Anyway, that’s the excuses mostly out of the way for two races – one Saturday, one Sunday – which each last 25 minutes plus a lap and have a rolling start.
Silverstone is a big circuit but when your last race here was in a Citroën C1, it feels shorter than normal. The race A110, with 266bhp and at 1135kg, is a nice fit for it on Michelin slicks that provide a fairly mega amount of lateral grip. Those, plus a proper sequential gearbox in place of the road car’s dual-clutch, plus all of the safety accoutrements, mean the A110 feels like a terrific race car. But there are elements of the road car’s character intact. It’s very agile, happy to move around as you lift and turn-in, though because of the limited-slip differential that is absent from the road car, it hooks up under acceleration more easily – albeit with more grip and traction than power now, with heavier steering that has bags of feel. With a less aggressive differential, there’s less initial hook-up under acceleration and a more pendulous swing into oversteer later.
With all cars making the same power and having the same aerodynamics, passing is hard, so there seems to be the time-honoured Clio Cup passing technique of sticking your car in the way of somebody else’s and letting them avoid you.
Getting to grips with it, I finish 12th out of 18 in race one and 13th in race two with all body panels intact, which, at £90,000 for the car and another £90k or so to race it for a year, is just as well. If I had the wherewithal, I’d be back.
Road to race
Race-spec Alpine A110s get a pretty thorough going over. The engine is internally the same as the road car’s 1.8-litre four-cylinder turbo but a new intake and exhaust lift its power by 18bhp. More importantly, the rear subframe is re-fabricated to accommodate a firewall between the cabin and the engine bay, to brace the area and to allow fitment of the sequential race box and pneumatic shifter. At the front there’s a new fuel tank, while all round the bespoke suspension with adjustable springs and dampers drops the car’s overall height by 62mm. Stripped inside, the cars could weigh as little as 1050kg, but the minimum race weight is 1125kg (the road car is 1098kg at its lightest).
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Hardcore Alpine A110S makes public debut at Tokyo