About 60 cars at Brands Hatch, organised by Tracksense. The car we had was just the Track XR as my twin turbo is a little poorly, soon to be fixed by the 4 litre engine I am preparing
Robert's account
An early start, 06.45, far too bright and far too early
. We arrived at about 08.00 and the paddock was very full,
there was a wide range of cars including a couple of Lotus Corinas, Golfs, Scoobys, Evos, Elises, Caterfields, BMWs,
Fiestas, Escorts, Porsches, a Capri, a very quick Maestro, a couple of Aston DB6s, TVRs ......... like I said, a wide
range!Driving the track again was great, the weather was fantastic and the marshalling seemed to be a bit better than last time! I was getting more and more confidence with braking into Paddock Hill Bend which made the stomach churning much better at the bottom! Druids seemed to cause no problems at all, just break late, in a straight line and turn in very late making the apex 2/3rds of the way round. Managed to overtake a few people out of Druids just by getting the line right
Graham Hill bend, hmmmm, didn't really feel I mastered that corner, I kept either understeering to much, or
braking a bit late and getting a bit of oversteer. I ran a little wide twice and clipped the outside kerb, which is
very bumpy and unfortunately it triped the fuel cut off both times 
Pulled over to the edge of the track and
reset it both times and then carried on ......Surtees into Mclaren was great fun, and I think my best part of the circuit for catching people up, just behind Paddock Hill Bend. I managed it flat out a number of times, but then I had to brake earlier as the car was a little more unsettled. Lifting of a little seemed to be the best way through, and leaving the braking really late into Mclaren but making sure all the braking is done in a straight line.
The problem with Clearways was I just kept understeering too much
I let the car run right out to the edge of Clarke
but still too much understeer. I still managed to carry more speed through which allowed more overtaking down the
straight I kept the car tight to the wall down the striaght, crossing over to the left at the end before throwing
the car into Paddock Hill again One of my sessions was cut short after two Renault Spiders spun off down Paddock Hill bend >
on the first lap!!!
They cleared the cars off the track but I only managed 2 laps before the session was over!I managed to overtake quite a few cars which is always good fun
The marshalls were quicker with the blue flags this
time, even though some cars ignored them! I was stuck behind a race prepared Proton for just over a lap, I managed to get
past him out of Druids though. There was an incredibly quick Maestro who in one session started behind me, came past
after a few corners on the first lap, then towards the end of the session he came past again!!! I was trying to catch
an Imprezza and a TVR in one of my sessions, I closed up through Surtees, but they pulled the gap back out down the
straight.....The only casualty of the day was the viscous fan, it locked up solid so now spins at the same speed as the engine, a good few bhp lost there!! Luckily I can just pull the one off my dead 2.9 out of the twin turbo so no cost to replace!
Overall a great day, some great cars on track, great weather and of course a great circuit!
Tony's Account
Brands Hatch + Track Sense = frustration: Discuss. Well, that's what I'd expected in the run up to this event. There has been loads of criticism levelled at BHL for cornering the market - indeed the reason I booked in the first place was that I thought I may never get another chance. Was this clever marketing, or what? Also, Brands has some peculiar rules such as "you must be assessed by an instructor before you take a passenger". Track Sense black flag you for too much tyre squeal. The day was obviously going to be full of nazi marshals, wasn't it?. As it turned out, I was 95% wrong (I'll explain the 5% in a minute).
On arrival, we bagged a garage, signed in (very smooth), swapped groups (no hassle) and the briefing started on time. The sessions ran fast, then medium, then "steady" (very PC). The pace car did it's job well, starting off slowly for the first sighting lap and gradually building the pace before pulling off after three laps. The day's on! What a circuit!! My first time driving here: Out of the pits and falling down paddock hill before rising up to druids is awesome. Real stomach churning stuff. Round the hairpin before going back down the slope and into Graham Hill bend. I tended to tiptoe around here because I've seen soooo many racers lose it and go off - and the kerbs are evil, completely unusable (see Rob's report!). From there, sweeping round into Surtees (I couldn't do it flat - sorry!) before sweeping back onto the start/finish straight hugging the pit wall and taking that weird line across to the left and stabbing the brakes for Paddock Hill again. Here we go again!
The threat of very deep gravel was enough to keep me honest, and I actually had a pretty uneventful day. But that's a good thing! Lots of driving - some overtaking, and some being overtaken but all very neat and tidy. And I got away with just a bit of tyre squeal!
The scariest point of the day was when this big fat marshal marched up to me and started rambling on about me pulling into the infield and what did I think I was doing? I tried to point out that I hadn't been driving and diverted attention to Robert (it's official, I'm a coward!). He explained that in fact he hadn't stopped to adjust his camera, but to reset the fuel cut-off switch which had tripped after he went within a yard of the kerbs at Graham Hill bend. "Oh", said the marshal, "I s'pose that's alwight. I was gonna chew yer bo11ox off fer stopping to adjust yer camerwer". And off he went, goose-stepping as best he could.
Blue flagging seemed fair this time and all the sessions ran to time. There were more offs than I expected, but then there were more cars on circuit than I expected too. I was well happy with the day overall, though I think you need to be able to go for it on track days without fear of being kicked out. Track days are about finding your limits - I think you need to go slightly past the limit in order to do that, so I hope other track day organisers don't follow suit and get heavy with the black flags. That said, the more offs, the less track time so there is a balance to strike. Today, they seemed to get it right.
Andy's account
Another day at Brands! Last time was good, this time was better!
The first surprise of the day was rolling up at Rob's house at 6:35am (10 mins early!) - to find him not only conscious, but outside loading hardware into the Sierra!! (sorry Rob, but I know you don't normally 'do' mornings
Anyway - we made it to Brands fairly uneventfully, the sign-in went fine and the morning seemed to kick off very nicely, and there was an unusually wide range of cars there, which is always nice to see - everything from a Skyline GTR to a couple of (very nicely presented) Cortinas from 1963(ish)!
I really really couldn't understand the crazy Tracksense policy of not allowing passengers on the parade laps! The complete opposite of the more intuitive Easytrack policy. I would love to hear the justification behind this - I guess there must be one?
Otherwise, I think Tracksense did a very good job of keeping things together, with sessions running pretty much to time right through the day. Also, the marshals took a much more even-handed approach than last time we were at Brands, with fewer blue flags for us, and more for people we were trying to pass (although I don't think many people knew what they meant!)
I managed to drive three sessions during the day, quite a good amount of track time! I started quite slow, Brands is not a circuit to spin off from - very evil gravel traps and I've seen what they do to cars! Gradually though I worked my way back up to speed. I think my recent experiences at Wroughton airfield have improved my performance around hairpins as Druids didn't seem anything like as challenging as at our last visit.
My last session made it all worth while, and I seemed to be overtaking everything (obviously I wasn't really - but it felt good!) - the unusual policy of allowing overtaking in corners made the day much more enjoyable and gave us a significant advantage over cars with more BHP but softer suspension!
I look forward to our next Brands outing!
