Superbike Magazine, January 2003 . . .
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The Blade and I have been busy this month.
The big news was the launch of a new kind of foreign track
day from Track Sense. Based around the concept of a package
holiday you can make one phone call to Track Sense which
arrange the track time, hotel, flights, coach transfers,
meals and transport for your bike. This is the first time
such a complete service has been available and it’s
all the better for including 2 days on the brilliant Almeria
Circuit and 3 nights in a four-star hotel. Flight times
mean you get half a day in the coastal resort either end,
and it’s all for the startling price of just £599
per rider. Every single person I spoke to said they had
a great time and thought it was outstanding value for money.
And, because not everyone relishes four days away from the
trouble and strife, you can take the missus too. |
Extras include bike hire and a bike livery where you have leave
bike in Spain between track days. It will be serviced free &
checked over in readiness for your next visit for £60 per
month. I had a fantastic time and recommend Track Sense for their
professionalism and thoroughness.
Jamie Wilkins, Superbike Magazine
Revved Up Column, The Sunday People, 10 November 2002
HOT TRACK HIGHLIGHTS DREAM TRIP . . .
With the sun beating down on two-and-a-half miles of perfect
black tarmac, your motorcycle screaming into the read-line and
that you can go as fast as you can completely within the law –
biking doesn’t get any better than this.
Yet this super two-day track attack is not an impossible dream.
For the clever lads at Track Sense have realised that many bikers
are fed up with spending around £200 for a day riding round
a rain-lashed British circuit.Instead, they send out your bike
by transporter before you fly to a plush four-star Spanish hotel
on the Costa del Sol.After an evening meeting your fellow playmates
and an excellent buffet breakfast, the coach whisks you off to
the truly superb Circuit do Almeria track.
During a short briefing, riders are separated into novice, intermediate
and expert classes before the first session begins, heralding
seven unbroken hours of speed. Race instructors on Pirelli-shod
TT600s from the European Superbike School will provide help and
guidance. Then it’s down to you.
You may think that you’re fast but there is always someone
quicker (or slower) and lots of riders to spend the day testing
your skills against. We were allowed 20 minutes of track time
per hour and as the temperatures soared into the high 70s, despite
my lightweight Akito leathers, that’s enough bike wrestling
for me.
One of the biggest joys of the Track Sense experience are the
people who share the trip. Housewives and managing directors,
van drivers and property developers all come together for the
ultimate biking days out.
What price motorcycle heaven? Just £599 for a four-day trip
including bike transport, flights, four-star beachside hotel,
connecting transport, and even 3 meals a day. Non-riding partners
get to go along for only £299. Pound-per-mile-per-hour there’s
no biking experience to match it.
Revved Up Rating 9/10.
Paul Myles, Sunday People Sports Desk.
Tried & Tested, Ride Magazine, Issue 91
£599 TWO DAYS ON TRACK, SOUTHERN SPAIN . . .
Fancy a track day with (almost) guaranteed sun? Track Sense
will transport your bike to southern Spain, fly you out, and let
you go large on a top circuit. Everyone can relax; the weather
is almost always dry.
The Sunday or Monday before your trip, drop your bike off at the
transport depot, and the following Friday you depart for Malaga
Airport. Coach transfers are laid on with stops for refreshments
half way. The day after you arrive sees you head out onto the
track.
There’s a sensible (and compulsory) briefing, and your track
time starts at 10am. Riders are split into 3 groups according
to experience and track sessions are 20 minutes long. Sessions
continue until 5pm, you take your lunch between sessions, as they
don’t stop.
Free tuition is available if you wish to brush up on your skills
or racing lines. An excellent mechanic is there to sort out any
problems, change tyres etc., and comes equipped with a few common
spares, and a few shite jokes. Bikes are fully insured during
transit, loading and unloading, and insured for theft while parked
overnight in a locked pit garage.
The beachfront hotel also provides evening meals, and lunch is
provided at the circuit.
Verdict: First rate. The best organised and therefore one of
the safest track days I’ve ever been on. Sunday drop off/collection
times mean no extra time off work (great), and Spain means sunny
weather.
For £599 we got: 2 days track time on a sunny Spanish circuit,
3 nights half-board in a 4 star beachfront hotel, flights &
transfers, bike transport and lunch at the track.
Olly Crick, Ride Magazine
Financial Times ‘How To Spend It’ Magazine, 11 January
2003 . . .
It’s 10.20 on a winter’s morning and Eddie Coombes
is buzzing. He’s just pulled over after howling along a
perfect stretch of sun-soaked black-top at 150mph on his Ducati
996 Superbike, and the knees of his leathers are scuffed to hell
because he’s just been taking bends like a grand prix star.
No prizes for guessing he’s not on home territory in the
UK, where speed cameras, overcrowded roads and the seemingly endless
cold, wet winters make opportunities for legally letting rip few
and far between.
In fact Eddie and other bike mad professionals couldn’t
care less of its lashing it down back in Britain, because for
the next 2 days they have exclusive use of Spain’s Circuito
de Almeria, the driest racetrack in Europe. Owners of exotic bikes
are guaranteed 2 days of sun during which they can lap the circuit
to their hearts content as fast or as slowly as they wish.
It is the Spanish holiday every motorcycle fan has been waiting
for. Track Sense arranges the transport of your bike and kit,
books you into a 4 star hotel for 3 nights, organises your flights,
rents the track, employs a pit lane mechanic, and ensures that
ambulance crews are on hand in case the worst comes to the worst.
All you have to do is turn up and ride.
Coombes, the 31-year-old director of an Internet security company,
has by now pulled his helmet off and is coming down from the high
of completing 10 laps of the 2.5-mile track. “The UK racetracks
are too crowded and you’re always worried about the weather,
and on the road you can only use a fraction of a modern sports
bike’s performance,” he says. "The people you
meet here are more friendly and have less of a serious attitude,
there’s no pressure to rude better or faster than anyone
else – we are not professional racers, we just want to feel
like we are.”
“The expense? I don’t even think about that because,
to me, this is the best value entertainment there is.”
Each day’s riding begins at 10am and lasts until 5pm. Riders
choose the group they are most comfortable in – fast, medium,
or slow – and go out for one 20 minute session every hour.
The first few laps are taken nice slowly, everyone following the
instructors while we warm our tyres and learn the basic layout
of the circuit – after that, it’s a case of every
man, or woman, for themselves.
It turns into 2 days of endless thrills, and it has to be said,
a few spills, but damage to the bikes and the riders who end up
sliding into the gravel is mainly superficial, and the crashes
themselves are all enthusiastically reconstructed around the dinner
table the following evening.
The worst part, of course, is having to return to wet and grid
locked Britain.
Simon De Burton, The Financial Times
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