Jitty - BR Racing 2007

www.brracing.co.uk

The Jitty is always keen to publicise positive images of young people, opportunities for them (especially those in Leicestershire), as well as giving them a "voice". In doing this we pursue any avenue available to us be it music, sport, art and so on.

We had met BR Racing very briefly at the "Autosport International" show at Birmingham's NEC earlier in the year, and both myself and Craig were interested and impressed by their "Youth Into Motorsport" initiative. The UK has produced some excellent talent in motorsport such as, Colin McRae, Matt Neal, Lewis Hamilton, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, James Hunt, Derek Bell..well the list is huge, but this record is only possible due to opportunities such as "Youth Into Motorsport".

In fact, legend, Colin McRae is on record as saying:

The RST junior academy is a great first step on the Rally ladder - I only wish it was available when I was a teenager"

In BR Racing's own words:

Our goal is to give everyone from the age of 10 upwards the opportunity to experience the enjoyment of motorsport, and hopefully progress through our programme pyramid. Whilst the emphasis at all times is to have "fun", in a safe environment with friendly staff to guide you along the way, we would hope to encourage new talent that is required to ensure the succesful future of motorsport in the UK. We also encourage more mature students through corporate days and rally experiences.

Lu-Luvvers Account

At first I didn’t know what to expect, I’d volunteered to do a review on motor-sport and here I was about to go rally driving.
When I got there I was surprised at how small the car looked, but I was assured it was a lot faster than it looked.

We were then given a safety talk about how the car worked, the safety precautions we should take, why we should take them and a little bit of insight into the workings and history of rallying. The talk itself was extremely interesting and helpful and I personally would not have had a clue of how to go about anything without it.

Once we were in the car itself we were given a quick briefing into how to drive the car by the instructor, he was very helpful, understanding and had a lot of patience, especially since I didn’t really listen to what he said the first time.

After we’d gone round the track and gotten to know it a bit we were allowed to push the car and to see where its limits, and indeed our own were, this was vital as we were later to try to do our ‘quick’ lap.

The most boring part of the day was definitely watching the other drivers have their go, as I was anxious to drive all of the time, it wouldn’t have been so bad had it not been for the cold.

The quick lap was easily the most fun part, I had never experienced such adrenaline and it took me about 10 minutes to stop violently shaking. We started out just getting to know the track again but a few laps and we were all ‘putting our foot down’ trying to get the fastest time we could.

Overall it was a very memorable and fun day, an experience I would very much like to try again in the future and would definitely recommend it to those wishing to learn, or just have a fun day out.