03 Oct 07
Caroline Betts shared her pale blue racing MGB with her mother, and sisters Justine and Sarah Moody drove their father's Ferrari Daytona in the regularity category while dad Anthony shared a yellow E-Type. The girls were having fun as well as the boys, and at the end of the first day Alona was stunned to discover that we were lying fourth out of 28 in the regularity. Perhaps we'd get a bit competitive after all.
Day two involved the MIRA test track, a slithery stage at Belvoir Castle and laps at both Donington and Mallory Park. The technique for the stages, at each of which we had two runs, seemed to be to go fast for most of it, having a good time in the process, and slow right down at the end in order to cross the line at precisely the right moment. Having learned the approximate lie of the land on the first run, you can then refine the technique for the second run. Provided your co-driver presses the right button on the stopwatch, of course...
Belvoir Castle was a brilliant, dust-raising blast: I was Sandro Munari in the 1973 World Rally Championship, flinging his Fulvia to that year's championship win as the engine rasped and revved with its slightly dirty V4 note. How would my Lancia behave on the track at Donington? This was new territory, but as at Brands it was turning out to be rather better than I expected: keep your accelerator foot in and the front wheels just pull it through, no torque steer, minimal understeer. And my rebuilt engine was getting revvier with every mile.
After MIRA we were third, astonishingly. And over in the race category, the Chevron was dominant but Richard Frankel's Alfa had also been powersliding its way to glory, fending off myriad 911s. Day three, by which time we had slipped back to fourth, included a stage at Cholmondley Castle, and then to Oulton Park which is almost a mini-Nürburgring complete with a Karussel-type corner banked only on the inner edge. This vied with Donington for top circuit honours, not least because they're both long.
