track days confessions. how dangerous is it?!

[mjrc]

The initial message has been deleted from this topic.

[stockhatcher]

i'd certainly stay away from the trackdays that you've been on.

i think your right to leave them alone, there is far too much damage going on.

[agent006]

Trackdays are as dangerous as you make them. Your driving is up to you, i've managed to not bin it yet, as have the majority of others. It's quite easy to spot other drivers who are a liability and keep out of the way.

[andye30m3]

I've been to 4 at brands hatch and never seen any contact, even the day the scrap yard took a lorry load of MOT failures for the staff x-mas do.

Seen a coupe of spins but thats about it.

[mmm-five]

I've done about 40 and only ever had contact with a cone or two, and been in the kitty litter at Oulton once due to being off-line and outbraking myself.

Seen an accident on maybe every 10th event.

[onemorelap]

agent006 said:

Trackdays are as dangerous as you make them. Your driving is up to you, i've managed to not bin it yet, as have the majority of others. It's quite easy to spot other drivers who are a liability and keep out of the way.

Couldn't agree more with that sentiment.

If you have confidence in your own ability and drive on or within that ability then it's a relatively safe and very enjoyable way to spend a day.

As stated its quite easy to spot the "numpties" who either take themself out of the equation all together in the 1st couple of hours or are intelligent enough to calm down, drive accordingly and respect what the day is all about.
After eight years of trackdays one trick i picked up along the way was to resist the temptation to go straight out at 9.00am and just watch from the pitwall for the 1st twenty minutes or so.
I found that pretty much gave me a good idea for the majority of attendees as to who knew / didn't know what they were doing. As such i could treat the cars and drivers accordingly when overtaking / being overtaken. Obviously this little technique didn't cover all attendees but when encountering similar numpties on track i just used to back off and let them go and have an accident somewhere else on the circuit.

Overall i think this approach has stood me in good stead as apart from a couple of harmless spins and occassional half spins i've not had any blackflags or damage to the car in all the years i've enjoyed doing them (what a swot!!)

Out of everything experienced on trackdays the only real issue we had was with those "egos" that couldn't accept that a track prepped 205 could possibly be pedalled quicker around certain circuits than some drivers in what are undoubtedly faster road cars.
I lost count of the amount of times that we would come up behind such a car previously taking good lines albeit moderately slower only for them to completely cock it up at the next corner in a vein attempt to keep in front.

Irrespective the fun factor massively outweighs any perceived "danger" factors.

[jdwcd]

Like most track days, you dont overtake when entering or on a corner, so its no guess whos falt it was.