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ARDS Test: The Medical

26 Tuesday Nov 2013

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ARDS Test: The Medical

***My apologies – it seems I never posted this blog on here!  This was from January 2013, and a very important step in getting your race license.***

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The final piece of the jigsaw to be granted an MSA National B Race License is to book and pass the full medical checkup.

It is essentially the same as what you’ll need for top quality life insurance.  Most Doctors charge around £100 for this.

I did some searching around, and found others had paid a lot more than this, and some as little as £50!

On a recent first aid course at work, I asked the instructor on the off-chance he’d know someone who could do a good price, and as it turned out he did!  As a PCV license holder, he was subject to regular medicals, and used a Dr Hill based in the West Midlands area.

I called the number I’d been given, and spoke directly to Dr Hill (I’ll add his details below) – no nonsense, nice and friendly, and he offered me his first available appointment on a weekend.

This involved a bit of a trek to Shrewsbury, but getting somewhere closer to home would be a longer wait, and at least it’s a pleasant drive out that way.

And he said it would be £40!  Bargain!

So the day came, and off I headed, praying my urine sample didn’t leak in the car on the drive over (as it turns out, a can of Guinness exploded in my car on the journey, but I suppose it’s a more pleasant smell to put up with).

He prodded me about a bit, asked the important questions (about diabetes, epilepsy, non-motorsport related mental defects etc), listened to my heart and breathing, and did a full eye test for vision and colour blindness.

I’m pleased to say my eyes are perfect.  My blood pressure, on the other hand, wasn’t.

The first time he took the pressure, he’d been asking me about what I was racing and stuff.  I’m sure this might relax most people, but even typing about the chance to climb into a Formula racing car now gets my adrenalin going!

Ray Formula Vee chassis

Added to this, I’d woken up with The Lurgy.

So I had it recorded at 140/90 on the form – which isn’t ideal, but shouldn’t cause any problems.

The whole thing was done very quickly and efficiently, he stamped my ARDS license application form, and I was out the door within a very short time to go and find things to do in Shropshire on a Sunday when you’re ill.

I gawped at a few floods in the area and then went home to get the last parts of the form filled in ready for the New Year when I could send it off.

So it’s all in the post – practical and medical tests done and dusted, passport pic attached, and within the next week or so I should be sent out my first ever National B Race License!

In the mean time, the Motorsport International Show is on at Birmingham NEC shortly, so I shall hopefully get my race equipment cheap from there.

Then it’s time to talk about getting the Formula Vee booked in to a test day – and I can take to the wheel for the first time and see…

Who knows?  If I’m Senna or Slow!

Bring it on!

*** If you need a reasonably priced medical check, and are based close enough to the Wolverhampton/Shrewsbury/Kidderminster area, contact Dr Hill on 07802 690 896.

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Read the other blogs in my ARDS license series:

Taking The ARDS Test – The Morning Preparation

03 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by in ARDS Test, Formula Vee, Racing, Technique, Uncategorized

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Taking The ARDS Test – The Morning Preparation

Note: This blog was originally posted 19 October 2012.

“What experience do you have?”
“Loads of bike track days, and car skid control courses and, err, stuff.”
“What are you going to race?”
“Formula Vee, next season!”

That was the last moment I felt confident on the day of my ARDS test!

Luckily, not everyone there (there were about 18 of us) had done loads of car track days and stuff, so I wasn’t alone in my lack of experience, but then the instructors spent the next part of the morning basically telling us all we weren’t going to pass today.  I guess this was a good thing, as it knocked the cocky straight out of you.  Especially when you learn that Silverstone is the toughest place to pass the ARDS test (although this can also work in your favour as Race Stewards will look on you more favourably if blame needs to be apportioned for an on-track incident).

After a brief chat about the basics that we should already know (race lines, car physics, under and oversteer etc), we split into two groups – one group going off to the skid pan whilst my group were first out on the proper track.

The instructors were people I almost recognised.  If I could remember their names you’d probably know a few, too.  I clocked Ian Flux who I know from old Formula Vee and Tuscans but hadn’t seen him since I was tiny. He wasn’t my instructor, so no chance of favouritism there!

I got Neal.  If you know who Neal is, please let me know, because I didn’t get his surname, and the sheet he filled signed I never got to take home!  He was great, anyway!

