Track Life – Accepting the cost of limits

The thing I like the most about the track is we’re all there for our own reasons but underneath it all, it boils down to just one. “How fast can I get around this thing?” The other side of that is how much are you willing to spend to get there?

See, you say it’s about the car but in the end, you know it’s about you.

My best lap at CTMP (Mosport) is a 1:40:43 in a 2016 JCW Mini. It was late in the day, track temps were good and I had just enough fuel in the tank for the length of the session. The car was about as light as it could be under the conditions. For a Fast Hatch with stock power and wheels that were on their way out, it’s a good time (top speed that session was 195kmh – my all time top speed in the Mini is 205 kmh). By comparison, a Porsche GT3-RS could probably get around the track with a decent driver in about 1:27:00. The Mini had 240 bhp in a 2.0L inline 4 cylinder motor. The Porsche has 518bhp on tap from its flat 6 cylinder 4.0L engine. I think I paid $32K all in for my Mini a current GT3 RS runs between $240 and 600K depending on what bits you’ve slapped on it. So (and I get this is very poor comparative math) to go 13 seconds faster, the cost average is if we use the middle of the scale, roughly $20,616.00 per second gained. Of course this doesn’t factor in the cost of the actual entry fee, brakes, rotors, gas etc. And to be fair, it doesn’t matter, we’re both having fun.

My current Fast Hatch is of course the blue car pictured above beside my good friend Jason in his Ariel Atom. It’s a 2022 Golf R. It’s been lowered with performance springs (1″ if you’re interested), it’s a stock turbocharged inline 4 cylinder putting out 315 bhp at 5700 rpm and weighs in at 3,417lbs. My best time to date has been a 1:42:10. With a top speed of 214kmh If we call up the Mini’s stats, it was a stock stacked turbo (twin) inline 4 cylinder putting out 240 bhp (factory tune) at 5,400 rpm and weighed in at 2,845 lbs. which translates to a weight difference of 572 lbs. Which to be fair is a big difference. The Golf R also has 4MOTION AWD with torque-vectoring differential, which simply put means the car puts thrust to whichever wheel needs it the most.

All of this is just to provide context. Track days are fun but they’re also expensive and depending on how the car is set up, they can be even more expensive still.

At its minimum, you’re taking your car (whatever platform you’ve brought) and subjecting it to its maximum stress loads of acceleration, braking, body roll and temperatures. The plusses and minuses of what you’re driving are going to be brought into sharp relief. Your shortcomings as a driver doubly so (you can also add driver error into this column). I’ve been running in Intermediate group all this year. I’m still learning the car and the slightly slower pace of the middle group makes it easier to figure it all out over the more intense Advanced group. The Golf R is much quicker than the Mini in respect to power and the DST transmission is quick and snappy (and you can still blow shifts with it) so in the straight sections it’s very vroom vroom. In the corners however that extra 572 pounds really works against you and in my case it’s just over two seconds slower. Now, I could mitigate some of that with better tires. My current Firestone Firehawk Indy 500s are a hard wearing tire as far as the track goes but grippy in the corners, they are not. At least they are consistent in their lack of grip. I could probably find those two seconds with a different tires. I could also throw camber pucks on the front suspension to give myself better front end grip. More speed always equals more money.

Sometimes, even with all of the bells and whistles sorted on the car, you’re not going to get an opportunity to set your fastest lap because there’s a lot of traffic in the session or the weather is against you with temperature, moisture or wind (I had one day where the wind down the back straight was so strong I couldn’t get the car, foot to the floor over 190 kmh). Ans as organized as a track day is, things can devolve into chaos pretty quickly. Especially when you’ve got a driver who decides to buck all the rules and let their freak flag fly. It’s rare but it does happen and it usually ends in tears for them.

Track culture is very much a real thing and it’s very different from country to country. When I first started out and probably because I was so used to waving faster cars by, when I did come up on a slower driver in a faster car, only to not have them not wave me by, it was always irritating as I’d be cooling me heels behind them as they man handled their way through the corners. In their mind I was the slower car because they were able. to walk away from me on the straight sections. Even though I was all over their ass at every corner because they would brake so early. Yes, there were a few confrontations in the pits, where a friendly discussion was had about getting me by so I could put in a fun session and not a frustrating one. These days when this happens, I’ll meet them and suggest they can go faster in the sections they’re currently slow in (well slower than me) and talk through how to set themselves up for best outcomes.

This last track day I realized I could manage to shift up a gear between turns three and four and carry more speed over the top. Yes, it worked but it was a double edged sword and it really messed up my braking zone at the top of turn four and made the section down to the base of turn 5A far more exciting than it needed to be. It’ll take a bit more fiddling about to figure out what the best approach is going to be there.

