mse track days

[dubkiller]

mse must be having a blinding year. every time i go to book a day at one of there airfeild venues they are booked up. will be out this saturday @ keevil by booking a month in adavance !.
are more folks doing these events instead of circuits because of the credit crunch ?.

[HereBeMonsters]

Although I've gone the other way - I did 10 with them in 2007, a couple in 2008, then started racing radio control in an effort to save money. That has failed (r/c is amazingly expensive once you start getting competitive) so I'm going to start booking trackdays again. Once I've got me new car of course...

[A.Wang]

I'll be at Keevil on Sat. with another PHer in a white Porsche 944 S2 - do come and say hi!

[Herman Toothrot]

HereBeMonsters said:

Although I've gone the other way - I did 10 with them in 2007, a couple in 2008, then started racing radio control in an effort to save money. That has failed (r/c is amazingly expensive once you start getting competitive) so I'm going to start booking trackdays again. Once I've got me new car of course...

Very good, I decided about 4 years ago to get back in to RC and ended up getting straight back out for the same reason, plus I needed to travel even more distance to decent, organised club racing than with real cars to trackdays.

Trackdays I've been using MSE for two reason, nice and local circuits to me and price, I used to go to bookatrack events but they seem to have added almost £100 on the cost of every event this year. I'm sure a day at Combe for example used to be about £190 with early booking now its £285 early booking

Edited by Herman Toothrot on Thursday 7th May 18:11

[jleroux]

Herman Toothrot said:

I used to go to bookatrack events but they seem to have added almost £100 on the cost of every event this year. I'm sure a day at Combe for example used to be about £190 with early booking now its £285 early booking

We used to run 4 x 15 minute sessions per hour but now run open pit lane with guaranteed no queuing. that's potentially at least twice as much track time for "just" £100 extra - that's value for money :-)

IMO too many people look at the headline price of a track day rather than the "cost per mile" or the quality of the track time on offer. I guess that's our fault for failing to market the days properly though!

Jonny
BaT

[F355GTS]

jleroux said:

Herman Toothrot said:

I used to go to bookatrack events but they seem to have added almost £100 on the cost of every event this year. I'm sure a day at Combe for example used to be about £190 with early booking now its £285 early booking

We used to run 4 x 15 minute sessions per hour but now run open pit lane with guaranteed no queuing. that's potentially at least twice as much track time for "just" £100 extra - that's value for money :-)

IMO too many people look at the headline price of a track day rather than the "cost per mile" or the quality of the track time on offer. I guess that's our fault for failing to market the days properly though!

Jonny
BaT

Hi Jonny

interesting point and for me queues are something to avoid so maybe I should do some more of your days, as a matter of interest how many spaces do you book on a Combe day?

thanks

Mark

[dubkiller]

will do. grey golf mk2 5dr or red 996tt.
dk.

A.Wang said:

I'll be at Keevil on Sat. with another PHer in a white Porsche 944 S2 - do come and say hi!

[jleroux]

F355GTS said:

interesting point and for me queues are something to avoid so maybe I should do some more of your days, as a matter of interest how many spaces do you book on a Combe day?

they're capped at 25 cars Mark - hope to see you out and about then - been a while since you did a BaT day!

[Birdthom]

maybe that's what happens when you become a ferrari owner J5

Edited by Birdthom on Friday 8th May 00:20

[HereBeMonsters]

jleroux said:

Herman Toothrot said:

I used to go to bookatrack events but they seem to have added almost £100 on the cost of every event this year. I'm sure a day at Combe for example used to be about £190 with early booking now its £285 early booking

We used to run 4 x 15 minute sessions per hour but now run open pit lane with guaranteed no queuing. that's potentially at least twice as much track time for "just" £100 extra - that's value for money :-)

IMO too many people look at the headline price of a track day rather than the "cost per mile" or the quality of the track time on offer. I guess that's our fault for failing to market the days properly though!

Jonny
BaT

So howcome MSE can do Castle Combe for £199, open pit lane??

[t11ner]

Simple, they book more cars in!

I'm not commenting specifically on MSE as I don't know them but the formula isn't complicated here, look at the number of cars that the circuit will allow on track at any one time, multiply it by two and that's how many cars you can book in for an open pitlane day if you want to have little or no risk of queueing. So at Oulton and Cadwell for instance we will book a max of around 60 cars. I guess to be able to guarantee no queueing, BaT may even have to take slightly less than that but by charging more per car they can do that and their drivers will know that they won't be waiting to get out on track.

If you want to thrash the profit on a trackday you can drop the price a bit and overbook the day to make more money but queues will be almost inevitable and once they start it snowballs because the drivers know they will have to queue to go out again if they do normal shortish sessions so they stay out for longer which makes the queues worse which means they stay out even longer etc etc...... . If you end up at a reasonably cheap "open pitlane" day where there are long queues take a look at how many cars are there and you'll soon see if that's the reason!

On the other hand, we are able to run our Trackaction-Online days cheaply as we are an enthusiasts group and don't need to make a living out of running our days, we book a two to one ratio as described above and aside from during red flags etc we haven't had a queue yet .

Steve H
TA-OL

[HereBeMonsters]

I've never had to queue for more than 5 minutes on an MSE day, and I've done a few!

[Herman Toothrot]

HereBeMonsters said:

I've never had to queue for more than 5 minutes on an MSE day, and I've done a few!

Same here

[HereBeMonsters]

Herman Toothrot said:

HereBeMonsters said:

I've never had to queue for more than 5 minutes on an MSE day, and I've done a few!

Same here

That, and Rupert is an absolute legend. "Use the whole track, you have paid for it after all!"

[dubkiller]

me too.

Herman Toothrot said:

HereBeMonsters said:

I've never had to queue for more than 5 minutes on an MSE day, and I've done a few!

Same here

[jleroux]

good on them if they can make it stack up at those prices - it's not easy to do. sounds like Ed & Natasha run a good track day - i'm hoping to see for myself in a few weeks as we've got some of our Caterhams out on hire on their day at Combe on the 2nd June.

Jonny
BaT

[t11ner]

Yep, fair play to them.

As I said, we aim for our days to be reasonably priced with no queueing so it can be done but there are some operators that don't give such a priority to keeping the numbers sensible.

Steve H

[Overhere]

Hi, Only skimmed through this thread but wanted to say, I've done many track days and have done a few public days with track operators, what a nighmare, I've gone off airfield days to some extent, but only because real circuits are so much better. I did Goodwood with the Porsche 928 club in March and it was fantastic, shame about the 98db limit (two sets of silencers needed)

I've been a customer of Ed and Tasha of MSE for many years, they are just so good, the best, really, in every aspect, getting instruction from one of their crew (Rupert Crooke is awesome) is worth every penny. If you want a great proper circuit with a great crew, do Pembrey with MSE this year, or Castle Combe, I'll be there...

[steve z]

Have done a few MSE days in the past and never had any semblance (sp?) of a queue.

Ed and Natasha are great organisers (genuine enthusiasts).

Would be great to see them do more on circuits rather than airfields though.

[F355GTS]

jleroux said:

good on them if they can make it stack up at those prices - it's not easy to do. sounds like Ed & Natasha run a good track day - i'm hoping to see for myself in a few weeks as we've got some of our Caterhams out on hire on their day at Combe on the 2nd June.

Jonny
BaT

I'll be there too Jonny