using a HANS device meant my hand was forced, and I needed to buy a new helmet with the SAH2010 approval with the HANS posts drilled.
It was always my intention to get a ‘better’ helmet when I could, so I figured now I might as well spend and get something I’d be happy with for many years to come.
Most of the big names sell their entry level helmet for around £400+, then the HANS posts will cost another £40+. That’s all a lot of money for someone with an Oliver Twist style race budget like mine!
Having been happy with the fit of my Koden, I looked at their more expensive models at the Autosport International Show, and found the fit equally as good, but the quality of their later helmets noticeable better.
Their base helmet with HANS fitments could be had for around £250! The only limit is that you have to have black or white, so no gaudy glowing colours this time…
However, if I’d bought one of these (and I’d be happy to race in them) I’d have always been kicking myself for not buying the full carbon fiber version – so I did!
The show price from Mark at M&P was an absolute bargain of £350 INCLUDING the HANS fitments! So for that extra £100, I’d be getting a Koden KSC25 in real life carbon – the likes of which would set you back, ooh, one or two thousand for one of the ‘big name’ brands!
Quality is excellent. Nothing is flimsy, all the bits join together perfectly, and even the Nomex lining is well-stitched and as good as any I’ve seen. Weight is a stunning 1330g. To put that into perspective, as a biker of 15 years riding daily, I buy the best kit I can. I have never worn a helmet as light as the Koden KSC25, and it’s very, very noticeable as soon as you put it on!
It’s got a trusty double D-ring fastener, and holds my noggin like a sensuous lover. Or a wrestler about to crush your head like a grapefruit. Whatever makes you feel safer! And the button on the front is to release the visor – so no more fumbling around for the lift tab!
As you can see from the first picture, you get a few accessories, too. There’s the peaked bit, for people who drive closed cars and are deluded into thinking nothing can ever possibly get through the windscreen, so don’t need a visor. And another bit that I think is a spoiler. I’ll put that on, if I can – I need to check clearance in the Vee cockpit with the HANS kit, first, though.
You can get spare visors, but I forgot to get one! I think you can get black/smoke or blue iridium. I wear blue iridium on my bike, because a) it looks cool, and b) the blue tint gives better viewing definition in cloudy or overcast conditions – perfect for the UK!
I am chuffed to bits with my Koden KSC25. For the price it’s unbelievable value – but just as a race helmet for ANY money, it’s a damned fine buy! I’m sure it will do me proud.
Every year I umm and arr about whether I NEED to go to the Birmingham National Exhibition Centre, paying £10 to get ripped off for parking, and gazing at a load of racing cars, before spending obscene amounts of money on kit.
With some of the rule changes this year, and wanting to try out some HANS devices, and also find out a lot of information, the 2015 show was essential for me.
I don’t technically have to wear a HANS until 2016, but I’d be stupid to get in a car without one (see previous blog). I have now found out for definite that you can’t get any old helmet drilled and fitted with HANS posts – they do have to be certified to have them. So this means my flouro yellow Koden helmet is going to have to go.
I’m almost certainly going to get another Koden helmet – but the HANS fitted ones only come in black, white or carbon fibre. They fit me really well, and are closer to what a helmet SHOULD cost without getting ripped off for a brand name!
I sadly didn’t take advantage of the show offer for £350 for the carbon lid with posts, so will probably now have to pay £400 and then get the posts as well! Unless any of you guys have a contact to help me out here?
I was pleased to see that the AHS Formula Vee on the 750 Motor Club stand was fitted with the elusive Hoosier tyres we have to buy for this season! The look of them has definitely grown on me, and poking them found them to be very soft, with very deep tread.
I swear I’m going to film the holding area after the first race, then make a drinking game: Every time someone pushes down on or prods another drivers tyres to try to gauge what pressures they’re running, you have to take a drink. It will be a very messy and very short game…
Anyway – the highlights of the show!
I hadn’t been there long before I saw this beast sat in the distance:
It’s the truly awesomeSauber/Mercedes C9 Group C beast! Thinking this would be Car Of The Show for me, I then noticed a Lister Storm right behind it!
This was my favourite car from when they came out (I have the brochures for the road version!). I don’t know what colours it’s in here (maybe the Spanish series), but it was amazing to see one in the flesh.
To complete my top 3, despite an Audi Sport Quattro and Jaguar XJR-15 being right next to the two above, it has to be this mean-looking Renault that I know nothing about:
When a few mates over Christmas suggested we should go karting, I realised it had been over 2 years since I last went to my local track! This wasn’t good enough, so this time we actually sorted it out, and turned up at Birmingham F1K to take advantage of a £20 deal for 30 mins of track time.
Last time I was there, I’d done a few sessions close to each other, and was convinced that my 27 second lap time was as good as I could drive, and my weight was the only factor left to bring my lap times down.