But as I’ve said, everything has a cost, especially speed. You’re either spending to to reach it or paying out to fix the stuff that breaks trying to get there. For me the bulk of that cost has been rotors, brake pads and rubber. Well that and trips to drive some of the coolest tracks on the planet. My first set of rotors at the front got chewed up by a sticking brake caliper and the EBC Blue pads I had on just couldn’t take the stress. I couldn’t get proper pads for the next track day so I had to run with OEM pads which did far better than I thought they would but in the following track day, they too evaporated and it cost me another front rotor but only the one this time. I’m now running EBC RP1 pads which are very aggressive race pads and so progressive braking will be the order of the day on my next track day on the 18th of August. I’ve got a couple of other options for brake pads but I’m hoping that testing them won’t be needed till next year’s season.

I guess in the end, it’s all going to come down to how much those two seconds are going to cost me. Oh, I’ll grumble about it but I accept it, speed costs.

UK Trip 2026 – May 2nd – The RAF Museum

I’ve been wanting to go to the RAF Museum ever since I was twelve. They put out a fantastic aircraft reference book on all WW2 aircraft. How many were made, what marks were built and what the differences in those marks were. It was an incredible and detailed work. Add to that a family connection the the Grahame White Company Ltd. which is essentially what turned Hendon into Hendon, it was a lock I’d be visiting. Plus they have one of my favourite flying boats, the Short Sunderland on display and you can go inside it (bonus). Plus I learned that the Sunderland also came with four forward facing .50cal. machine guns. Whether this was for ranging purposes for the depth charges or just to blow merry hell out of surfaced U-Boats, I’ll have to look into.

The museum does a very good job of representing aircraft from a number of eras especially the inter war period when the transition from doped fabric sheath over wooden framed biplanes was giving way to aluminum and finally monocoque fuselages. Radial engines were still well represented but inline powerplants were making inroads. My Grandfather once told me that when he saw the first Spitfire fly he thought he’d never see anything go that quick through the air ever again. Five years later, he was working on the first jet aircraft.

The museums in the UK seem very focused on enthrilling the young about everything they have to show. Which is fine but it does leave some of us older visitors maybe looking for deeper insight. Of course here is where their Docents play a major role as they’re spread around to answer any questions you might have.

In Hanger 1 I asked about the Graheme White factory and it’s actual location and was informed that all of the flats behind the museum used to comprise the workshops of his factory.

The old Hendon Tower control

Grahame White’s office.

Of course by 1920, he was out of the aircraft game and producing cyclecars up to the end of the company proper. What I find fascinating about all museums is while they all have aircraft on display that you’d expect to see, there’s always those rarities that you don’t. For example there were, “Cherry blossom,” Kamikaze flying bombs on display at the Imperial War Museum and The RAF Museum, I’ve only ever seen one on display at the National Museum of the USAF in Dayton. I’m sure these examples must have come out of the Burma campaign but never mind, back to Docents.

James one of the Hall 2 Docents announced he would be giving a talk about the Gloster Meteor and it’s involvement in the Korean conflict. I’d read one book written by an Goup Commander a while back so what the hell. Turns out I was the only one there but screw it, I’m not on a timetable and information is information. It all get squirreled as away in this rat’s nest of a brain of mine. Anyway, I learned some stuff and we had a lovely chat afterwards about aircraft from this era.

There are six hangers on the grounds all of them hold aviation wonders, at least to someone like me. What is interesting is the mix of aircraft from different countries. I’d expect ones from the RAF and even the notorious ones from Germany and Japan. I wasn’t expecting the Italian fighters and certainly not the American B-17G Flying Fortress and B-24J Liberator. Then there were the exhibits that took you unawares like the recovered partial tail section of a Sterling III missing it’s tail turret but I could see at a glance in the bent remains how his and the top gunner’s bodies were the only ones recovered from the downing of his aircraft. I stood by that for a while taking it in.

UK Trip – London – May 1st / 2026

Winston Churchill looks towards the Houses of Parliament and the newly restored Big Ben

I woke up at 5am with a pretty sore back. Silverstone is a pretty active ride and you do get chucked around a bit inside the Clio. My arms were pretty sore too. The hotel’s boiler was still down, so no hot shower to make things feels better. To be honest both stays at the Silverstone Hilton had been a bit crap. The first time a couple of years previous they had just opened so you cut them a bit of slack but here we were two years on and things weren’t much better and to top it off critical infrastructure was breaking down. When I was writing my review of our stay I laid out that a comprehensive preventative maintenance plan would most likely help them avoid disaster in the future as well as save them money. They comped us all a bit more off of our stay but still guys, get it together.

Paddington Station is massive but also a great central point to start from.

