Campbell Cassidy's blog

Donnington ? Track Day, Weather ? English. Objectives, Meet new team and impress them with silky smooth driving style and outright pace. Fags smoked +/-300, coffee 3.47 bbls (US). Outcome: Abject failure followed humiliation by children.

Expletive-deleted, expletive-deleted, expletive-deleted, expletive-deleted, expletive-deleted?. fuck. Not a good day. The never say unfixable ethos of Locost was driven close to its bleeding edge in order to shoehorn Mr Edwards into the co-pilot seat of the yet to christened 74 car and off we went for a few sighting laps of the Donnington track and it?s fascinating ecology, more expletive deleted. Clearly disgusted by the reduction in his circumstances from the airbrushed luxury of a professional super cup team to Locost, Sean was enjoying his revenge cold. Locost being the very polar opposite of what he does for a living, this outrage to his professional credentials would like any other good deed not go unpunished. The outrage was probably compounded by a skint knee, bless these thoroughbreds, and it was with some savour that Sean delighted in stretching both my cognitive abilities and my cojhones with a barrage of instruction that could be distilled into variations of the word power prefixed by; more, double more, triple more, full, max, complete etc, etc?more ecology, lots of ecology, more expletive deleted and much sniggering from the stalwart men & woman of the TMC Motorsport team and for a cherry on top: a collective snigger from the mandatory collection of the under fives that seem to populate these events, my godson specially flown in for the occasion as a promising county level sniggerer even managed to snap me being hounded down by a Volvo estate ? Round 2 to Mr Edwards.

Snetterton ? 750mc Test day, Objectives, try to not humiliate myself in front of my new team, a la Donnigton, or any passing under fives for that matter. Try to keep it on the pavement, Try not to be last. Outcome: Failed.

In my soon to reach fledgling status: the only red flag I?ve had waved at me was of the metaphorical variety that started this whole process off?.not so today. Locost is a series based on the best seller by Ron Champion, Build & Race Your Own Sports Car for 250quid. Nowdays the book on Amazon costs nearly 90 quid so even if, as recommended by Mr Champion, you can pick up an old Ford Escort for 50quid then the remaining 110quid will have to stretch pretty far. Locost however is a gentleman?s sport compared to another of the forumale organised by the august men and women of the 750 Motor Club. Whilst watching a series dedicated to 14-17 year olds I was reminded of the old sports pun about going to see a fight at Madison Square Gardens when an ice hockey match broke out, turns out in motorsport this is called Sax Max: a well intentioned attempt to productively channel teenage energy, instigated by someone who had clearly never met a teenager.

The TMC Motorsport team, who were providing the crumbling beauty that is the 74 car were also holding a hooligan in their van and aided by a small number of kitchen utensils, a pan of hot water and the traditional fresh towels, Tony finally coached some life out the Black Beast: a Bio-Ethanol Burning (sometimes) Bruiser that is so tough that it refuses to move lest this be confused with backing down in anyway. All remedies had failed to light the thick vegetable based protein that this planet-saver ran on and only after an extended tow (Norwich I think) did the studded black warrior finally deign to storm away from the paddock leaving nothing but skid marks, from onlookers mainly, and pieces of razor sharp black bodywork flying into the mercifully empty grandstands, with the kind of noise that you would expect from an expertly thrown ninja shuriken on a snowy market day.

This notionally green machine, liveried in matt black and driven by a by now liverish Matt C, was the talk of the paddock. A project in genetics and canola oil from Coventry University this Locost racer was the charge, your honour, of Mr Matt Cherrington, a youthful veteran of Locost, whose faultlessly reliable and demonstrably quick car was now in my infant like hands and perhaps Matt was a shade greener with envy, rather than greener than greenpeace as again the stubborn Black, Bio Beast which had now adopted a pacifistic posture and was not starting on, or for, anybody. Whilst in the background the rustic charm of the ever dependable 74 car purred like a butter milkshake.

After the bruising spectacle of Sax Max and with most of the broken bits of Citroen cleared out of Sunday market stalls, the buzzing swarm of machinery that is the Locost grid was off and running, and off, and running and off, and off and then Red Flag. End of Day, not very quick, lot of grass to be cleared off the paintwork but still straight and still starting, onwards and never backwards, well not until the front end came back round again.

Locost, A novice’s tale

Snetterton – Track Day, October, Weather Mysteriously Fine, Objectives: Bit of laugh with my best mate in his new porker. Outcome: Success

I really thought there would be a bit more glamour and a lot less camping, or at least a bit more of the Barbara Windsor sort of carry on camping, clearly I had a lot to learn.

A few track days behind the wheel of my friend’s recently rebuilt and nearly totally waterproof 964 RS had prepared me for absolutely nothing in Locost racing other than the general of juxtaposition of Snetterton and the A11. My nameless and shameless friend, one of the newly anointed pinstriped city pederasts had arranged for Sean Edwards, son of a F1 driver, and very much a rising star in International Porsche Supercup racing to come down to Snet and show us both the ropes, or more accurately just how ropey we were. It seems almost laughable now given the wild speculation and breathtaking risks that the banking industry employed to bring us to our economic knees but my studiously risk averse amigo refused to put any of his new pride and joy onto any of the kerbs or even exceed 3500rpm but being far more experienced in these matters my own contribution was to make his very pretty little car spit out an alarming amount of brake fluid and finally a prop shaft, after a very, very neat – no kerbs – no grass, no stall, 720 on my way into Russell’s.

End of the day for both of us and the end of track days for my friend, it’s the downturn you understand, and despite public outcry he remains the complete banker however the dark die was cast with a throwaway line, from Mr Edwards, about something called ARDS tests and me not even having a race licence. Turned out that this was to be a bit of red flag to this aged bull and as the months followed and the dominos fell I was back at Snet in a VX220 roaring over the exit kerbs at Russell’s just as required by Sean and much to the delight of my examiner (more of this later). One ARDS test passed, now to find some racing and to score at least one point on the absurdly overachieving Mr Edwards.