That said, when I’m karting I’ve always used the brakes as a bit of an on/off switch. This worked to get the kart sliding and drifting, but, as I hope we all know by now, if your tyres are sliding you’re almost certainly going slower than you could be.
On previous sessions I’d worked at making sure I’m hitting the right lines, and there’s less than an inch between me and the edge of the track so I’m using everything I can. These things alone will help you carry speed through corners – which is vital in a kart that goes ‘off the boil’ the instant you release the loud pedal. This time, I was determined to have a go at using the brake pedal a bit more lightly and progressively.
Video here:
I was a lot faster than the others on the track – which made the passing fun, but didn’t actually give me a whole lot of clear laps. And it was all just a bit of fun, so I do like to get majorly sideways and full on the throttle through a few of the corners on the track! I also wasn’t going to shove the others out of the way and ruin their enjoyment, knowing I wasn’t going to get stuck behind them for long.
I was here to work a little and get some benefit from it, though…
I remember getting a good exit onto the start/finish straight, looking over to find the track ahead clear for most of the lap, and thinking “Right, let’s get a quick one in!”.
I scrapped the drifting, and used very delicate braking for the whole lap – just to see if I could get a faster time. This was Lap 9 – and I smashed my previously ‘unbeatable’ (for me!) time by a full second! And I still weigh the same as I did, then!
The other few clear laps I had I did the fun way – which felt faster to me, and wasn’t far off that time (a few tenths in it), but never bettered that Lap 9 time.
So, experiment concluded – keep it all in line for the best times!
Of course, I’m once again convinced that I’d need to lose weight in order to beat my best time – so it’ll be fun to go back again soon, and see if I can get under 26 seconds!
It seems that my last post here about getting ‘race fit’ attracted a fair bit of attention.
I feel a bit bad about this, as I glossed over the specifics of what I’m doing, so anyone reading that blog won’t actually get anything of much use from it!
I did mention that running is my primary exercise. Ask any boxer what the best training is for fitness, and they’ll tell you it’s all about road work.
It’s the fastest way to lose weight, tone up, and massively improve your aerobic fitness.
I run on the treadmill, as I don’t want to terrify old Grannies on the streets as I lollop past in a wheezing splutter of sweat and stitches – or spew my guts up as I fall past the 1 mile mark in public before collapsing in a charity shop doorway.
Set a target that’s realistic to YOU! Ignore what anyone else is doing – if you want to walk for 5 mins then jog in 2 min blasts, then you do that! Likewise if your aim is to burn 200 calories, do 2km, or to just spend 20 mins on the treadmill. Just remember that you do need to keep pushing yourself further and faster to get the best results.
Breathing is often the first thing people neglect. However fit you are, however strong your muscles, if you’re not BREATHING you’re going to fade fast inside the car.
Most people will hold their breath in a stressful situation, so this is something very important to racing. I might stencil ‘REMEMBER TO BREATH!’ in the cockpit somewhere!
I basically use all the gym equipment after I’ve had my run – the bike, cross trainer (again awesome for your aerobic fitness), rower, then do 2 or 3 sets on the weights machines.
Putting on muscle will increase your weight. It will also protect you when you’re tumbling end-over-end smashing into the chassis, so don’t look at it as a totally bad thing to build!
Strengthening the core body muscles is a good idea. I’m doing squats, abdominal crunches, and neck exercises outside the gym.
My neck gets a lot of stick from riding a sports bike, so isn’t too bad for strength. When I used to play American Football I used to do the ‘wrestlers bridge’. You need to be very careful building up your neck muscles, and be warned now that this one is pretty extreme, and won’t work for all of you!
Basically, you lay on your back with legs bent. Keeping the back of your head on the floor, push the rest of your body upwards so your back arches, and then roll from back to front of your head.
Isometric exercises seem to fit well with motor racing. Because you’re working one muscle against another, this will strengthen your muscles for efficiency, rather than just for show. Personally, I also do stretches for flexibility – I’m not sure of the outright value of this for racing cars, but the more range of motion your muscles have, the less likely they are to pull or tear.
I need to pick up my free weights at home (not in the gym, staring at myself in the mirror, because I find that weird!) as I’ve noticed my arms have wasted a bit, and arm strength will be essential to wrestle the car around.
I’m no expert on all this, and even if you think my somewhat half-assed approach to a routine is too much for you, DO SOMETHING!
I’m planning on introducing short sessions to my routine by setting alarms on my phone, and doing a few crunches, squats, push-ups etc. If you do just 10 push-ups a week then you’re 10 push-ups ahead of someone who doesn’t!
You need to motivate yourself to get started – then the rest will come.
And what better motivation than living every child’s dream to be a racing driver!
James Cater Racing 