ScoobyNet.com - Subaru Enthusiast Forum - Our day with Formula Woman @ Top Gear

Having not had a great deal of sleep on the Friday night (dire accomodation), we arrived at Dunsfold airfield on Saturday morning to find the Formula Woman unit open and providing welcome cups of tea and coffee to all and sundry.

The ladies were busy immediately filling out forms and meeting each other, whilst I and a few of the chaps got to inspect the vehicles in the unit. These included two Honda Civic Type-R's, a Subaru Impreza Type 4 Sti (year or two older than ours), a Caterham 7, and a 3 Series BMW Compact which may be the Formula Woman Brit-Car (BTCC style racing). The BMW was fully race prepared and looked fantastic.

While us chaps talked about cars and circuits, the ladies were organised into 4 groups of 5 and briefed on their itinerary for the day. This would consist of a Skid Pan session, Heel & Toe instruction, cornering techniques and finally fast passenger rides in the Caterham.

Karen's group would do the events in the order mentioned above. As we drove out onto the airfield to make our way in convoy to the 'skid pan', we could see various other little groups of people and cars, and saw a group near what we thought was the area used by Top Gear...

Karen's group performed the skid pan exercises in an old BMW 5 series Auto. It was a little disappointing, as we imagined they would be shown what to do in the event of a skid or spin. However, they were merely required to drive fast and get a feel for the wet conditions and gain confidence. No skids or spins resulted! :rolleyes:

Whilst that was going on, nearby another grup were in the Impreza driving up and down the runway. When Karen's group swapped onto this we discovered it was the car used to illustrate Heel & Toeing. All the girls seemed to pretty much get it quite quickly! (Some of them seemed to love the Impreza). :)

A break for lunch was then followed by fast laps in the Honda's around a part of the course used by the Top Gear team. Including the corner where the surface has the lines painted on it for a chicane followed by a sweeping right hander. Karen had initial difficulty thanks to the amount of steering lock required to get around a different corner. Although she know her '10 to 2' technique, she'd never been shown how to catch another armful of lock when her arms were fully crossed! Although the instructor was trying to explain, it was difficult on the move. Next time, Karen got her to explain before they set off and it clicked. Everything became natural and she absolutely blitzed around the circuit. Although they were in Type-R Honda's, they'd been instructed not to use more than 5 thousand RPM! Guess who kept getting told off for using more than that? ;)

All the ladies were collected together for their final ride in the Caterham which used the same circuit as the Hondas. To say it was a little bit quicker would be the understatement of the century! Karen thoroughly enjoyed it as they drifted around the sweeping right hander, through the chicane, down the straight...Everywhere! :D

After a de-brief, the ladies were invited to organise further one-to-one tuition days. It looks like Karen will be doing Donnington and Castle Coombe in early May. This tuition will be done driving the Formula Woman Caterhams, so she's really going to learn a hell of a lot. Jealous, moi?!? :mad:

Whilst all this was going on, the Top Gear crew were beating the living snot out of two Vauxhall (ne Holden) Monaro VXR's. Standing starts, doughnouts, skids, spinds, etc. We did notice someone doing a piece to camera from within one of the cars, but it didn't look like Clarkson, May or Hammond. Wonder if they had a guest driver or have a new presenter. Anyway, keep any eye out for footage of a Silver Monaro VXR on a lovely sunny day - See if you can spot any Hondas in the background.

BTW - From the 10 ladies I saw driving on the day, there were no numpties and the quality of skill was very high. Most of the girls had a real interest in cars and driving. One of them I chatted to was a BMW mechanic, and another was a BMW product manager for the Z4!!! :eek:

Cheers,
Squizz
:)