I grabbed a ride in with one of the other track day participants to their rental car drop off at Heathrow. Goodbyes were said with plans to see them at the June track day at Mosport. From there I helped get another of the group to Paddington station on the Heathrow Express so they like me could go sightseeing. We were staying on opposite sides of the station, so I split with them there and from then on I was flying solo. As much as I’d had a great time with the group I was ready for some me time. Check in at the hotel was at three and they weren’t going to be swayed. I dropped my bags off with them (for a not insubstantial fee – the cheek) and camera bag over my shoulder started my trek which would eventually end up at the Imperial War Museum.

Happy to be walking in London

So as previously stated, for the bulk of this trip, we had not encountered any Americans. I now know why, they’re here in London along with everybody else. I’m sure plenty of London is just regularly congested people wise but down by the popular touristy bits? It’s like Costco on a busy day just as big as a city. I mean it was wall to wall humanity and this was after a very pleasant walk through Hyde Park to the Bomber Command Memorial. To get there, you go past Buckingham Palace (not being any sort of a Royalist, not my cup of tea).

The paddle boats at Hyde Park

Ducks doing duck things

It was a lovely warm day

On the way to The Bomber Command Memorial, you pass by many other memorials. Britain has after all been around for a bit and this does tend to accrue you a fair bit of individuals who gave the ultimate sacrifice, my grandfather on my mother’s side amongst them. The first and second world wars did a lot to change society.

Wellington Arch

The WW1 Memorial and Cenotaph

The New Zealand War Memorial

The side of each cross is inscribed with words or images

Finally, I got to the Bomber Command Memorial.

The memorial itself is really well thought out with a regular bomber crew on a plinth in the center under a roof with a geodesic support structure fabricated from a recovered Wellington Bomber’s frame.

Once I’d paid my respects, I made my way over to the Imperial War Museum another forty minute walk (I’m certainly getting my steps in).

The IWM is free to enter but they do take donations, which I did at the door. As you would expect the museum focuses on a variety of conflicts the UK has found itself in over the years though they have essentially foregone the bulk of anything prior to WW1, which is a shame but perhaps they’re just not putting as much light on the conquest of the British Empire because lets be honest, there were more than a few times they were the baddies but then that’s history in a nutshell isn’t it, whoever wins gets to write the script.

The WW1 exhibit is thorough and while there were a lot of young students running about the place on a school trip, they’re not really drinking it in so to speak. Which is fine, they should be spared the full horror of the slaughter of the Great War it’s impossible to impart even one ten thousandth of what that was like to anyone who didn’t go through it. So for me, it was a sobering exhibit because it breaks down very effectively the mechanization of war and its effect on the humans crushed under its heel.

The Central area of the Museum

The nasty tools of trench warfare. Lots of the hand to hand stuff is of Canadian origin.

A German parachute mine. One of these destroyed my Great Grandfather’s house. Lucky for him he wasn’t home.

Allied shipping lost to U-Boats in the Atlantic

Nebelwerfer

Cherry Blossom

WW2 was more of the same though more about rising to the fascist threat of Germany and Italy and the all out home effort of the UK. Though one of their home dinner table had a plate with a whole egg and bacon on it. Sure if you knew people maybe, otherwise it was powdered eggs and maybe Spam.

From WW2 you move through Palestine, Korea and of course Northern Ireland and the Troubles (all of which deserve their own museum), bounce off the Falklands and end on the Gulf War in fairly truncated fashion.

This gun was mounted in HMS Resolution in 1915, and later remounted in the monitor HMS Roberts, actively bombarding Sword Beach on D-Day during the Normandy landings.

I opted to take the tube back to my hotel and grab a quick nap before looking for dinner. The hotel proved to be overpriced and underwhelming but more of that in the next installment.

UK Infinite Motorsports Trip 3.0 – April 29th to 30th, 2026 – Silverstone

April 29th

Travel day – A down day to get to Silverstone in good time with no stress because no matter how much fun any track day is, it’s stressful (even though it ridiculously fun) especially when it’s a new track and that goes doubly for when it’s a new track with a completely different track culture than you’re used to. The last two days had been with MSV, the owners of a number of iconic UK tracks and they run a tight ship. Track limits are enforced and bad behaviour is punished. Bollock it up enough times and you will be ejected from the venue. Silverstone by contrast is it’s own entity and might be the reason why it feels at least to me a lot looser trackside than any of the MSV tracks I have run at.

We of course were still running with The Real Gran Turismo and all the support Nicholas, Simon and the rest of their great team provided. Sure, the Clio Trophy 200 I’m driving isn’t the newest and certainly not the fastest bit of kit out there but it’s familiar and it responds the way I expect it to. For me, consistency will always trump speed any day of the week. Knowing how the car will react to your inputs is critical. Once you’ve got that dialed in it just becomes a matter of stringing the corners together.

