It's often said there is no such thing as cheap motor racing. After being in and around motorsport for many years, I knew without question that much was true. Right up until September last year, at least, when I competed in an autosolo. And there it was - genuinely affordable, inexpensive and accessible motorsport.
Okay, so it's not at all costly and by no means difficult to get started in, but is this relatively new form of competition driving actually worthwhile? Does budget motor racing not beget budget thrills? I'll flesh this out a little later on, but at the end of one run my right hand was shaking so much I couldn't read the writing scrawled onto the timecard I was holding.
Don't confuse autosolo with autotest. The latter has been around for a very long time and while I know there are lots of people out there who love it dearly and won't thank me for saying so, the idea of ferreting around traffic cones at walking pace, losing marks for not reversing into the designated area in an exactly perpendicular fashion, and having to memorise a very complicated course sounds like hell to me. I've no interest in that whatsoever.
Autosolo does away with all that pernickety rubbish while keeping all the good stuff - namely the affordability of it all and the excitement of racing against the stopwatch. And in autosolo, you'll only ever use reverse gear if something has gone terribly wrong. Otherwise the two disciplines are very similar in principle, both using big car parks, large industrial hard standings and disused airfields, plus cones to mark out the course (in autosolo they're clearly numbered in sequence to show the route, but in autotest you have to remember the way yourself).
On reflection, autosolo is really just hooning about on a patch of asphalt (and sometimes grass), but with just enough rigour applied for it to be classified as a form of motorsport. Under Motorsport UK's new licensing structure, you don't even need a competition licence to take part - you simply join the organising motor club on the day and sign up for your free RS Clubman licence (which permits you to take part in certain forms of grass-roots motorsport).
You'll pay an entry fee as well, after which you will have forked out something like £60. Unless you happen to live right next door to the autosolo venue you'll burn far more fuel travelling there and back than you will actually competing. What's more, you don't need any specialist safety equipment. You don't even need a helmet. In this particular form of motorsport, a powerful and highly-specified machine is wholly inferior to the one you don't give a damn about - the cheaper the car, the more fun you'll have. But the best bit? You can even share a car on the day with a buddy, meaning you can split the cost of buying and running it between you.
If that doesn't qualify as cheap motorsport, I've no idea what does. I took part in an event organised by Bristol Motor Club at Westonzoyland, a scruffy parcel of disused airfield close to Bridgwater, Somerset. I shared a first-generation Mazda MX-5 with the car's owner, who'd bought it for £800. It had been modified with a rollover bar and competition seat only because he also competes in sprints (you need a little more safety equipment for sprinting).
Bristol Motor Club organises the MX-5 Challenge each year as a standalone championship made up of autosolos, sprints and hill climbs. You can enter pretty much whatever road-legal car you like in autosolo, but the rules are very carefully devised within the MX-5 Challenge so that drivers cannot buy performance by fitting expensive upgrades. They run Michelin tyres, bought from competitors in a Ginetta circuit racing championship for pocket change.
Along with a dozen Mazdas there were also several bog-standard shopping hatchbacks, a Subaru Impreza, a couple of older BMWs and an Audi TT there on the day (one bloke turned up in an Alfa Romeo 4C once). The courses are made up of 32 gates marked out by orange and yellow cones, with one cone lying flat to indicate which side of it you should pass. Unless you're too busy enjoying the scenery, each run should take less than a minute. Everybody gets three runs at each course layout, dropping the slowest time and carrying the two fastest times forward towards an overall time.
Throughout the day the cones are moved around slightly so you tackle four different course layouts, meaning you're kept on your toes. Before each run there's an opportunity to walk the course and you're given a printout showing the four different layouts. In total, then, you get 12 runs throughout the day. So let's call that 10 minutes of actual competition - not a great deal given you're there all day, but I suppose that has to be taken in the context of the very modest cost of taking part.
Clipping a cone earns you a five second penalty and going the wrong way around a gate means that run is scrapped entirely. Before you can think about being even halfway competitive, therefore, you have to avoid making mistakes. Only then can you start pushing a little harder to set a quick time.
I was fidgeting with that nervous energy that any competition driver will be familiar with as I lined up for my very first run. Never mind being fast, I said to myself. Just get a feel for the car and make sure you know where the course goes. I'd been told that calling out the numbers as you pass through the gates helps you find the next one, so that's what I did. My first run was neat, tidy, free from mistakes and, come the finish line, not remotely competitive either. A time of 45.91 seconds left me a few seconds off the fastest runners in the MX-5 Challenge.
I tried a little harder on run two and chopped two seconds off my time. For run three, now happy I knew where the course went and what the little Mazda was like to drive, I pushed harder still. That saw me go another second faster, although my time of 43 seconds dead was still a couple of seconds off the very fastest drivers. I was at least competitive with the rest of the pack.
My times improved later in the day, although on one run I did miss a gate. It was way out to the left of the previous gate and out of my line of sight. That earned me a 'wrong test', meaning that run was struck off and a notional time given. There was an important lesson in that: if you're not absolutely certain you know which way the course goes, you don't stand a chance of winning. Sure, you can drive from one gate to the next if you prefer, spotting the following number in the sequence as you go. The fastest competitors, however, memorise the layout and don't give away those fractions of a second looking out for the next gate. The other way is easier, but much slower.
Apart from offering only a modest amount of seat time, autosolo is also a low-speed form of motorsport. You don't necessarily have to shift out of first gear. But even at 20 or 30mph, the cones rushing at me relentlessly, hands twirling energetically at the wheel and feet dancing across the pedals, I didn't for a moment wish to be travelling any faster. I was still working hard to balance the car in corners, still trying to spot braking points, still feeling as though I was doing all I could to wring performance from the machine. That's why, when I reached the end of my fastest run, I was shaking and shuddering with the thrill of it.
Autosolo is such an intense form of competition driving, each run finished before you've remembered to take a breath. I'm still not sure what would be more enjoyable overall: ignoring the time cards entirely and skidding around as though points were awarded for style; or keeping it neat and tidy and trying to match the fastest drivers out there. But I do know the quickest guys never looked rushed or hurried. Instead, they were calm, smooth and unflustered, always two or three gates ahead of themselves.
What else? Few things powerslide more willingly or controllably than a Mazda MX-5 - equipped with an LSD - in first gear on a dusty airfield. Next time, I reckon I'd have a bash at being competitive in the morning, review that approach at lunchtime, then forget about neatness and precision altogether come the afternoon and go for a skid instead.
I've done a reasonable amount of circuit racing (and in some pretty quick machinery at that) and I've tried single venue rallying and hill climbing, too. I think those forms of motorsport are ultimately more exciting and challenging, and more rewarding because of it. Nonetheless, I was amazed and how much I enjoyed darting between cones in first gear in a car that cost less than a skiing holiday. As a way of keeping your eye in between races and sprints, or as a form of starter motorsport, autosolo really is fantastic. It's also so cheap it would almost be rude not to.
I was competing in this event for a feature in Motorsport UK's in-house magazine, Revolution. It's now edited by Dan Trent, former editor of PH. You can read the magazine on Motorsport UK's app, or by following this link.
Photo credit: © Max Earey/Motorsport UK
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