Post by Wyvern on Oct 11, 2010 1:47:39 GMT
Sounds like a fairly normal scenario really, doesn't it? Sensible, practical jumper, sensible, practical car... possibly the world's most middle-class and dull track day experience?
Well, very possibly, if the woman in question was my mum and the car was a geriatric Volvo estate, with all the sensibleness and boxiness that entails. On the other hand, if the woman was, say, me, and the car was the latest Volvo S60 - a car designed to compete directly with the BMW 3 Series - and the venue was Dunsfold Park, it suddenly gets a lot more interesting.
I suppose this story starts back in the summer, when, in a quiet moment at work, I entered a draw thing on the Volvo website. I was intrigued by the idea of a 'naughty' Volvo, so I stuck my name into the hat and hoped for the best. Alas, I heard nothing, but as I hadn't really expected to I wasn't too disappointed. I pretty much forgot all about it until I got a phone call at work a couple of weeks ago and a nice lady from Volvo said that they'd decided to run another weekend at my local venue and if I wanted to do it, they had a place for me. Being based in the south east, my local venue was Dunsfold Park, home of a certain pokey motoring show. Who wouldn't want to throw a powerful car around the complex of runways where they film Top Gear? Obviously, I said a very emphatic 'YES!' and began to plan the adventure.
I had planned to drive down because I've been to Dunsfold before and I know that it's a swine to get to. As Mayfayre is in Italy this weekend, she said it would be fine for me to take the Mondeo - but of course, this was prior to it going wonky last week. This meant getting to the track by public transport, which sounded nightmarish and involved a replacement bus service, but I was not to be deterred. I was also planning to take a TG-mad Australian friend as my +1, because I thought she might enjoy it, and I also thought she might like the chance to visit the track while she's here. I think that made me more determined to sort it out. Then, to add further complication, the taxi company I'd been recommended didn't work Sundays.
And yet... it all came together, and even worked to our advantage because while everyone else was waiting in a queue to get into the car park, an XC90 turned up and whisked us down to the big inflatable marquee where the reception and safety briefing was taking place, allowing us to get checked straight in (something I'd been dreading, because I was sure I must have missed something in the small print about having held a licence for a minimum length of time, but turned out to be fine) and issued with our wristbands and lanyards before the bulk of the participants arrived.
My lanyard and pass (name obscured to protect the, um, innocent?)
We quickly found a table and settled in to look at the brochures and have canapes. It was all very swish, but the tables were quite amusing...
The white writing says You will of course have to spin it to read this, unless you're reading it upside down, in which case you're tilting your head and people are staring.
After we'd been briefed on safety (something which took all of two minutes, and basically consisted of 'Don't Be A Prat'), we were led outside to be introduced to this most naughty of Volvos. They certainly did it with style... (apologies for the sound quality on this clip, and the occasional infringement of a fingertip).
Next we got to experience some of the new safety features - a new version of the automatic braking system - which will stop the car completely at speeds of up to 9mph and considerably lessen the impact of a collision at speeds above that, and the pedestrian detection system which identifies people and tracks their movements if they look likely to move into the path of the car. Both of these demonstrations relied on inflatables, the former on an inflatable bright orange car, the latter on a rather dodgy looking inflatable bloke (called Frank, IIRC), and as neither the orange car nor 'Frank' ended up going pop, it's fair to say that the systems worked well. They do brake rather abruptly, but it's far better that than ramming someone's back end or running someone over.
All this talk of safety is still sounding pretty Volvo-ish, isn't it?
A middle-aged woman in a Boden jumper with a Volvo...