There’s been+ something about this trip that was scratching at the back of my head for the last few days and I didn’t put my finger on it till last night. I haven’t met a single American yet on this trip, not one and considering that Brands Hatch is limited on access days, that’s weird. Now that might change at Silverstone, it is after all a vaunted F1 track and we will be staying trackside at the Hilton but to be honest, it’s been kind of nice. Americans are pretty nice one on one but they are always a bit loud, a bit more and at times, a bit much.

Once lunch was done and my interest in old churches and their grounds was sated, we headed off once again to Silverstone. We’d be staying at the Hilton located trackside. We had a 2pm appointment to go to the museum. It’s a pretty good museum with an interesting collection of record setting cars but then that’s really any museum of this kind isn’t it. Still one of my favourite cars is there, a Cooper 2 one of John Cooper’s initial forays into rear engined race cars. It’s as rudimentary as you can make a car but I love it in all of it’s very rough hand beaten glory.

We were through the museum in a couple of hours. To be fair, my back was killing me. Driving on the right hand side of the car makes you use a completely different muscle set than your used to and no matter how smooth video makes it look to the watcher (thanks motion suppression) you do get chucked around quite a bit. Because I tend to use a lot of my upper body and shoulders to hold steady in the cockpit, I was feeling it in my shoulders, neck and mid back.

The view from my hotel room was a bit of all right though. Beats looking at the parking lot.

April 30th – Silverstone

The last time I was at Silverstone, it had been every bit as spirited as Brands Hatch was this trip and equally as busy. The safety brief had pretty much gone out the window before the first lap under a green flag was completed. Silverstone, like Brands only opens their GP configuration a few times a year. My last visit had been a week prior to a major race weekend. This time, the race had been the week prior and it definitely showed in the tenor of the track experience this time.

Sunny but cool

The safety briefing was held in pit bay 1 and there were enough people on the track that it took place twice one right after the other to get people through and out on the track once it went green. I always enjoy the briefings, they give you a good sense of the people you’re going to be lapping with and because it is the way in the UK and Europe, every level of skill behind the wheel can hit the track at the same time. I’ll be honest, there’s things about this style I like and things about it I’m not fond of.

I like that you’re treated like an adult and you need to keep on your toes to not be more than a speed bump to the faster cars. The differing skill sets always means that the pass on the left only rule and the driver being passed moves off the line also make sense. Not getting a faster car by you ASAP does show your attending skill level and people in more expensive and what should be faster cars are equally as bad at letting faster lower powered cars through as much as I’ve ever experienced here and in the US. All you can do is meet them in the corners and hold tight on them until they get the hint.

There was a small kerfuffle early in the morning as we had been inadvertently issued two pit bays and the guy in an E Type Jag was having a moan that we were in his bay. Nicolas and Jennifer went off to course direction to get it sorted and he took the extra assigned bay beside us. It was a nice car, too bad it was being driven by a bit of a prick.

I’d opted to have instruction (Stuart for today – he’d been my instructor at Donnington Park) for the morning as you can forget a lot in two years and other than sim time, I knew I’d be rusty round the track. Though to be fair, the sim time really helped to remember my braking zones and entry points. I did well enough that Stuart was prepared to cut me loose after our first session. However, instruction is always good, I had him for the morning so we started working on more granular parts of my driving, like me holding my eyes on the apex too long and because of that not being as smooth as I could be on the exit of the corner.

Having a chuckle with Stuart before heading out. It’s important to be relaxed before you head out onto the track.

Consistency is key to a successful track day, regardless of the environment, especially when you’re taking part of a one-off day. Tracks are a lot like music, they each have their own rhythm and some tunes are harder to learn than others. You can also have your own rhythm blown by the actions of others. Situational awareness is critical once you’re on track proper. Know who is around you and wwhere you need to look to see the flag stations. I’ve had great days at my home track of Mosport (CTMP) and I;ve had some utterly shit day because for whatever reason, I can’t string a decent lap together. Usually the issue lies between my ears. As much as I like to talk about how the focus at the track blocks out all of the other bullshit in your life, sometimes if the outside noise is loud enough, it creeps in. First time on a track though, you’re trying to put a lot of things together. A big part of it if you’ve been running it in a sim is do the two match up in your head? If you’re in a situation like this, you’re also getting the feel of an unfamiliar car. Which is one of the main reasons I like to rent a fast hatch or at the very least like at the Nurburgring a car with more grip and stability than your usual track ride. You’ve also got your instructor talking you through the course at the same time. Add to that the stuff in your head you’ve assigned in your head about how this particular track feels to you. It’s a lot of data management, it’s a lot of emotion and you need to cut through all of that and find the rhythm I’ve been banging on about.

