Driving Experience Days

[Mr Overheads]

Where can I find a decent driving experience day.

I want to buy a different car after, or as well as, the Elise, but would love to do a proper set of back to back drives of say a 911, Cayman S, AMV8, Evora S, F355, R8 etc etc etc.

Best I can find at the moment is Audi Experience day £499 inc VAT and plenty of time in the cars.

Don't want any of these Red Letter Day type experiences where you get 3 laps in a Ferrari for £99.

[Corsair7]

Mr Overheads said:

Where can I find a decent driving experience day.

I want to buy a different car after, or as well as, the Elise, but would love to do a proper set of back to back drives of say a 911, Cayman S, AMV8, Evora S, F355, R8 etc etc etc.

Best I can find at the moment is Audi Experience day £499 inc VAT and plenty of time in the cars.

Don't want any of these Red Letter Day type experiences where you get 3 laps in a Ferrari for £99.

You want the Palmer Sport day. http://www.palmersport.com/

[Mr Overheads]

Yep i've seen that, but I don't want to buy any of those cars particularly except maybe the 911, but that's a hardcore racing version.

Looks like a great day and might go on it anyway.

[Mr Overheads]

Anyone else recmmend anything? Doesn't have to be on a track. Cna be experiencing cars on the public road.

[F1GTRUeno]

I'm sure there is one whereby you get something like five different supercars (Gallardo and 911 Turbo are flashing up in my head at the minute) on public roads, drive as a group and swap throughout the day.

No idea what it's called or what it costs mind.

[mike80]

Sounds like a dreamcarhire day. I photographed one of these for a magazine last year.

We were given a route and the keys to the first car, you end up with about an hour/40 miles or so in each, and meet at specific points to swap cars. 3 cars in the morning, break for a pub lunch and and 3 in the afternoon. The routes were good, and nobody telling you to slow down.

We had a V12 Vantage, R8, Gallardo, 430, GTR and 911 Turbo. Its not cheap, but good fun if you can afford these things! I will try and find the article we did tomorrow.

[Presuming Ed]

I'm a bit stuck here. I can't see any experience day letting you have a proper blast in any of their cars apart from a parade around a circuit. Circuit driving isn't really going to tell you a lot about the cars you want to buy due to race tracks being nothing like the road and again you won't be able to push the cars.

Better that you draw a shortlist of cars you want to buy and then go test driving through the trade.

[Polarbert]

The majority of driving experience days are pretty naff anyways, for people who aren't interested in cars but yet want to say to their mates down the pub that they drove the new Audi supercar at the weekend.

[mike80]

http://issuu.com/squareupmedia/docs/sm_54 This is the review we did, from page 60.

http://www.dreamcarhire.com/

[F1GTRUeno]

Polarbert said:

The majority of driving experience days are pretty naff anyways, for people who aren't interested in cars but yet want to say to their mates down the pub that they drove the new Audi supercar at the weekend.

I don't agree.

I drove a DBS at a 6th Gear Experience day at Prodrive's headquarters

I'm extremely interested in cars, but being 19 at the time, skint and in all reality never being able to afford an Aston Martin in my life, I absolutely fking loved it.

Plus the fact I drove it quicker than you'd ever be able to drive it on the road in the first place...

[edo]

Best value for money (you get what you pay for), is a Jonathan Palmer day. you spend 99% of your time driving, with decent instructors in well looked after machinery, and pushed to drive them properly without silly rpm limits etc.

[CraigyMc]

edo said:

Best value for money (you get what you pay for), is a Jonathan Palmer day. you spend 99% of your time driving, with decent instructors in well looked after machinery, and pushed to drive them properly without silly rpm limits etc.

Before you read the following, please know that I really, really don't like vauxhall's 80% approach to chassis dynamics. Sometimes -ok, quite often- they make nice engines. I just don't like the way they handle, mostly. Even knowing that - I'd argue a VXR trackday is the best value of the lot, in terms of turn-up-and-drive stuff.

£95 buys you half a day, broken down into something like 90mins of track time and an additional 90 minutes of autocross/stunt driving.
For the track aspect, there are about 30 odd cars and 50 patricipants in the track driving piece.
The format is that Vauxhall turn up to a track (thruxton, rockingham, croft, etc etc) with a few big transporterloads of cars, (eg. 10 corsas, 8 astras, 6 VXR8's and something like 4 merivas zafiras and insignias). They are owned by vauxhall and will be the only things allowed on circuit.
circuit time is done in 90 minute sessions, of which there are 4 per day. Each punter will only do one session on the track.
Each car has an instructor, who does not get out of the car during that session. He sits in the passenger seat the whole time.
The pitlane has bus stops at regular distances with a model name on (eg. "Corsa") ... hey, you at the back, stop sniggering. None of them say "Jordan" or "Lucy Pinder". All the cars of that model park at that bus stop.
Each punter is given a silly hat (for hygeine) and lent a decent helmet for the track driving part of the day, unless they brought their own.

Everyone's let loose on the cars at the same time, and you just go to any car which is not currently occupied and you get in the drivers seat.
You then get 3 laps of the track, then you come back into the pits and get out, or stay in the same car and repeat, if no-one is waiting at that model's bus-stop.
It's up to the punters to choose what to drive - some people would literally stand at the VXR8 busstop the whole time, despite it having the longest queue and attendant longest wait for a drive.

Some people just take whatever is free at the time (this is more fun than it may sound. There's a lot of variation in the skill levels of the punters. Take it from me, overtaking a VXR8 on the exit of church at Thruxton while laughing my head off in a totally-on the limit meriva was quite a good laugh. Even the instructor dude was laughing).

There are no revlimits and the instructors are quite relaxed about people really going for it - bouncing off the limiter, locking up, sliding around a little are all tolerated (not encouraged, obviously!).

There are a couple of pro-drivers giving experience laps in roadcars - a friend was taken around by Giovanardi while I was driven around by another BTCC regular. Since "the punters know each other" - the BTCC guys went a little bananas. I could literally have wound the window down and touched the other car as they both slid around thruxton - that's how close they got. Giovanardi smashed up an alloy on the way into the pits (went over a kerb a little too hard). Absolutely amazing fun and almost worth the £95 by itself, that was.

The other part of the day is of various format, but it includes an autotest in a boggo-spec astra (not a VXR) against the clock, and lessons in handbrake turning, etc. The instructor for this has been Paul Swift both times (the guy is a legend) - and has included him taking people for passenger rides while he drives about on two wheels, for example. He also does his "don't stop me now" stunt drivig routine, which is quite good fun.
Some food is put on (sandwiches etc) halfway through the day.

There's absolutely no way Vauxhall make any money out of this type of event. Im sure it's subsidised greatly by VXR marketing people.

I've done the VXR day at Rockingham and Thruxton, and have also done various other experience days (in fact, my next one is this week..) including supercars at mallory (diablo,noble,911,maser3200,XKR,viper), rallying (group N fiesta) at silverstone, exiges at silverstone (south circuit), all day caterhams at silverstone (south circuit again), drifting (caterhams in the silverstone main gate carpark), various other stuff and pretty much every karting track in the land.

Best value for money? VXR... easily, and by quite some margin.

C


ps. Now I have to go and wash as I've just said something that made me feel unclean.

ETA: I can't be 100% sure, but I think I was driven around Thrux by Tom Onslow Cole (he of BTCC and brother of Mel C fame). I didn't know who he was at the time!

Edited by CraigyMc on Monday 14th March 17:44