I have been pondering what to do next, if anything, now that time and money have gone out the window now that two kids are in the family. In a nutshell I needed a motorsport category that didn’t penalise for not being able to test, minimal risk of damage to the car, relatively cheap to compete and purchase a car and didn’t require travelling too far from home. After considering some of the more grassroots racing, particularly grass track racing and oval racing (fast fords etc), I decided that the answer lay much closer to home than I originally thought in the Curborough sprint championship.
By choosing sprints, and hillclimbs if desired, it means I can keep within a similar discipline to circuit racing and hopefully when I eventually go back to the circuits I won’t have lost my touch. Testing for sprints and hillclimbs is quite rare and is not usually available the day before an event therefore it suits my needs perfectly. Needless to say that sprinting is against the clock therefore there are no other cars on circuit to hit!
The Curborough sprint course is just 15 minutes away and is a regular venue that I visit to see the interesting array of cars that go sprinting; anything from roadgoing Vauxhall Corsas to big V8 powered single seaters. It’s not the most exciting venue and I remember sprinting there in my first year of motorsport and finding it rather underwhelming compared to other circuits on the calendar. However I thought that if I could find something more interesting to drive than the roadgoing Opel Manta that I used back then it might make it more exciting, so the search for a suitable car began…
First on the shopping list was a Jedi Mk4. These motorbike engined single seaters are rapid and ideal for sprinting. I had one particular car in mind and despite numerous offers a deal couldn’t be reached. A Mallock derived car called a Matador came on the market which had been used for sprints which had been fitted with a Honda Blackbird motorbike engine instead of the usual Crossflow and it had big slick tyres. The car looked exactly what I was looking for and I agreed to purchase the car over the phone. I made the trip to Wakefield to see Mathew Suttcliffe and the car was exactly as described so the deal was done.
So all I need to do now is get booked in to an event at Curborough to see if the car makes an ordinary track more interesting!
Tags: Curbourough, sprinting