Post run debrief

This was my second time at Silverstone. My first time had been a bit of a shit show. I’d arrived a day later than I should have. It was Infinite’s firt foray into these types of trips and we hadn’t worked out the coordination between all of the attendees quite yet. I’d literally flown eight hours and then been on a train for another three and finally given up on a final two hour bus ride to take a forty five minute taxi drive to the hotel trackside. I then met up with the group and went to the Silverstone museum. By three pm GMT I had been up for about twenty eight hours (hard to sleep on a plane in coach) and I was done. I went back to the hotel and crashed out till about eight. After a late dinner, it was back to bed and then up at seven to meet the group, grab breakfast and head to the track. So I was jet lagged, exhausted and the very first track we were going to be hitting that trip was one of the preeminent F1 tracks in the world. Add to that I had no idea of the track culture in the UK and we’d be on track with every level of driver level and that the level of aggression on track was off the charts as teams tried to get their data in. My morning was utter shit and I didn’t start to put it together even just a little until late in the afternoon.

This time was completely different.

Silverstone was the third track of this trip. Brands had been spirited, Snetterton had been fast and technical. I had a good feel for the car, I was rested, my body was in the same time zone my brain was. I was loose, I was comfortable and I was relaxed and because the race they’d held the previous weekend, so was the atmosphere around the track. There were a number of vintage cars out there with us as well and that always brings a smile to my face. My sim time paid off immediately, the picture in my head match what was coming in through my mark one eyeballs. The track was a lot less busy than Brands and big enough you could do entire laps and only see a few other cars out there. The last trip, we had five red flags before lunch, this time I think we had four red flags for the whole day and the bulk of those came in the afternoon as guys were pushing a little harder on tires that might have a little less grip but the best part was no real incidents.

a Lamborghini SUV… Somebody paid too much for an Audi.

Is it a car or a fishing lure for a very big fish?

You brace differently in a right hand drive car. This is my left leg and these were deep bruises.

All in all, I had a fantastic day at Silverstone, I even managed to get by a few products of the Porsche variety, which never fails to make me smile. It was a great way to end the track portion of this trip. The only downside to the day was the boiler had packed up at the hotel so it was a cold shower and shave before dinner. The next day we’d all be going our separate ways. I’d be heading for London and a couple of days of knocking off some museums that were very important to me as well as paying my respects at the Bomber Command Memorial.

UK Infinite Motorsports Trip 3.0 – April 28th, 2026 – Snetterton

It was a cold, windy and slightly damp start to the day, though by 10:00am it had warmed up nicely.

Snetterton started it’s life, you guessed it as an airfield (RAF Snetterton Heath), though it hosted a US Bomber Squadron (96th Bombardment Group) flying B-17Gs. One hundred and ninety six aircraft did not return over the course of their three years of combat. I don’t have the stats on how many of the crews were killed or captured but needless to say, with an average crew of ten men it’s at least 1,960 men. But, that’s got bugger all to do with a track day other than they turned the abandoned airfield after the war into a race track. Decommissioned in 1948, it hosted its first race in 1951. Like most tracks, it has a number of configurations it can be run in. We would be running the Snetterton 300 configuration.

A lot like Silverstone, it’s a fairly flat track with very little elevation change, like Brands it is an extremely technical fast flowing track but unlike Brands the intensity scale was dialed well back . It wasn’t non existent but at least on this track I felt I had time to think and plan before reacting. A bunch of the corners were really well set up for fast in fast out and you could carry a lot of speed through them. Top speed for the day was around 180kmh. Compared to Mosport it’s a little slow but Mosport is the fast track it is for a reason and that reason is the Moss Straight.

Coming down the front straight, setting up for turn one.

Once the clouds cleared and the sun came out, things warmed up nicely. Weather was pretty pleasant for the bulk of our trip if not downright warm.

I come into frame at 00:10sec

Des was still instructing me for the morning, something I always recommend for track days where it’s your first time there and especially in the UK. There are differences in track etiquette. When allowing a pass you are the one to move off the race line and always to the right. Passes are done on the left. Red flags are more like our Black Flag, everybody returns to the pits. Black flags are individual but just like here, they come with a bollocking and if warranted, an ejection.

Des talking me through it.

The thing with Snetterton is you’re going to be holding position on a number of corners because they’re sharp enough acceleration will bring you to grief. The trick is to find that right level of grip, which can be tricky. Other parts of the track are foot to the floor as you thread through left and right corners. Des was pretty happy with my ability so we were working on the granular stuff and other than a brush with a fixed pylon coming through Brundle into Nelson (a trick left right corner with very hard braking followed by equally hard acceleration) my morning was pretty calm. Though I did manage a pretty decent four wheel slide through Williams that had us both laughing as I headed down the long Bently Straight. I managed to hit 195kmh on the back straight which was nice and thanks to years of turn 8 at Mosport, I did a decent job of trail braking into Brundle.

Eye’s on the Apex

I look fast as hell here or it could just be camera effect.

