Sawston Manor Park

Following some negotiation with the Lady of the Manor, I was given permission to begin construction of a new semi permanent raceway in the Manor grounds.

Fortunately the garage is quite well suited to the task already having some carpet and not being completely overrun with clutter. Before the weather turns (really) cold again I'm planning to get an insulation kit for the garage door and some seals for the edges. Hopefully this should make it reasonably temperate.

Construction began with a simple softwood frame that is roughly 15 foot by 3.



I then covered this in some cheap chipboard loft floorboarding which extended the width to 4 feet by adding a foot of overhang.



I then covered that with some green felt baize from my favourite online tat bazaar and added some chequered flags to cover up all the clutter that is now cunningly hidden beneath. As a bonus the garage now appears considerably tidier.



I edged it with some UPVC strips that were kindly donated by Mt LeeT. I also fixed some white foam core board to the the garage walls to make it look a bit nicer.



Then came the fun bit of designing the track. The preliminarily design has yet to reach the required standards for FIA certification mainly due to a lack of run off on several of the fast corners. I think some elevation at the back of the circuit will help create a bit more space for that. I would also like to squeeze in a pit lane somewhere if I can I find room.



For the moment though this track is pretty fun and I am enjoying just being able to pop out to the garage and get a few laps in when the mood takes me.







Current track plan.



Although it's possibly a bit too crammed in I find it quite a nice mix of corner speeds. The single R2 after the power base is kind of fun as you can steal a lot of time by charging through it on the ragged edge. When it goes wrong though you end up barrelling end over end down the next straight, which certainly has some safety implications...