Noisy, noisy, noisy. We went to the races at Snetterton today, setting out under cloudy skies, wrapped up tight in coats that we had to take off before lunch. By the end of the day we were burnt and stinging, such are the vagaries of a British summer.

It was a meet of the British F3/GT championships, about which I knew nothing before we went, but the best races of them all had to be the Volkswagen Racing Cup, which is a wide field of regular cars racing against each other, with a couple of vans thrown in for good measure. This is classed as a support race, as it’s not the main focus of the day, but it is certainly more entertaining than the F3 cars, which buzz around the track like wannabe Formula 1 cars.

Despite the wide variations in the specs of each car, though, some clever maths lets all the entrants in the VW Cup compete on a level playing field by balancing power and weight ratios.

Yet the van - my favourite as the visual underdog - performed poorly throughout, and put out great clouds of black smoke, like it was trying to put off its pursuers in some kind of film car chase.

For anyone who knows little or nothing about car racing, though - me, for example - it’s the perfect introduction to the sport as you get to watch all manner of races in close succession.

A kind of car racing tasting menu.

It doesn’t help you write more informed blog posts about it, though, so you might like to try this one instead.

Technorati Tags:
snetterton, volkswagen, vw

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