From this point on, it all started to get a bit more interesting, not that the safety stuff wasn't interesting in its own way, but there was far more fun to be had with a 3 litre, 200+ bhp car, an empty runway and some water. That fun was to be had with a little thing called lift-off oversteer. Lift-off oversteer is what happens when you accelerate into a turn and then suddenly take your foot off the gas. This throws the weight of the vehicle forward, which means the nose dips and the back end 'goes light' and steps out. Under the wrong circumstances, this can kill you, though at least with oversteer you stand a chance of hitting the thing that kills you backwards, so you don't see it. However, under controlled circumstances, lift-off oversteer is the key to the 'Scandinavian Flick', and this was the first thing the poor, beleaguered instructors had to teach me. It went really well, and I picked it up pretty quickly, didn't lose it at any point and came out with a huge grin on my face. The noise of the tyres screaming was awesome. By the time we'd all finished throwing the cars at the big patch of wet, slippery track, they were filthy, and looked like this:
(this is a white car)
Next, we got to see how precisely the car handled by driving it around an obstacle course. This was a timed event, and I pretty much decided that rather than trying to be too brave I would just aim at the wooden spoon but concentrate on not hitting things. I'd never done anything quite like it before (driving along Plymouth Hoe, which has a long stretch of chicanes, was as close as I'd come), but although my time was slow, I did get to really feel the handling and I drove accurately. No matter how wildly I threw it threw a gate or how tightly I had to weave between the slalom cones, it always felt completely planted, and it never felt like it was going to let me down. I could have pushed harder, but I'll save that for the future. I'm a novice at all this, so I just wanted to get through in one piece. And actually, judging by the times the other groups put it, I don't think it was that embarrassing, because the slowest of the fastest times (i.e. the slowest of all the fastest times recorded by the four groups) was quite a bit slower than the fastest chap in our group
Next came something rather special, and it required the wearing of a crash helmet and a very fetching disposable balaclava for hygiene reasons...
This was the one thing the drivers didn't get to drive for, and unfortunately there wasn't enough time to take the guests out as well. It was, however, quite a highlight as I can now say that I have been around the Top Gear test track, and Hammerhead in particular made me very glad I was wearing a crash helmet. We hit 100mph at times on the straights and our fastest lap time was somewhere in the 1.30s. Seeing the track from the car's perspective is really quite odd - it's hard to remember how it all fits together, and obviously, because the laps are edited, you just don't get a full appreciation of how long the track actually is. It's an entertaining track though, and does do what it was designed for: it works both for handling and for power. It's neither a very fast track nor an excessively intricate one, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a lot of fun to go around.
(There's a car going around Gambon behind me)
They also had a selection of Volvo merchandise, and I have to admit if I'd realised you got all three for the money and not just one, I'd have been very tempted by the set of nail polishes in Volvo S60 colours - they'd have made a great memento!
After that, it was back in the driving seat for the exhilarating finale to the day, something that was listed as 'Performance and Handling (The Chase)'. For this, they brought out the fully police-specced car from the introduction. I then had to drive through a combination of slaloms, chicanes and hairpins while being chased by the police car, complete with blue lights flashing in my mirror. Meanwhile, the guests got to follow in the 'unmarked' police car when that one was being used. It was great fun, though I'm sure I shall look terrified when the in-car video comes through! Didn't quite manage a clean sheet this time, and did sacrifice a traffic cone, but it was worth it to floor the thing on the last straight. The police caught me, but never mind - the chap instructing me on this event was very complimentary about my driving, which made me smile even more. I don't think I could have asked for a better confidence booster than to have done something like this, and more to the point, to have proved to myself that I can do something like this.
Then came the really cool bit.
The instructors took the wheel and took us around the same course. My friend and I ended up back in the car with my instructor, who said many nice things about woman drivers (I was the only female participant today) and then mentioned he used to be the lead trainer at Prodrive before thrashing hell out of the car. We were thrown around like peas in whistles and absolutely shrieked with laughter from start to finish. As a final little treat, when it came to being ferried back to the debrief, we got to ride in the police car.
Even the taxi driver who took us back to the station (and who deserved a medal for waiting, because although I'd said we wouldn't need picking up until 5.45pm, the driver who dropped us off took it upon himself to tell him to be there for 5pm) was lovely. He regaled us with tales of how he'd driven Boris Johnson to Top Gear!
There was a replacement bus waiting when we got to the station, it arrived at the other end in time for us to find something to eat, our train was on time (although the announcements on board were a bit wonky, which was why "We are now approaching Mind The Gap,") and the tubes were behaving when we got back to London. As you can see, we had brilliant weather too. Simply could not have asked for a better day. So a huge THANK YOU to Volvo for arranging it all, to the transport system for not letting me down when it really mattered. I shall dream about the sound of tortured tyres and the smell of cooked brakes tonight!
