I'm such a child, and I love it. Ever since I fitted an LSD to the Caterham all I've really wanted to do was mess about and do some donuts, and on Friday I finally had my chance. I joined the rest of the Hondas-On-Track boys and girls for another North Weald activity day full, complete with a brand new pair of rear tyres. It was hugely entertaining although there was a slight incident involving a cone that means the car's out of action again for a while.
In my opinion it's the biggest downside to airfield days. An inch off the right line and you clip a cone, and the resulting damage can vary from a scratch to a new side skin. Luckily as part of my spring cleaning adventure I replaced all of the metal wing retaining nuts and bolts with plastic versions, which are designed to snap off and save the side skin from being ripped to pieces with the wing. This is exactly what happened so all I need replace is the bolts, wing and light cluster.
But my point remains; if I'd have been an inch out at Brands or Silverstone I'd have just taken a bit too much kerb, or caught a bit of grass. At worse I might have seen some kitty litter. But to actually hit a solid object and do real damage would have taken a big error of judgement or some exceptional circumstances.
Aside from the damage it was very entertaining to slide the car around, mostly in circles, with lots of smoke and noise. I'm looking forward to fixing the damage and booking a proper track day and getting back to some serious driving.
Please check out the picture gallery for the event and the short video I put together, which includes a few donuts and generally misbehaving. It was also a good excuse to fiddle with Adobe After Effects and come up with a new intro to match the new site design. There's also a full write-up of the days action over in the motorsport section.