Three hours at Brands Hatch fry our brakes and kill our tyres
By The Prodigal Fool, published on 10 April 2010
We love our Audi S4. Love it. If getting four people and their luggage from A to B as quickly and safely as possible is your goal, then there are very few cars on the planet as capable as the little terrior from Ingolstadt.
And for the great majority of the time, that’s what our S4 gets asked to do.
But every now and then, we get an itch. The kind of itch you can’t scratch easily on the public roads (Well, not without eventually spending some time explaining yourself to a rather stuffy old Etonian magistrate…eh, but that story is for another post.) Yes, every now and then, you want to really push your car to its limits. And for that, only the track will do.
So last Thursday evening, we spent three hours blasting around Brands Hatch circuit in the S4. And what a blast it was.
The key to a good track day is keeping the number of cars down and ensuring that everyone is well briefed and capable. The organisers at Brands Hatch do this very well. It’s a slick operation that we thorougly recommend.
The circuit is short – no more than a mile would be our guess – but has some good corners and is enough of a challenge to keep you interested for a few hours.
And there really is nothing like being able to hurl your car around a track in safety, testing the limits of its – and, more importantly your – ability.
Ah, and since we’re talking about ability, we’ve got to tell you: The S4 is a phenomenal all round road car. On the track? Not so much.
On the road, our 4.2 litre V8, Quattro S4 Avant never feels less than supremely competent. Blisteringly fast, well-footed and with the ability to protect you against your own mistakes. When pushed to the limit in the way you can only ever do on the track though, the poor thing suffers greatly from understeer and weak brakes. Oh, and its weight doesn’t exactly help either. By the end of our three hour session, our P-Zeros looked more like slicks than road tyres.
But that, if you’ll excuse the pun, is par for the course when you’re racing. We enjoyed every minute of it and it was well worth the cost of some new tyres and brake pads. A track day at Brands Hatch comes highly recommended.
Brands Hatch Race Circuit, Fawkham, Longfield, Kent, DA2 8NG, Tel: +44 1474 872 331
Three hours at Brands Hatch fry our brakes and kill our tyres
We love our Audi S4. Love it. If getting four people and their luggage from A to B as quickly and safely as possible is your goal, then there are very few cars on the planet as capable as the little terrior from Ingolstadt. And for the great majority of the time, that’s what our [...]
4 Responses to “Three hours at Brands Hatch fry our brakes and kill our tyres”
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It is short – no doubt about it – but for a novice like me, it’s well-run and challenging enough.
No crashes to speak of…oh, wait, there was one: some jumped up little twerp in a Caterham who moments earlier had tried to undertake me – a strictly forbidden move because of the safety risks – went hurtling into the sand pit on one of the tighter corners. He apparently thought the laws of physics didn’t apply to him and his go-kart. He was mistaken.
And I guess that was my most satisfying moment, as I drove by smiling to myself.
My worst? When I very, very nearly did the same just one lap later!
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Love the new format!
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Thanks, Speedmaster. We’re pretty talentless around here – the clever people are the theme designers at WordPress – but I certainly like the result too.
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Straight-Six
12 April 2010
Sounds like it would have been a blast…in another car! Friendly needling aside, I have yet to savour Brand’s Hatch but worry that a mere mile is a bit too small.
Anways, tell us more! Any offs or crashes? Your most satisfying moment? Your worst? Let us feel the heat of those wilting brakes, my man…