Toyota Sprint Series

[janey]

In September 2007 the very 1st sprint day was set up with the help of Javelin Trackdays and on 20th October took place on the purpose built track at Barkston Heath Airfield near Grantham in Lincolnshire. This ‘taster’ sprint was a great success and the full series was put into place.

2008:

The first round was held at Waterbeach MOD base on 16th March for many it was their 1st time competing in such an event, and despite the weather which couldn’t have been any worse with rain & high winds all day a good time was had by all.

The 2nd round was a Barkston Heath on 4th May a completely different track type to Waterbeach,

with a purpose built twisty tarmac track.

Round 3 on 14th June was the 1st visit to Teeside Autodrome, a challenging track with a mixture of adverse cambers, tight turns, blind corners, hills & sweeping bends

The 4th round on 17th August was held at Woodbridge, another RAF base this track has many more long straights along the runways and crossovers from hard to loose surfaces with a few tight turns thrown in for good measure making it a challenge for everyone’s driving skills especially in the rain

The 5th and final round of the year saw everyone back at Teeside on 25th October, though this time although practice & sighting laps were in the light the actual competition runs didn’t go ahead until it was dark making the track even more of a challenge than it had been before with the need to see as best as possible one clever competitor even fixed a rally style multi light pod the front of his car.

2009:

The 29th March saw the introduction of Rockingham Speedway to the TSS tracks for the 1st round which was a chance for all the drivers to see how it felt to be competing on a fully purpose built full size track and facing the famous ‘nascar’ wall

Round 2 on 3rd May and we were back to Barkston Heath, the narrow & twisty venue soon became familiar to all though adding to the usual challenge was the rain and a wet track making things even more interesting than usual

The 3rd round on 28th June was back at Woodbridge though with a different shorter track set up of 1.8m but still consisting of the challenging key elements from before

Round 4 was back at a familiar Barkston Heath but with an added challenge on 2nd August. Sprinters were to drive the track anti-clockwise, on previous rounds clockwise had been the way and now due to the twists and turns it was a case of learning it all over again.

Round 5 saw the revisit of Woodbridge though this time the track was over 2 miles long .

The 6th and final round of the year was another dark evening at Teeside, many canny competitors had upgraded their lights or installed additional spot lights after being caught out the year before.