Road Car Sport

So, let’s put the spotlight on the different types of competition that you can do without having to fit roll cages, competition seats, lowered suspension, or even go-faster stripes…

Autosolos
Autosolos are an ideal starting point, because one of the main rules is that you must drive to the meeting; bringing your car on a trailer is a definite no-no. The aim of the game is to drive around a series of courses marked out with cones as fast as possible – rather like a slalom skier. As well as the excitement of competing, you get the added satisfaction of helping the organisers, as drivers are asked to spend part of the day marshalling a test. This gives you the bonus of being able to check out the different ‘lines’ that your rivals take. Apart from entry fees of around £25 per event, your only other expense will be petrol for the day’s sport. \

Autotests
Autotests are a natural progression from Autosolos, and they contain an important additional element – reversing. Again, you need to negotiate a course laid out with cones or wooden stakes as fast as possible. Handbrake turns, tightly controlled powerslides and the iconic ‘reverse flick’ – spinning the car on its own length to go from full speed backwards to full speed forwards in an instant – are some of the skills that you will learn along the way. Most of the sport’s top drivers started by using their everyday road cars, so you will be, literally, following in the wheeltracks of the champions.

Car Trials
Car Trials, formerly known as Production Car Trials, teaches you two essential skills; delicate throttle control and the ability to find grip on any tricky surface, whether it be wet grass, gravel or deep mud. Your average family hatchback makes a fine ‘tool of choice’ because you will need a car with good all-round handling as you tackle a number of tight, twisty sections laid out on hillsides, aiming to get as far up the gradient as possible without stopping or hitting marker poles. One essential element that makes this sport so competitor-friendly is that you carry a passenger who acts as moving ballast in the sections. They are also allowed to ‘bounce’ in the vehicle, to help maintain grip when the going gets slippery, so a friend with some energy to burn is ideal!

Classic Trials are similar to Car Trials, with the addition of non-competitive sections on the public road, in between the different hills.
Your passenger will usually act as navigator, which adds to their fun and gives them additional input to the teamwork.

Navigational Rallies
Navigational Rallies are run by many motor clubs (find your local motor club) and they are all about finding your way around a route on remote country roads at night, ensuring you arrive at various checkpoints, called controls, at exactly the right minute to avoid time penalties. Unlike special stage rallying, speed is not essential in navigational events; you are positively discouraged from going too fast, with severe penalties for arriving early at a control. Good teamwork between you and your navigator is vital to negotiate the route correctly and on time, and an often-forgotten skill is the simple ability to think clearly and concentrate on the road ahead in the dead of night. Apart from petrol and entry fees of about £50 per rally, the only other expense is Ordnance Survey maps to cover the route. Also, if you can persuade a friend or fellow car club member who can read maps well and doesn’t suffer from car-sickness to navigate for you, they will be a great asset!

Drag Racing
Run What Ya Brung is the strange name given to public track days at drag racing venues such as Santa Pod and Shakespeare County Raceway. Simply turn up, pay a signing-on fee of about £50 and this allows you to make unlimited full speed runs on the same quarter-mile course usually occupied by ear-splitting 6000-horsepower dragsters. After each run, you get a detailed computer analysis of your reaction time on the starting line, your time along the course and your terminal speed at the end of the quarter-mile. Although a helmet is recommended it’s only compulsory if you know you will be travelling at more than 110mph at the end of the ‘strip’. It is an ideal way to test your road car to the limit to see how fast it can go in a straight line; and it’s also a test of how strong your nerve is!

Sprinting/Hillclimbing
Sprinting and Hillclimbing are regarded as the ultimate in precision driving at speed. They are time trials held either on courses laid out on disused airfields or the asphalt drive to, say, a stately home or farm. Competition takes place over two timed runs, and class honours are won or lost by fractions of a second, so you need to be ‘switched on’ right from when you leave the start line. Most meetings have classes for standard road cars, and the only modification needed is to fit a timing strut to the front bumper. This breaks the electronic timing beam at the start and finish line, and is easily made from a sheet of metal about the size of a school ruler, with a bracket to attach it to the vehicle. Apart from entry fees (around £80 per event), your main outlay will be for personal safety equipment, which is mandatory. A good quality helmet costs from £150 upwards, while fireproof overalls are on average around £250. They are available from all specialist motorsport stockists.

Cross Country
As anyone who has ever been stuck behind one on the morning ‘school run’ knows, the nearest that most four-wheel drive vehicles get to being off-road and dirty is when they mount the pavement or drive through a muddy puddle. But for the more ambitious 4×4 owner there are several categories of organised competition where a completely standard family off-roader will let you battle with other like-minded drivers and, win or lose, you will have huge amounts of fun at minimal cost.

Drivearound
‘Driveround’ events are specifically for four-wheel drive vehicles and make an ideal introduction to exploring the limits of what your standard 4×4 can and can’t do when it’s off-road. Run by the All Wheel Drive Club and particularly popular in the South East, where they use Army land, Driverounds consist of a course of about one mile long laid out over challenging, but not damaging, terrain. Plenty of marshals are on hand to help drivers who get stuck or bogged down, and you can drive the course as many times as you like during the day. Many drivers who have tried these events have moved on to compete in 4×4 Trials and Safari (off-road time trial) competitions.

Family Vehicle Trials
Family Vehicle Trials are, like the name suggests, for road legal 4×4 vehicles. The competitive format is the same as Car Trials for two-wheel drive cars, with drivers trying to negotiate a series of sections, usually on steep hillsides, without stopping or hitting marker poles. The further through each section you get, the less points you lose; the winner is the driver with the lowest penalty points at the end of the day. The only modification you may need to make – although it’s not compulsory – are fitting All Terrain tyres to help with grip on the slippery slopes.

Tyro Trials
Tyro Trials are for the young adventurer in a 4×4 – you don’t even need a full driver’s road licence as you can start competing at 14. Cars must be absolutely standard and the sections are deliberately designed to be non-damaging to vehicles – and therefore to the driver’s wallet – so they are an ideal way for youngsters to learn the art of close car control on a variety of different surfaces in a safe and controlled environment. An essential safety rule, which makes these events popular with Under-17s is that an adult must drive the vehicle between the sections and then the crew members swap over at the start marker.