All in all, Snetterton was a great day and everybody had a blast, even though the guys M2 was still being repaired and they’d had a cold morning in Real GT’s MX-5 we’d all boogied round the track in decent style and speed. We had a travel day built in to get to Silverstone and I was worried it was going to be a repeat of the last time I was there. Turns out, I needn’t have bothered myself but then that’s what you do, you go off the data you have and my last go round had been nothing short of track mayhem.

UK Infinite Motorsports Trip 3.0 – April 27th, 2026 – Brands Hatch

Brands Hatch GP, the main reason I’m on this trip. One of the most iconic tracks in the UK and dripping in motorsport history. Brabham, Cooper, Graham, Hailwood, Surtees, Clark, Sheene and Minter, names enshrined in the curves and straights of this track. I’ve been wanting to get to this place for twenty years. It’s a circuit of almost 4km (3.916km) comprised of nine turns.

Left to right: Steve, John, Dave, Rob

The description from Wikipedia is as follows:

The full Grand Prix circuit begins on the Brabham Straight, an off-camber, slightly curved stretch, before plunging into the right-hander at Paddock Hill Bend, with gradients of 8%.^[1] Despite the difficulty of the curve, due to the straight that precedes it, it is one of the track’s few overtaking spots. The next corner, Druids, is a hairpin bend, taken after an uphill braking zone at Hailwood Hill. The track then curves around the south bank spectator area into the downhill, off-camber Graham Hill Bend, and another, slightly bent stretch at the Cooper Straight, which runs parallel to the pit lane. After the straight, the circuit climbs uphill though the decreasing-radius Surtees turn, before moving onto the back straight where the track’s top speeds can be reached. The most significant elevation changes on the circuit occur here at Pilgrim’s Drop and Hawthorn Hill, which leads into Hawthorn Bend (with some parts approaching 7%). The track then loops around the woodland with a series of mid-speed corners, most notably the dip at Westfield and Dingle Dell and the blind Sheene curve. From there the track then emerges from the left hand and cambered Stirlings Bend onto the short straight to Clearways and rejoins the Indy Circuit for Clark Curve with its uphill off-camber approach to the pit straight and the start/finish line.

It is needless to say an incredibly technical track and much like Silverstone, the full GP configuration is only open for lapping a few times a year with the bulk of their offered track days being the shorter Indy Circuit configuration.

Forza has had this track in all of its iterations since version 6 and you can choose the Indy or the GP configuration. For me, sims do not really do much but Forza does a very good job of keeping their visuals up to date and so you can effectively use it to plan your race line, your braking and turn in area. For the most part they even get the car physics pretty close though I’ve yet to find a sim that gives me the real level of grip even basic track tires impart. Doesn’t matter however, I spent months on the sim to figure these points out and they were pretty much correct. I also ran the sim in semi race mode with lots of cars because I had a feeling… Turns out I was right.

The weekend of the 2nd of May was going to be a big GP race at Brands. We of course would be at finishing up at Silverstone that weekend and I would be heading to London. What we didn’t know was that one of the practice days had been cancelled so a lot of the teams eager to test and to get track time under their belt had booked in to the track day as well. It was going to be a somewhat repeat of Silverstone two years previous. It was for want of a better description, a highly dynamic environment once the green flag was waived and the track went live.

Now all of that aside, it was a great track day, even with the fifteen red flags that were waived that day. The drop down from the top of Paddock Hill to base of Hailwood Hill was phenomenal and made me smile every time after the first one. There were a lot of very fast cars on the circuit and much to get by you and also to work around all while you’re learning the track for real. My instructor Des was very good. Once I settled down and he could see I wasn’t out of my depth you start developing that shorthand for how your tackling the problem corner by corner. Not to mention, you’re sitting on the wrong side of the car for starters, though I had made a point of only driving right hand drive cars in the sim sessions so I could confirm proper sight lines from the driver’s seat.

The hairpin at Druids was one of the hardest to master as you’re braking hard at the bridge after coming up the short rise of Hailwoods Hill and diving deep into the turn before swinging right to get on the right line for entry into Graham Hill Bend. Cars tend to bunch up here, especially when you can only pass on the left with indication on the right indicator of your car. Basically, you move off the racing line, signalling right and getting whomever past you on the left. Not going to lie, once you’re used to this, it does make things a lot easier getting past a car. We’d also said, no passing in corners at the safety meeting but that pretty much went out the window right away too but as stated, once you’ve got it sussed out, it’s no big deal to get faster cars by you.

The thing with Brands is you’ve got to be on the right line or it’ll end in tears or a run into deep gravel. Disaster struck two of our drivers when a car in front of them went off ito the gravel and showered the front of their M2 with high velocity rocks. One of those rocks struck the oil cooler supply line and cut it. Not a big hole but big enough they were done for the day in that car and despite the guys at The Real Gran Tourismo’s efforts they couldn’t effect a repair. Lucky enough it was later in the afternoon that not too much track time was lost.

