Newport Edition

Castle Combe VAG Track Day August 2007

A Hot day for hot cars and hot laps..

Castle Combe always puts on a good show. Well organised, excellent facilities for drivers and spectators plus being so close to home there is no half a day drive to get there. It’s pretty good value too, only £6 entry to watch a full days worth of track gods and track dogs giving it their best around the somewhat ‘flat’ Combe circuit. And to take part it’s pretty reasonable too.. A couple of our members, Guy, Chris and Dan payed just over £100 for 4 sessions throughout the day. Although I think Dan just played his younger brother card and managed to skank his way onto the Gay Pride lap. This family lap is suppose to be a chance to drive the circuit ‘carefully’ and show off your car or something. But most people still managed to tail back behind the pace cars and lash it around a few corners for good measure.

Luckily there wasn’t too many spills to report. Most of the cars seemed to love the hot sticky track baked by the mid day sun. A good day for personal bests I’m guessing. Guy’s newly acquired white Corrado 1.8 valver was flying around, and looking at the lack of writing on his tyre walls, he was either hitting the apex of every corner just right or his tracking his funked after taking just 2 hrs to fit a full set of coilovers. Either way, it looked good on the track up against bigger machines like the abundance of RS4’s on the day.

Chris in his red Polo GTi also got a few laps in, practicing for the Nurburgring no doubt! His mad camber set-up came into full effect around the track, luckily his stretched tyres managed to stay on the rims.

I took a break from the pix to catch up with a few of the members..

“so Guy, how was it out there?”
“Well Ewan it was going really well, until some pikey in a MK3 Golf split a brake line and sprayed my car with fluid”!
“Gutted mate”

“Chris, I understand this is your first time around the Combe, how did it feel?”
“Uhmm.. good yeh, a real good run, Although I lost a centre cap on the way round so I lost a few seconds picking that up”
“You mean, you stopped mid lap to pick up a plastic centre cap?”
“Well yes.. they’re about £50 on ebay!”
“Standard”

There’s a few more track days coming up soon at Castle Combe. A Eurofest action day on the 8th September and a Rally day on the 22nd September. Both are well worth getting too. NewportEdition will be there in force as usual.

Check the forum for more info >>

Loads more pix in the gallery >>

Ewan E