I
was a pupil of Brands Hatch Racing School in the 1980s, where I
drove over 100 laps in Formula First and Formula Ford single
seater cars
The video below from the Top Gear TV series of the period, shows the
Formula Ford car used by the school and the driver briefing before
the initial trial
The details of the training schedule and costs are shown on the left
- Yes, it was a lot cheaper then!
The Initial Trial was taken up by many people, like track day
experiences nowdays but few progressed to further training days at
the circuit
The Novice Class had 10 timed laps, followed by Intermediate
Class, Advanced Class and Graduation Class, each with a training
session, follwed by further days with 3 sessions of 10 timed laps,
each with a faster target time needed to progress
The sessions I booked and attended are shown on my card on the
right Notably my trial session was on the 3rd Jan 1987, right
after New Year and it snowed strongly, making things quite
difficult! I returned to Brands in February and April and by July I
had progressed to the Intermediate Class, then Advanced Class by
August and Graduation Class by the following July (perferring
better weather for the faster times!)
On the left, the Top Gear presenter goes out for
initial laps only using up to 4000 rpm, which is allowed to
increase as the pupil progresses through the classes
He doesn't really even use this rev range much
though and, as one discovers with more experience, it is the
conservation of speed and smooth driving that really lowers lap
times
The Racing School laps are conducted on the short 1.2 mile
Brands Hatch Indy Circuit, as shown below, which allows
observation almost at all times from the tower in the pits
straight
As is very clear from my session note on the right, my
progression through the classes was not without drama and I had a
big crash at Clearways during my first Intermediate Class laps!
Unusually a racing driver testing his own car was allowed out during
the session and he cut in front of me, just as I was about to brake
for the first right hander into Clearways
I had to turn quickly to avoid him and then had no track or time
left to brake at all - carrying way too much speed, I tried to usher
the car round...
I didn't spin, which was a bonus, but with almost a 4 wheel drift
both front and rear left side wheels went up and over the rumble
strip but alas, it was a damp day and with no grip from these tyres
on wet grass, I hurtled sideways into the tyre wall, breaking front
and rear left suspension
The normal braking point, where I tried to wrestle the car round
Clearways is shown on the left, as is the point I hit the tyre wall
I treated the impending collision as all part of the deal, taking
hands off the wheel and bracing for impact and, once stationary,
using the opportunity to see how fast I get could the harness off
an extricate myself from the car..
Here are some clips from an excellent track guide by Scott Mansell
of Driver 61,
showing what should have happened...
Quote: "Clearways is quite technical, it's quite difficult, but
it's important here because it's tricky. You can see the circuit
comes around to the right. Well, it actually comes around to the
right, continues around tighten up a little bit and then we're
back on to start/finish straight around here. Now what we're doing here is we're allowing the car to push
towards the outside; we will have the minimum speed here before we
then come to Clearways and get back on the accelerator. It's difficult because when you're braking, we might have a
little bit of steering angle. You can see I'm trying to keep the
car as straight as possible with little steering angle, in it so
we can decelerate, get on the brakes as much as
possible"
This is about the point were a driver testing his own Formula
Ford flashed in front of me, causing me to have to avoid him and
ruining any chance I had of braking in this difficult section
Quote: "We let in the car push towards the outside, but not
all the way around the outside. You can see there's a bit of a
gap and I'm actually quite wide on this lap. If you do go too far over to the left, it's tough to get
the car to come back and into Clearways. You just can't make
the car turn enough. So we're not using all of the road on
the left-hand side. You can see now that my head is turned and we're looking
towards the inside of Clearways. We can just catch the first glimpse of the kerb at clear
ways. We're still decelerating slightly. We have just come off
the brakes, and we'll let the car roll into Clearways, we're
somewhere in the middle of the road at this point."
Yes, it was extremely difficult to get my car turned enough with
the huge amount of excess speed I was now carrying - I counter
steered the ensuing oversteer and manged to prevent a spin,
coaxing the car into right hand rotation but the 4 tyre contact
patches were not enough grip to prevent the car pushing out
towards the rumble strip and the wet grass - once only 2 tyres
were in contact with the tarmac there certainly wasn't enough grip
and I careered sideways, hitting the tyre barrier with both front
and rear left wheels simultaneously
From that crash though, with the target lap time of 70 secs, I
continued development and, as the session note on the right shows,
my fastest lap times were down in the 56 sec range by the time I
was in the Graduation Class
Unfortunately driver instruction for every session was suddenly
mandated at this time, doubling fees, even for Graduation Class
drivers going for their final times - with this, I decided my useful
time with the school had come to an end
Although a good lap always invloves combining what you've learned at
every bend, at Brands the largest improvement comes from mastering
the awesome Paddock Hill Bend, which my MSA Circuit Guide describes
as "Perhaps the most epic corner in British racing, it is
unforgettable to the driver"
I'd have to agree, as it is approached at very high speed after the
long Brabham Pits Straight and with a slight hill on the entry and
steep dive after the crest, it is like hurtling at a blind hill
with no sight of the rapidly descending turn to the
right it hides, as former Stig Ben Collins descibes
below
As shown in the MSA Guide on the left, there are two choices of
racing line for Paddock Hill Bend - the A line almost hugs the
slightly curved track perimeter and the B line points straight
from further to the centre the track
Scott Mansell takes more of the B line in the video clip on the
right, showing the entry and Braking Point (BP in the guide)
- the second clip below shows the Turning in Point (TP)
and exit down the hill
The B line allows more stable straight line braking but requires a
sharper turn in, whereas the A line reduces the turn in but means
the car is less stable, braking at high speed with some degree of
steering angle
As Scott Mansell says, with practice you can
push yourself deeper and deeper into the entry of the bend -
what he doesn't say is that it takes quite a bit of "bottle" to
convince yourself that this is possible
I won't give away the secret but a very
experienced driver gave me a tip on how to use line A but to
minimise the unstability of the car - again this took a
while to achieve but it works well
Brands Hatch will always be my "home track"and for quite some
time I held a desire to test myself of the longer 2.4 mile Grand
Prix Circuit
This came to fruition in 2019 when I took my Lotus Exige Cup to a
tesing day on the full GP Circuit
The car had livery from a company that an old friend and I were
setting up for car sales/tuning, so it looked the part next to
cars testing for the weekend's Blancpain
Endurance race
Happily my driving kept the pace well too and
I managed to catch Lotus Sevens/Caterhams equipped with racing
slicks and all but match their cornering speed
After several sessions on track and a second tank of fuel, the
rain fell and quite a few drivers decided not to go out..
The Exige would've made Colin Chapman
proud though, as she faired better than Porsches and Ferraris - but
then my experiences at Paddock Hill Bend helped, as I could
chase the fast cars into the braking area and feel that they
would brake first
Click the photostrip below for all the shots
from the test, including very high definition photographs of the
car on track
