Alan H's Experience

Alan H's Experience - Coltishall 2006

A rather pretty blue Westy fitted with an XFlow

Back to September 2006

A track day? And me a senior citizen I ask myself. “Why do you want to race a car?” the wife said, “You must be raving mad”. Go on, give it some welly, my best mate retorted you have got to go for it while we can still get in the car. Cheeky bugger.

Well I eventually sent off my cheque to John and prepared myself mentally for the big day. The car was also checked over, oil, water, loose bits and bobs sorted and on Thursday prior to the event I left on a sunny morning destination Coltishall.

The journey was much more comfortable than I had thought, not having traveled anywhere as far in ‘Pretty Blue’ before. The motorway journey was bearable and at a steady 65 mph the car just cruised along, the 1700 cc cross flow doing its bit and not for one minute showing its age.

A halfway stop at the Cambridge services on the M11 saw full English and a hot coffee go down a treat and I was back on the road in 45 minutes. I arrived at Coltishall at about 3pm to meet with John, Trevor and the other members all thoroughly enjoying the venue and track a day earlier than me.

On Friday morning I woke bright and early with slight butterflies and some reservation over the day ahead. Maybe the wife was right as I am not a boy racer, well may be a bit. The drive from my lodging was a little damp with a splattering of rain. After stopping for a full tank of jungle juice at Coltishall garage I arrived and took my place in the main hanger. There were certainly some exotica, with Ferrari, Porsche, Subaru and a Noble to boot as well as a number of Westies.

All this meant plenty of opposition in the horse power stakes not only from the exotica but the Westfield boys, John with his turbo Fireblade and Trevor with his Duratec. I guessed my cross flow would be in a world of its own, but not quite, there were at least two other Westies with similar engines and mine.

The track was cracking, reasonably demanding for me a novice with fast sections and chicanes. The area in front of the spectator area was turned into a box of four corners leading into two straights with a flat out bend between allowing me to reach 100 mph before the long bottom bend which I took as fast as I could after some reasonably heavy braking. The bottom bend was widened hairpin ending in a fantastic drift as I entered the main runway. The car was balanced, braked perfectly and at no time did I feel I was on the ragged edge.

Not fast enough you might think. Well for an old'un it was plenty fast enough to me. At the end of the day having used two full tanks of juice traveled 170 miles to try out the car and a further 140 or so on track.

It was a fantastic experience and one which I shall remember for a long time. Well at least until the next.