Right guys and gals – here is an early heads up on an event that would be foolish to miss. As most of you know, I run my MGA in a tolerably spirited fashion on the annual pilgrimage to Le Mans and at other venues. I also used to organise an annual rally for the MG Car Club, where we used the main runway at a couple of RAF airfields as part of the event. I am now stationed at RAF Marham (near Kings Lynn in Norfolk) and have the go ahead to organise a motoring event or two there, with a view to raising funds for some of the good and worthy causes that Marham supports.
It would be an ideal venue for a track day.
The airfield's main runway is one and a half miles long and over 75 metres wide - dead straight, smooth tarmac - enormous fun driving it and plenty of distance to not only achieve terminal velocity, but to hold it there for as long as the sphincter factor allows as the end of the runway looms!
The aircraft taxiway, which connects the two ends of the runway, is a similar width and surface, and provides a further two and a half miles of uninterrupted tarmac, providing a proper circuit of 4 miles in all.
As a whole, the shape is roughly triangular, but with the width of the runway and taxiway there is ample scope to create everything from sweeping curves to chicanes.
As it is an operational airfield, Marham cannot be used during a weekday. However at the weekend, exclusive use of the runway and taxiway is the ticket. The event could be run on a Saturday from, say, 1000 until 1600, or on a Sunday, with sessions of around 30 minutes to cater for different experience levels. Alternatively, if there was enough interest, it could be run over both days of the same weekend. In addition, all the necessary facilities, such as toilets, catering, drinks, marshalling and medical cover to support an event would be available. There are also a couple of other possibilities, with the Station’s kart club opening its doors to visitors (shades of Karting Nord..…), and the chance to visit some of the Station’s aircraft facilities as part of the event. The event would be organised and run properly, with appropriate public liability cover for participants.
I have interest from the Ferrari Owners Club, the TVR Owners Club and the MG Car Club, but I know that there is a whole load of interesting machinery out there belonging to CA members – and it would be wholly wrong of me not to offer the opportunity to fellow members to gather together and exercise our steeds, classic or modern, in the way that was intended when they were built.
I am sure that an outstanding track day/weekend could be provided, probably for as little as £70 per car or less – incredibly good value when you compare that to commercial track day costs. I envisage everyone getting a good chunk of the time available – preferably as much as they want and the machinery will stand, but that will depend on how many cars there are in total. No money needed yet, but what I really need to know now before I commit my time/effort, proceed with any further planning/organising, and provide more detail for the event is quite simply how many CA’ers would be sufficiently interested to go beyond the “great idea” response and actually participate? Likely timing of the event would be a weekend in September this year, so it is well after Le Mans and summer holidays, and sufficiently good value not to attract any approbation from ‘er indoors.
Please post responses as part of this thread, but please keep the posts on topic and relatively brief at this stage. Naturally, I am happy to answer questions about the event itself on this thread, but Smokie will be moderating this one so that we don’t have to pick through loads of posts exchanging thoughts/humour etc on the subject – of course the forum wouldn’t be the same without that, so we would be grateful if you wish to exchange thoughts indirectly related to the subject, then please start another thread to provide the entertainment. All the best for now,
MG Mark
