My First Autosolo

I'd wanted to do one of these for a very long time, and now I have finally completed my first Autosolo!

The GRRC hosted its second Autosolo of the year in October, and I was keen to make it! There were a variety of cars that showed up, and we were each allocated out own paddocks to use for the duration of the event.

My weapon of choice? A 1998 Caterham 1.6K Supersport. Lightweight, skinny tyres and rear-wheel drive - can you get a better combination?

The event was very well organised, and this was actually the first motorsport event I competed in this year that ran entirely on time and to the schedule! I was put in to Green Group in Class C - where Green was an allocated Paddock row of random cars, which you went out with during the event, and Class C means that your car is RWD and Below 2.0 Litres without forced induction.

The car ran beautifully the whole day - I set some great lap times and took minimal penalties overall. Considering that a day earlier, the car had its exhaust, starter motor, clutch cable and gearbox bell-housing seperated from the car, it was a miracle I was there at all!

I got to chat with some lovely fellow competitors, to talk all things motorsport and cars in between track sessions, and we would talk about the different challenging sections of each stage.

I took 3rd in Class in the end, and was unfortunate to not get 1st considering a few people in the class had tyres not permitted for Autosolos. How the scrutineers missed it, I don't know! Anyway, it was great fun and I thoroughly enjoyed myself!

Seat time is king in motorsport, not just rallying, and doing events like this more often will be a more cost effective means of keeping the driving up and learning the handling characteristics of different cars moving forward. 

I am already looking to doing more Autosolos in future, and right now, I'm putting the wheels in to motion for co-driving next year and organising a couple of gravel drives and/or tests in between.