Well, very possibly, if the woman in question was my mum and the car was a geriatric Volvo estate, with all the sensibleness and boxiness that entails. On the other hand, if the woman was, say, me, and the car was the latest Volvo S60 - a car designed to compete directly with the BMW 3 Series - and the venue was Dunsfold Park, it suddenly gets a lot more interesting.
I suppose this story starts back in the summer, when, in a quiet moment at work, I entered a draw thing on the Volvo website. I was intrigued by the idea of a 'naughty' Volvo, so I stuck my name into the hat and hoped for the best. Alas, I heard nothing, but as I hadn't really expected to I wasn't too disappointed. I pretty much forgot all about it until I got a phone call at work a couple of weeks ago and a nice lady from Volvo said that they'd decided to run another weekend at my local venue and if I wanted to do it, they had a place for me. Being based in the south east, my local venue was Dunsfold Park, home of a certain pokey motoring show. Who wouldn't want to throw a powerful car around the complex of runways where they film Top Gear? Obviously, I said a very emphatic 'YES!' and began to plan the adventure.
I had planned to drive down because I've been to Dunsfold before and I know that it's a swine to get to. As Mayfayre is in Italy this weekend, she said it would be fine for me to take the Mondeo - but of course, this was prior to it going wonky last week. This meant getting to the track by public transport, which sounded nightmarish and involved a replacement bus service, but I was not to be deterred. I was also planning to take a TG-mad Australian friend as my +1, because I thought she might enjoy it, and I also thought she might like the chance to visit the track while she's here. I think that made me more determined to sort it out. Then, to add further complication, the taxi company I'd been recommended didn't work Sundays.
And yet... it all came together, and even worked to our advantage because while everyone else was waiting in a queue to get into the car park, an XC90 turned up and whisked us down to the big inflatable marquee where the reception and safety briefing was taking place, allowing us to get checked straight in (something I'd been dreading, because I was sure I must have missed something in the small print about having held a licence for a minimum length of time, but turned out to be fine) and issued with our wristbands and lanyards before the bulk of the participants arrived.
My lanyard and pass (name obscured to protect the, um, innocent?)
We quickly found a table and settled in to look at the brochures and have canapes. It was all very swish, but the tables were quite amusing...
The white writing says You will of course have to spin it to read this, unless you're reading it upside down, in which case you're tilting your head and people are staring.
After we'd been briefed on safety (something which took all of two minutes, and basically consisted of 'Don't Be A Prat'), we were led outside to be introduced to this most naughty of Volvos. They certainly did it with style... (apologies for the sound quality on this clip, and the occasional infringement of a fingertip).
Next we got to experience some of the new safety features - a new version of the automatic braking system - which will stop the car completely at speeds of up to 9mph and considerably lessen the impact of a collision at speeds above that, and the pedestrian detection system which identifies people and tracks their movements if they look likely to move into the path of the car. Both of these demonstrations relied on inflatables, the former on an inflatable bright orange car, the latter on a rather dodgy looking inflatable bloke (called Frank, IIRC), and as neither the orange car nor 'Frank' ended up going pop, it's fair to say that the systems worked well. They do brake rather abruptly, but it's far better that than ramming someone's back end or running someone over.
All this talk of safety is still sounding pretty Volvo-ish, isn't it?
A middle-aged woman in a Boden jumper with a Volvo...