So, I was literally one of the first to jump in the Renault Magane Sport test cars.  The six speed gearbox felt flawless, but, not being a car I’ve ever driven before the controls were a bastard.  The throttle was too sensitive, the brakes too sharp.  Heel & Toe was ditched immediately – I had far too much else to worry about.

We pulled out onto the Silverstone International circuit which I have never seen before in my life and began wishing I’d looked at on YouTube.  It is very fast, and not the simple 4 corner layout of the National track that I was expecting!

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So that’s all my excuses.  In the first session we did about 15 mins worth building up speed (instructor first for a few laps then me), and I realised I was In Trouble.

It was my first time EVER driving a car on a race track.  I went into 6th gear a few times when I wanted 4th, and was braking, coming off the pedal and then braking a bit more into corners.  I was feeding the steering wheel a little instead of keeping my hands at quarter-to-three.  My lines weren’t terrible, but transitions were ragged and nothing was very smooth.

There was no way I would pass unless I seriously got my act together.  And fast.

We had a second session for 15-20 mins and I was consciously trying to improve everywhere, plus looking through the corners and doing a respectable pace.

And I think pace was my biggest problem overall.  I have absolutely no frame of reference to what a fast car is on a track.

On a bike track day I’m busy all the time.  On the edge of my abilities, but not exceeding the bikes limits.

In a car it’s the opposite.  Because I’m used to thinking at 1000hp-per-tonne performance levels, cars are S L O W…

I had far too much time braking into corners.  I could have done some knitting and still made the corner.  The car felt so much slower that it almost felt like I was coming to a complete stop before the tight corners, and then waiting an eternity to get back on the power.

Once race driving is in muscle memory and I can do it all naturally without over thinking it all, this may well work to my advantage – but it was a major problem for me here.

Neil showed me a different way to hold the gear stick to improve my changes and stop getting 6th gear by accident.  Great, but this meant I had just a few laps left before the test in which to completely rewire my brain of how I’ve shifted gear on the roads for the last two years…

Next was the skid control, with the cars on cradles to simulate oversteer around a course of cones.  This was no problem for me, as I have done skid control in cars before, so was more a bit of fun getting it drifting.

Going into the lunch break I knew I’d improved a lot, but I still had a massive amount of work to do on my driving.

I put my chances of passing at 50-50.  60-40 at best.

I’d have to take 10 steps back and find a solid foundation to build on to have any more chance of passing the test today…

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ARDS Test Part 2: The Go Racing Pack

01 Saturday Jun 2013

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ARDS Test Part 2: The Go Racing Pack

Note: This blog was first published 06 August 2012.

I’ve now got my Go Racing Pack, and am preparing to book the test!

In the pack you get a DVD of what’s expected of you for the test, which goes over lots of regulations and flags you need to know for the test, and also a fair bit of first aid.  You get the ‘Blue Book’ of all contacts/rules/regs in the motor racing world along with some quick reference sheets for flags and handling techniques, a Demon Tweaks catalogue, and the application form itself.

Next step is to book up a day at Silverstone.

I have made a few observations along the way so far:

Although bike part prices are wayyy above car ones, when you get into car racing the balance shifts.

Car helmets? Unless you buy from overseas you’re looking at £300 for a cheapo, and most double that. Or in the thousands. Compare that to a bike lid that will do the job for £100…

And the flame retardant suits themselves? More than a set of leathers! You might scrape a cheap suit for £300, but just over £1000 seems to be about right – and that’s into custom-made super-leather jobbies on a set of bike leathers!

And then you need Nomex boots, gloves, and ideally a full set of fireproof undergarments head-to-toe.

Luckily, having just called Silverstone up directly, all you need for the test is comfortable clothing (as a lot of the day is in classrooms) and they provide an open-face helmet (so you can speak to the instructors and hear them yelling at you).  The may let me use my bike helmet, so I’ll take this along as well – mainly to try and sneak a bit of camera footage out of the day!

The other thing catching my attention at the moment is:

Heel & Toe

Every racing driver uses this technique, right?

Wrong, from what I can tell! I’m trying to find out from various sources exactly how many use it, and is it just the fastest drivers, and so far results are inconclusive.

