RE: Curburough Sprint
Wednesday 18th July 2001
Curburough Sprint
Piccies from the Westfield Sports Car Club's Sprint last month
Discussion
life is about choices man!
some choose to spend their time with westfields, some tvr's, some poor buggers spend their lives restoring cortina's.......really!
the wscc are a nice bunch, and i personally think think that watching 30 tvr tuscans, most badly driven, in the tuscan challenge is rather more tedious! cat, pigeons, moi?!
pablo
Surely the point of sprint series such as this is that they are primarily aimed at the competitors.
The fact that they also happen to provide quite an entertaining event for spectators is a bonus.
As for the quality of driving, well how about putting money and mouth in close proximity and showing them how it's done...... Or wouldn't your Nissan Micra be up to the challenge ??
Amateur/club racing tends to be far more exciting than the televised stuff which is more down to mechanics/money. I love watching club racing and whats more you can go into the pits and TALK to the drivers! Caterham/Westfield races can be very close I have seen three cars abreast fighting for the lead down a straight for the checkered flag after 10 laps of dogfight. No crashes but perfect positioning (not bad driving in my book). You don't see that on F1.
"being driven (most very badly) around Curborough?"
:-o
The standard at a sprint varies greatly as it's a starting point for a lot of people in motorsport.
However, I can't see how you can say that most cars were badly driven when class records fell, no cars were smashed up and Guy Gibson finished within 0.01s of the course record.
Your point about tedious viewing is vaguely justified. 80 odd Westfields can be a little too much for some, however, I would counter that by saying other marques are present at these events so it's not all shoe-boxes going round on rails. Compare this to Lotus 7 Club sprints were it's Caterham 7s ONLY (ie, not even Caterham 21s are allowed in!).
Horses for courses but I would suggest you compete at an event before suggesting the level of driving standards, then you may be in a better position to judge just how 'badly' the rest of the competitors drive.
Graeme.
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www.fluke-motorsport.co.uk
Oh dear oh dear, I seem to have upset a few people(obviously Westfield owners).I was giving an opinion purely from a spectators point of view. I find that motorsport involving one make of ANY type of car to be fairly tedious-more so at Curborough where there are limited vantage points, and where the main action is a fair distance from the spectator banking.
I think it's great that people want to compete with their machinery, and to be honest, it doesn't really matter whether they are quick or not as long as they derive some enjoyment from it. It is a fact, though, that many drivers in the kit car class are not particularly quick...
And just to clarify a point. I have competed in many sprints and hillclimbs (although not for three years or so) with considerable success, and until last season held our Club Curborough record for up to 1700 Kit Cars, set in a 120 bhp x-flow powered Sylva Striker on hard Falken rubber (not the sticky shaved down Bridgestone Pole Positions) that abound in that class today.
So I do know what I'm talking about.(I think...)
quote:I’ve noticed over the years that the problem with spectating at Sprints and hillclimbs is one of comparability. There’s often no immediate difference between many cars’ runs so that the only measure is the time – nearly always difficult for most people to gauge accurately without a stopwatch, or know until after the run has finished. Easy between a Pilbeam and an Austin Seven, but more difficult between two similar Westfields. When you watch a race, it’s easy to compare cars/drivers as you have a few others on the track at the same place and time (hopefully). Maybe that’s why ‘processional races’ are so boring because it just looks like cars going round and round. Try Le Mans without commentary and after 45 minutes it’s deathly…….. So for sprinting and hillclimbing it comes down to (perhaps) just looking out for the how the car turns in, where it brakes etc. Very Williams F1 Anorak. And I think most casual spectators just don’t want to have to concentrate so much – they want entertainment and action ‘in their face’! Hence all the TV coverage of ‘thrills and spills’ instead of ‘good clean’ racing. In any case at club level the emphasis should be on the competitor getting his money’s worth more than the spectator, unless you are asking the spectator to pay a high price. You’ll know that it’s very different if you’re the driver! Last event at Curborough I asked my wife how it looked and she said ‘ very slow!!’. I thought it was much more exciting on the inside………!
Purely a personal opinion, but can there be anything more tedious than watching 80-odd Westfields being driven (most very badly) around Curborough?
"I was giving an opinion purely from a spectators point of view."
As said, I mostly agree with you on the spectators view. But I guess it would also depend on the type of spectator. I've had friends with little interest in motorsport outside of F1 attend some sprints and they've been bored to tears due to the similar cars going round. However, I've had friends with an interest in a kit-car attend and they've loved it as you get to wander freely around the paddock, get right inside the cars and chat with their owners/drivers. I guess it depends on the individual.
"It is a fact, though, that many drivers in the kit car class are not particularly quick..."
It is a fact, though, that many drivers in the kit car class are particulary quick too... 
Graeme.
_____________________________
www.fluke-motorsport.co.uk
Graeme.
_____________________________
www.fluke-motorsport.co.uk
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