From this point on, it all started to get a bit more interesting, not that the safety stuff wasn't interesting in its own way, but there was far more fun to be had with a 3 litre, 200+ bhp car, an empty runway and some water. That fun was to be had with a little thing called lift-off oversteer. Lift-off oversteer is what happens when you accelerate into a turn and then suddenly take your foot off the gas. This throws the weight of the vehicle forward, which means the nose dips and the back end 'goes light' and steps out. Under the wrong circumstances, this can kill you, though at least with oversteer you stand a chance of hitting the thing that kills you backwards, so you don't see it. However, under controlled circumstances, lift-off oversteer is the key to the 'Scandinavian Flick', and this was the first thing the poor, beleaguered instructors had to teach me. It went really well, and I picked it up pretty quickly, didn't lose it at any point and came out with a huge grin on my face. The noise of the tyres screaming was awesome. By the time we'd all finished throwing the cars at the big patch of wet, slippery track, they were filthy, and looked like this:
(this is a white car)
Next, we got to see how precisely the car handled by driving it around an obstacle course. This was a timed event, and I pretty much decided that rather than trying to be too brave I would just aim at the wooden spoon but concentrate on not hitting things. I'd never done anything quite like it before (driving along Plymouth Hoe, which has a long stretch of chicanes, was as close as I'd come), but although my time was slow, I did get to really feel the handling and I drove accurately. No matter how wildly I threw it threw a gate or how tightly I had to weave between the slalom cones, it always felt completely planted, and it never felt like it was going to let me down. I could have pushed harder, but I'll save that for the future. I'm a novice at all this, so I just wanted to get through in one piece. And actually, judging by the times the other groups put it, I don't think it was that embarrassing, because the slowest of the fastest times (i.e. the slowest of all the fastest times recorded by the four groups) was quite a bit slower than the fastest chap in our group
Next came something rather special, and it required the wearing of a crash helmet and a very fetching disposable balaclava for hygiene reasons...
This was the one thing the drivers didn't get to drive for, and unfortunately there wasn't enough time to take the guests out as well. It was, however, quite a highlight as I can now say that I have been around the Top Gear test track, and Hammerhead in particular made me very glad I was wearing a crash helmet. We hit 100mph at times on the straights and our fastest lap time was somewhere in the 1.30s. Seeing the track from the car's perspective is really quite odd - it's hard to remember how it all fits together, and obviously, because the laps are edited, you just don't get a full appreciation of how long the track actually is. It's an entertaining track though, and does do what it was designed for: it works both for handling and for power. It's neither a very fast track nor an excessively intricate one, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a lot of fun to go around.
(There's a car going around Gambon behind me)
They also had a selection of Volvo merchandise, and I have to admit if I'd realised you got all three for the money and not just one, I'd have been very tempted by the set of nail polishes in Volvo S60 colours - they'd have made a great memento!
After that, it was back in the driving seat for the exhilarating finale to the day, something that was listed as 'Performance and Handling (The Chase)'. For this, they brought out the fully police-specced car from the introduction. I then had to drive through a combination of slaloms, chicanes and hairpins while being chased by the police car, complete with blue lights flashing in my mirror. Meanwhile, the guests got to follow in the 'unmarked' police car when that one was being used. It was great fun, though I'm sure I shall look terrified when the in-car video comes through! Didn't quite manage a clean sheet this time, and did sacrifice a traffic cone, but it was worth it to floor the thing on the last straight. The police caught me, but never mind - the chap instructing me on this event was very complimentary about my driving, which made me smile even more. I don't think I could have asked for a better confidence booster than to have done something like this, and more to the point, to have proved to myself that I can do something like this.
Then came the really cool bit.
The instructors took the wheel and took us around the same course. My friend and I ended up back in the car with my instructor, who said many nice things about woman drivers (I was the only female participant today) and then mentioned he used to be the lead trainer at Prodrive before thrashing hell out of the car. We were thrown around like peas in whistles and absolutely shrieked with laughter from start to finish. As a final little treat, when it came to being ferried back to the debrief, we got to ride in the police car.
Even the taxi driver who took us back to the station (and who deserved a medal for waiting, because although I'd said we wouldn't need picking up until 5.45pm, the driver who dropped us off took it upon himself to tell him to be there for 5pm) was lovely. He regaled us with tales of how he'd driven Boris Johnson to Top Gear!
There was a replacement bus waiting when we got to the station, it arrived at the other end in time for us to find something to eat, our train was on time (although the announcements on board were a bit wonky, which was why "We are now approaching Mind The Gap,") and the tubes were behaving when we got back to London. As you can see, we had brilliant weather too. Simply could not have asked for a better day. So a huge THANK YOU to Volvo for arranging it all, to the transport system for not letting me down when it really mattered. I shall dream about the sound of tortured tyres and the smell of cooked brakes tonight!
I love a man who can handle a gun 
;D ;D ;D 
I held you, you felt me, I touched you, you kissed me.......