I know championship winners who never use it, fo example.

I mean, I use the bike equivalent (blipping on every downshift), so it would make sense for me to learn heel and toe. Probably not for the test, but for the future, certainly.

I’ve said before about how driving a car is a bit boring as it’s all in slow motion compared to a bike.  Maybe this will liven things up a bit for me!

I’m enjoying watching old videos of Ayrton Senna and suchlikes working the pedals.  One thing to watch for, is if you’re learning from videos of Group B rally drivers, be aware that because of the filthy great primitive turbos they used, they’d often keep the throttle wide open as they braked.  This kept the turbo in the narrow sweet range when they got back on the power.

As a slight tangent to this, I recently learned that Ari Vatanen(?) drove the Lancia Delta S4 on the Portuguese GP circuit in 1984, and clocked a time that would have put him in 6th place at that years Formula One race!  Is that a sign of how awesome those Group B cars were, or how good their drivers were?

Do you use heel and toe in the car?

ARDS Test: Following My Childhood Dream To Be A Racing Driver

31 Friday May 2013

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ARDS Test: Following My Childhood Dream To Be A Racing Driver

Note: This was first written on 20 July 2012, when my journey first started. This is a new blog created to purely document my racing.

From my earliest memories, I always wanted to be a Racing Driver.

Well, that and a Bounty Hunter – and as I’ve been a Surveillance Operative/P.I. I’ve pretty much covered that one.  But didn’t get to shoot Bad Guys.

After riding sportsbikes for 12 years, and having blogged about the bike trackdays, you’d be forgiven for expecting me to be banging on about getting my bike racing license here – but no!  This is the ARDS National B License for four wheels!

I’ve only been driving cars for 2 years, but found straight away that I enjoy driving almost as much as riding a bike.

The thing is, I’ve crashed bikes and know it hurts!  Whilst I am pretty quick on two wheels (on road and track), I’m not going to push my limits into the kind of realms where I might be looking at actually racing.  Trackdays for bikes, whatever they try to claim, ARE racing, anyway!  You thrape the Hell out of your bike, try to be the fastest in every session, and the only thing missing is a trophy for anyone at the end.

I’ve never driven anything faster than a 14 year old Honda Civic Sport, but have done any advanced training I could grab, such as learning from Police/Pursuit trained drivers to a Skid Control course as soon as I’d passed my test.  I’ve done karting and am pretty fast there, too, but am under no illusions that drifting a kart will bear any resemblance to hammering a full-size car on a circuit.

I’ve grown up around the racing scene – namely the 750 Motor Club, as my Step Dad (Glenn Hay) raced Formula Vee single seaters.  He still owns several cars – one is being run currently by Rob Cowburn – but as he’s looking at racing again himself, and my sister Michelle Hay also passed her ARDS license a few years back he might run out of spare cars before I get enough cash to be able to try a race myself!

Doing a bit of research online, it seems first you have to buy the ‘starter pack’, which contains loads of useful info for the budding racing driver including a handbook of contacts for various ‘stuff’, a DVD to prepare you for the test itself, and the application forms.

The practical test and written test are done together on a half day course at just about every circuit, with most costing around £300.  That’s for a written test to show you can do everything safely and know the flags etc, and then you use their cars to hammer around a track and show the instructors that you can be trusted on track to not kill everybody around you.

It seems Silverstone also offer a whole days course for £400 – which includes all the above plus a lot more track time in the morning including more skid control training.  This option seems like a bargain for another £100 over the half day – especially as you get to use their Caterhams, rather than what appear to be things like Honda Civics and Peugeot Hairdressers at the other tracks.  I quite fancy a blast in a Caterham!

You also need to find a Doctor to give you a full medical examination – this is around £100 and I’m not happy about it!  Some people have told me you can get it done for half this, so it may be worth shopping around.

Assuming you pass all that, you just get the application forms back (there might be another fee here), and they send you your shiny new National B Race License in return!

And then the first step of the childhood dream is in motion!

I shall do a series of blogs about each stage of my application for anyone who’s also interested in doing the ARDS test, and if you have any more info or tips please feel free to post a comment!

You can get the initial pack from these two sites:

http://www.ards.co.uk

http://www.msauk.org/site/cms/contentviewarticle.asp?article=784