Heres my plan...See what you think boys and girls...Could you paste it absoloutely everywhere please too, if you use other message boards, if so, that would be great!
Reintroducing Autocross to Kent…<br>
After watching a 60’s video of the players No.6 autocross championship the other Sunday it came to me the lack of events in the SE. After some investigation, the Southern Counties Autocross Championship seems to be the core of Autocross today, running events in Weston Super Mare, Sugworthy, Chepstow and so on, which to most of us is simply to much of a distance to travel from Kent and the surrounding areas. It was very well supported in the late 70’s, a lot of road/rally cars and the occasional sprint cars came out with a tyre swap. So here I am writing this to see if it generates enough interest. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far…<br>
My plan is to bring back a ‘Players No.6’ championship 2004 style. With entry fees rising in sprints etc the average clubman level racer is finding it harder to get an edge over your Carlos Vandango with a never-ending budget.
Take the Autograss formula as a great example. £8.50 for a whole days worth of club racing, 3 heats and 2 finals, low-cost fun and some close competition, pretty good really? Well…this is what we need to conjure up again with Autocross. There must be a good amount of cars sitting in lock ups that could easily be put into a class. A good class would be Mini’s up 1000cc, all interior could be removed with a cage, and limited modifications, e.g. a stage 1 tune. Limited body modifications, choice of tyres free, wheels free. I won’t go into detail now, obviously more will be confirmed if anything progresses from here.
I’m confident we could resurrect Autocross in conjunction with 7oaks, TWMC, RMC and other SE area clubs. The latter age group (not me!) must remember the Players No.6 championship, which was very popular, probably because of Roger Clarke in that Mk1‘tina demonstrating how to put RWD to good use! It isn’t potentially destructive to the cars because only 2 compete at a time.
Anyway, moving on, what has Kent got left in forms of location? Pestalozzi and Valence have been taken away, Lydden is still on the yearly threat from McLaren, and so we need something else to relight the fire. So this is a perfect opportunity to pick up from where we left Autocross back in its prime. Escalating entry fees and so on in other forms of circuit racing is scaring competitors off so it will need to loosely follow the previous mentioned Autograss entry fees. Obviously these are just the basic ‘foundations’ I’m writing about now, but I’m just trying to get the ball rolling…<br>
If this were to go ahead, with the right promotion I’m positive it would attract loads of attention…“This year has seen the FODMC revisit its roots by running an autocross. The Severn View Autocross took place at Woolaston and saw a bumper entry enjoy a highly successful event”, that was actually a one off event so it looks promising the entry list would be successful and the general turn out if we were to launch it again.
Adam Tait.
E-mail me with your views/suggestions taity_boy@hotmail.com
Reintroducing Autocross to Kent…<br>
After watching a 60’s video of the players No.6 autocross championship the other Sunday it came to me the lack of events in the SE. After some investigation, the Southern Counties Autocross Championship seems to be the core of Autocross today, running events in Weston Super Mare, Sugworthy, Chepstow and so on, which to most of us is simply to much of a distance to travel from Kent and the surrounding areas. It was very well supported in the late 70’s, a lot of road/rally cars and the occasional sprint cars came out with a tyre swap. So here I am writing this to see if it generates enough interest. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far…<br>
My plan is to bring back a ‘Players No.6’ championship 2004 style. With entry fees rising in sprints etc the average clubman level racer is finding it harder to get an edge over your Carlos Vandango with a never-ending budget.
Take the Autograss formula as a great example. £8.50 for a whole days worth of club racing, 3 heats and 2 finals, low-cost fun and some close competition, pretty good really? Well…this is what we need to conjure up again with Autocross. There must be a good amount of cars sitting in lock ups that could easily be put into a class. A good class would be Mini’s up 1000cc, all interior could be removed with a cage, and limited modifications, e.g. a stage 1 tune. Limited body modifications, choice of tyres free, wheels free. I won’t go into detail now, obviously more will be confirmed if anything progresses from here.
I’m confident we could resurrect Autocross in conjunction with 7oaks, TWMC, RMC and other SE area clubs. The latter age group (not me!) must remember the Players No.6 championship, which was very popular, probably because of Roger Clarke in that Mk1‘tina demonstrating how to put RWD to good use! It isn’t potentially destructive to the cars because only 2 compete at a time.
Anyway, moving on, what has Kent got left in forms of location? Pestalozzi and Valence have been taken away, Lydden is still on the yearly threat from McLaren, and so we need something else to relight the fire. So this is a perfect opportunity to pick up from where we left Autocross back in its prime. Escalating entry fees and so on in other forms of circuit racing is scaring competitors off so it will need to loosely follow the previous mentioned Autograss entry fees. Obviously these are just the basic ‘foundations’ I’m writing about now, but I’m just trying to get the ball rolling…<br>
If this were to go ahead, with the right promotion I’m positive it would attract loads of attention…“This year has seen the FODMC revisit its roots by running an autocross. The Severn View Autocross took place at Woolaston and saw a bumper entry enjoy a highly successful event”, that was actually a one off event so it looks promising the entry list would be successful and the general turn out if we were to launch it again.
Adam Tait.
E-mail me with your views/suggestions taity_boy@hotmail.com
