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Sunday 6th May 2007
Jersey Here We Come...The Driving Tests.
Its Driving Test day today, I've never actually done one of these before and I'm a little bit nervous about doing it in a car we've only just bought and only driven about 300 miles in. In for a penny.. The driving tests were held in a car park (reserved for us naturally) on the west coast of Jersey, near the Corbiere Lighthouse. It wasn't raining but it was a cold and windswept morning, not really the best conditions to compete in your first one. Above: The cars arriving for the tests, not all of them took part, only 40, the others were spectators, only MG's were allowed into the main car park.
The course, this was laid out with cones and you were required to do three runs, through three different cone layouts, and the times were added together to give an overall score.
A demonstration run was carried out first to allow the competitors a chance to see how to drive the course, we were provided with diagrams of each layout but they made sense when you were able to actually see it done.
Lining up for my first run, I was the 11th one to run so I had the benefit of watching 10 others run before me, I managed to get a bit of wheel spin off the line but..
....I kept it under control and had a reasonable first run. I was feeling pretty good by now, I'd had a good run and didn't put it into the wall (you can't see it here but there is a pretty hard looking stone wall on the right hand side of the car park) and I felt I could go quicker. On my second run I nailed it dead, everything went perfectly, I could hear the cheers as I stopped in the finishing box. I was getting a bit cocky by now and I should have known better. On the third and final run I got a bit carried away, too much wheel spin off the line, trying to control that I managed to clip a cone (10 sec penalty) and while I was worrying about that I managed to misjudge a turn and had to reverse....
....I finished but it wasn't one of my best. I ended up 19th out of 40, 12.5 seconds off of the winners pace. If it hadn't have been for the 10 sec penalty, and the reverse, I could have been as high as 3rd, never mind. It was great fun all the same. The guy who won it, in a Midget, was very experienced, to the point of bringing his own compressor to over inflate the tyres, he certainly threw the little Midget around the track, I didn't fancy being that brutal with the car myself! You can see the wall in this picture, scary!
Some of the other cars that took part in the tests. Some were serious (check out the video camera on top the the yellow ZR) and some less so. One competitor tried so hard you could hear the alloy rims on his ZS scraping the ground as the low profile tyre side walls gave way, just about everyone winced at that. Dave, in the V8 engined MGC (top centre with the spare mounted on the boot) managed to knock over just about every cone on the course, not very fast but very entertaining! The Cobra gave a tyre smoking performance as well, unfortunately it didn't have the steering lock, or agility, to get around the course very quickly.
Hopefully the B will be roadworthy in time for next years event but somehow I doubt I'll get around the course as quickly in that as I did in the ZR. It was another well organised event by Sandra, Jenny & the team and I really enjoyed it.
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