A new sports car racing championship has just been launched aimed both at new and experienced drivers of mid-engined cars. The championship builds on the huge success of the Lotus Road Sports Series which began life as the Autobytel Lotus Championship, and evolved into an all Lotus event. Gavan Kershaw, the Lotus test driver, won in 2003 with serious competition from Natasha Bell and Chris Yandell. The last season attracted many other top drivers � several of whom have ascended to the British GT championship.
By focusing on mid-engined sports cars, the 2004 series guarantees high speed action as this particular chassis configuration displays outstanding braking and cornering agility. Expect to see the irrepressible Lotus Elise being challenged by the sensational new Vauxhall VX220 and more established cars such as the MGF. Other likely marques to compete are Renault, Toyota and Ferrari.
�Mid-engined sports cars offer performance that just cannot be exploited on the road� and rarely on track days. Our new championship offers experienced drivers of these cars a unique opportunity to compete with similar machines.
We are also keen to attract new drivers who have cut their teeth on track days and now want to race.� said George Mackintosh, series spokesperson.
�Our format allows drivers to move up from basically race-prepared road cars to full-race classes. And we are seen as being the testing ground for future GT drivers and cars!�.
With manufacturers such as Vauxhall keen to energise their brands with cars such as the VX220 and even VW likely to go to production with an �Elise rival�, this will be an exciting race format. The organisers hope to attract additional interest from new manufacturers such as Noble.
With an existing schedule of races at most of the big national circuits, the first event is at Croft in April. The organisers and Drivers� Council now invite drivers to register. Advice and support for new entrants is available.
Contact Richard Culverhouse on [email protected] or call George Mackintosh on 07785 924824.
Mid-engined sports cars offer performance that just cannot be exploited on the road� and rarely on track days
And we are seen as being the testing ground for future GT drivers and cars!�.
whilst this looks like an exciting series and maybe something I will go and watch this year, I can’t help questioning the 1st statement as being utter rubbish - surely there is more chance of overtaking on a trackday than in a race and as such more chance to exploit the performance?
Also, if its grass-roots racing whats the chance of most people developing their car and moving it into the GT class in future years…somewhere close to zero?
Natasha Bell & Chris Yandell were certainly not just “playing at it” - they had some serious wedge/team support behind their efforts. Both are very quick drivers too.
In saying that, young MarkD did extremely well too, albeit with a modest budget (& time to practice) compared to the aforementioned drivers & Gav.
Natasha Bell & Chris Yandell were certainly not just “playing at it”
Please don’t get me wrong, no disrespect to the others (after all I indirectly help fund Natasha through my B&C bills!), more a comment on Gavs abilities and perhaps a rose-tinted writer.
You could say slightly unfair given he had a historic sporting marque produce a car around him!
I’ll try to answer all the different comments I can see!
Firstly the competition for Gavan was quite serious in terms of the series because he had two non finishes earlier in the year. I think 3 drivers could still have won going into the last round - although I think this would be more of a reflection on the points scoring system (which is being reviewed) rather than the respective abilities of the drivers and development of the cars.
Yes - Honda engines will be allowed - as will Duratech.
I think the grass roots aspect is still there and co-exists with those with aspirations towards GTs in that there is a class for standard road cars - last year there were completely standard Exige, Sport190 and even and standard 118bhp Elise at the last round. Then for those with bigger budgets and ambitions there is the race class.
With respect to using the cars performance - I had a bit of a think about this - particularly as I reworded the original statement to what you see above from an originally much stronger statement - ie never being able to use the performance of the car on trackdays. Quite a difficult one to see - but I am much quicker now than I was when I started racing, even having done a fair few trackdays. My times improve year on year. Some of this is partly development of the car, but in 2 and a bit years of racing, I have only on 3 occasions been to circuits and have not been quicker than I have gone before. Twice it happened at Donington which I can only put down to ideal conditions the first time I was there this season, and the other time was at Snetterton on a different (and brand new) tyre. I would like to think I was using the full abilities of the car beforehand, but I was obviously not!
If anybody is interested - because lets face it - you know you want to, please feel free to email / use the message thingy on here / call 07734 225046, or speak to George, whose contact details appear at the top of this thread.
Mark - appeciate the tone of your post - I didn’t know you had a hand in writing it and hope you took no offense…just wanted to be a little provocative.
Its difficult aiming publicity at the right level - particularly as I am crap at anything to do with selling! George put together a really good piece, and I cleared up a few small errors, and generally toned down the enthusiasm a little bit (George is an entrepreneur, while I sit and stare at a computer screen all day - although not IT - which may explain it!). That was one of the phrases I thought long and hard about! While I could never have written the original piece I was able to make a few amendments, but then you have to keep everybody happy - and that includes the people who are happy to write the publicity and spend their own time on it as well!
And I did figure there was a little ‘playing’ going on!