I was running solo in the Clio so I had as much track time as I could take and by the time I was running solo in the afternoon, the track hadn’t really calmed down much as there was one session where I hadn’t even managed a lap before the red flag came out. Between sessions on track where I was letting the car cool down, there was a two seater Spitfire that flew overhead. I didn’t realize Biggin Hill (one of the major fighter airbases of the Battle of Britain) was nearby. Nothing like the sound of a V-12 Merlin filtering down to you from a thousand feet.

I should also qualify this was my first track day of the year. Our last run at Mosport was back in the middle of October. It does put a bit of a twist on your hear when you’re dropped into a super busy track, with every flavour of driver and skill level. Like I said, I don’t mind the European model but there is something to be said for the skill based run groups we have here in Canada ad the US. Usually when we run open track, it’s because the field is sparse.

I honestly couldn’t tell you any of my lap times. Timing is frowned upon as it’s felt it forces drivers into unsafe patterns trying to shave tenths of a second off what should just be a fun time. I mean I’m learning the track in real time, I’m well aware I’m not going to be fast. I couldn’t even tell you my top speed reached at Brands. You’re constantly adjusting for a corner and managing your braking and acceleration as well as moving the faster cars by. There simply isn’t time to keep track of that particular data point. In fact it’s a weird thing but you pay more attention to coolant and oil temp than you do to how fast you’re going. You go as fast as you can or as fast as you need to. Some corners are very clear in the way your car feels as to how much power to grip you’re putting down.

The track opened at 9:00am and closed at 4:45pm, we had fifteen red flags and I went through two tanks of gas. It was a great day of driving and we were heading directly from Brands to another hotel just outside of the Snetterton track. We ended the day with one of the best meals of the trip.

UK Infinite Motorsports Trip 3.0 – April 26th, 2026

Today was a travelling day.

We left Silverstone headed towards Brands Hatch.

Along the way, we hit Brooklands Museum. Which if you are in the area is a must see.

The remnants of the old banked track are still there but Brooklands has always been a hub of Motorsport and Aviation innovation or production so you’ve got quite a feast of vintage motorcycles, cars and aircraft to look through including a tour of a Concorde. There was also a classic car meet going on when we got there so plenty of very cool rolling stock to look at too.

What remains of the old banked track

Morgan three wheeler with the ubiquitous JAP engine

Brough Superior in full race kit. Still a fast bike even today.

After that it was a short drive down very narrow roads to dinner at the Rose and Crown, Sevenoaks pub. Andy our server was a bit of a petrol head and was very interested in what we were doing there and the tracks we were going to be running.

Once dinner was done it was another short drive along even narrower roads (including a bit of single track) to get to our hotel.

Once I had our safety video under my belt for the track day at Brands tomorrow under my belt it was down to the bar to meet up with the guys and have just one more cider before bed. Tomorrow is an early breakfast and meet up at the paddock for 8:15am. I’ll be under instruction for the morning and I’ll run the afternoon unassisted. Nervous? Sure, I’m nervous before any track day. Things’ll settle down once I’m rolling.

UK Infinite Motorsports Trip 3.0 – April 23-25, 2026

No pictures for this bit as we’ve all seen the inside of an airport.

First part of any trip at least for me is taking the red eye. This time to LHR terminal 2. It was my first time in a while flying Air Canada International out of Terminal 1 Pearson but like I said, you,ve seen one airport you’ve pretty much seen them all.

It’s a small group going over to the UK this time only five of us to tackle three tracks. The package put together by Jennifer Vince of Infinite Motorsports. A first for the rest (Jennifer excluded of course) of the group and my third.

Previous track outings were Silverstone GP and Donnington Park (year 1). The Nurburgring and two days at Spa-Forchamps (year 2) and this current trip; Brands Hatch, Snetterton 300 and Silverstone GP.

My hope is this trip Silverstone will be more enjoyable as I’ve got more track time under my belt but more to the point I have a better idea of what to expect and will drive with the correct level of aggression.

I won’t bother you with the bulk of the boring travel bits because for the most part you’ve all been on the big sky bus and no matter how nice the in flight meal, it’s uncomfortable at best and even on a red eye sleep is an ellusive beast.

Still, we got off in decent time and other than a bit of CAT (clear air turbulence) over the Atlantic it was a smooth flight.

Once clear of the car rental place and Heathrow proper we met up with the group proper at a little restobar beside a canal and grabbed some needed lunch because no matter how much they give you on the flight it just seems to disappear inside you.

Lunch done we headed into the car and off to our hotel just outside of Milton Keynes which if your interested is the rail hub you end up in if you’re getting to Silverstone on rail.

