As a car fan a track day is an absolute must. It’s an opportunity to try some dream cars, and drive them on an open track so that you can really concentrate on driving – and for us at Direct Gap, it was an opportunity to have a great team day out.
We were lucky with bright skies and glorious sunshine picking out the shiny cars lined up at Elvington Airfield in York.
The format is pretty simple - everyone gets to drive 4 cars on the airfield course. Each driver gets a total of 2 laps of the 3 mile course in each car.
We got to choose from some really top flight cars – and whilst there was also a quite a bit of queuing it proved to be an opportunity to get a good look at a great selection of super cars and take a few shots of all the whole field.
Interestingly we found that despite absolutely loving every second, we all agreed that the car we’d take home was the Jaguar F Type V8. It was great to get to drive a Lamborghini and a Ferrari, but at the end of the day it felt more like a box ticked than an urgent ‘must now own’.
A track day is not a cheap day out – and can get even more expensive with a few optional upgrades. There’s the option to do a hot lap with a racing driver in a Vauxhall VXR8 or an Arial Atom. It’s another level of driving, starting with the run onto the track hitting the main loop at a cool 160mph. Incredible skills.
It’s not a long day, but it felt like an eternity. The amount of adrenaline expended for each of those laps was massive. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like to drive like that full time. We were so exhilarated and also totally exhausted by lunchtime.
Car gallery
Lamborghini Gallardo lp560 Spyder in a mirror wrap
Lamborghini Aventador
McLaren MP4-12C row
Audi R8
Ford Mustang GT500E fastback
Ferrari and Jaguar F Type V8
Jaguar F Type V8… Can I take it home?
Ariel Atom
Nissan Skyline
Chevrolet Camaro
By Beate Kubitz at 29 Sep 2017, 00:00 AM