Declan Hicks In Depth On Round 4

Cadwell Park was never going to be an easy circuit. It’s tight, blind crested and twisty with almost no run-off. Mistakes were going to be punished with at least a few weeks work in the bodyshop if you got it wrong. Still, it was going to be a challenge and it looked like a potentially interesting succession of bends to contend with… especially considering this my was my first time drifting at the circuit with a car that’s wider on opposite lock than the circuit is wide in several places.

However upon arrival on the Saturday for practice everything became clearer. All those thoughts of potential hard labour were banished once I’d driven the section we were going to be using. It was awesome, so much fun to drive and pretty much flat out in 3rd all the way. First corner is a cambered right hander, then a transition through the dipping left, a right hander over the blind crest, cresting left with a lift at the end and a downchange mid drift into  2nd for the last 90 degree bend. I’d forgotten about the “getting it all wrong worries” and cracked on with nailing some blinding runs. True, there is no for room for error, on my 3rd run I left a faint mark on the rear bumper’s corner when I literally kissed the Armco. I didn’t even know I’d done it until the marshall who normally stands a foot the other side came up to me later and said “that was close!”. Note to self: Remember the car is nearly 16ft long for the future!

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