The sat nav in our rented Hyundai led us on a route that would have baffled anybody trying to follow us only to deposit us in the wrong place twenty minutes from where we actually needed to be. I plugged the destination into my iPhone and Jodi Whittaker or an AI voice who sounds a lot like her guided us in. That voice is damn near the best part of my phone.

Not much else to report as we were all pretty shagged from travel.

Tomorrow we’re going to be hitting up a GP race at Silverstone so I’ll be well amongst my tribe and in one of the happiest places you can be walking among the petrol heads at a track steeped in history both old and waiting to be written.

April 25th

Today was race day at Silvestone, though the Saturday format as we’re not staying for the Sunday big show.

Lots to see as it’s the Ginetta GP race (think a racier Miata). As well as an larger GP cars and Formula 3000.

Seen on the way in to the Race. Not a racecar but weird and interesting regardless.

The pits were very busy and each class had their own pit areas.

For you the race is over…

The benefits of simulation

I spend the bulk of my cash on track days. I also don’t live in a large house so floor space is at a premium. I’d love to have the budget for a fancy driving sim rig but I just don’t, what I do have is an Xbox S and a copy of Forza. Sure, it’s not Gran Turismo or Asscetto Corsa but it gets the job done and as I’m just running a hand controller all of those other bells and whistles don’t matter to me anyway. What does matter is how close to the actual track details is the sim? And by track details, I mean the scuffs and graffiti on the crash barriers. How accurate are the curbs and their placements, and of course track signage. These are your aiming points for a successful lap.

There’s a splash of blue graffiti on the crash barrier at Schwedenkruez at the Nurburgring that is your aiming point for the braking zone prior to turning into the left hand corner. If you watch any videos of the Ring on Youtube you’ll often see cars come in way to hot, jump the curb and drive across the grass or brake too hard and spin out here. That patch of blue is critical to success. Forza has it in their graphics. The other thing is I can pick from hundreds of cars and I can build them as close to what they’ll be as I need. Forza gets the physics pretty close, even simulating grip levels at different tire temps and track conditions.

Because I’m a, “Fast hatch,” guy, my focus is always more on the corners and not so much the straights. Entry points, proper race line, braking zone, best approach to the apex. Not so much as I can be fast but more towards being smooth. With the exception of my home track at CTMP (Mosport) I’ve only got at best a day at a track to get comfortable with it. It’s always nice when you’ve got two days as the second day is when you start to put it together. That was certainly true of Watkins Glen and Spa-Forchamps.

So I’ve spent the last month and a bit running Brands Hatch GP and Silverstone GP in a Vauxhaul Corsa on the sim. Which is not the Renault Clio I’ll be driving but it is a right hand drive in the sim (The Clio is left hand drive) and the track looks different from that seat and you need to add that visual data to your brain. Brands is a tricky track with some very serious braking zones. Silverstone is a long track and it suffers from very little altitude change and that the GP track is very similar on both sides so it’s easy to get confused and set yourself up wrong for a corner because you’re a bit lost. How can this happen? Data overload of which I’ve spoken in the past.

Anyway, I’m twenty days out from my trip to the UK and looking forward to getting back on track.

Back to the UK

The plan was to take a year off of hitting international tracks and try to rebuild some resources. This is not a cheap hobby to indulge in especially when you’re miles away from the tracks in question. I’d love to be able to go to tracks down south but under the current conditions there, I like and many other Canadians are choosing to spend my dollars elsewhere. I’d also been told in no uncertain terms that an international trip wasn’t in the cards so I’d squarely placed my focus on getting up to snuff in the new 2022 Golf R.

With that in mind I’d bought into all six track days at CTMP (Mosport) and figured that this would be the year I’d tackle Mount Tremblant and Calabogie. So when Infinite Motorsports reached out to me at the beginning of February asking if I’d be interested in going back to the UK, I wasn’t expecting it. Of course my first question was which tracks?

Brands Hatch GP, Snetterton 300 and Silverstone GP.

Brands Hatch is of course a bucket list track for me. I’d frankly never heard of Snetterton but after a bit of research, it looks like fun and as for Silverstone, if you remember I likened it to a party we weren’t really welcomed at. Well, this time I know what I’m getting into and I’m much better prepared mentally for what I’ll be up against. I’ll be at the party and ready to drop the gloves if need be.

Getting beat up in the corner by some super-cars.

We’re going with the previously partnered The Real Gran Tourismo once again I’ll be in the trusty Clio Trophy 200. It’s a fun little fast hatch with quick pick up and a fantastic set of brakes. I had a ton of fun throwing it around Donnington Park and even the afternoon at Silverstone once the Race Teams had gone home and the rich kids had broken their toys.

This trip, I’m also going to take some extra time and visit some museums I’ve been meaning to get to as well as the Bomber Command Memorial

After this, I plan to hold off on any more distant track travels unless of course the chance comes up to do Motegi or Suzuka in which case, shut up and take my money.