Gym What?
Ask any Irish person about Gymkhana and you won’t get much of a response. We have Autotesting, a very similar type of motorsport that has a lot of history here and one that the Irish have always been pretty good at.
Running alongside a recent drift practice event was a round of the national Autotesting championship and I took some pics to show you drift people fwd can be fun too !
The most popular car used in Autotesting has always been the original mini.There are the tin tops, the class with stock looking bodies, and the specials.These specials are custom built with the minimum body requirements to keep weight down.
One of the first cars I ever drove was a mini special belonging to a friend of my dad.He used to compete at the highest level and let me lose in his car when I was only driving a few months.They are actually pretty quick and so much fun to fire around, gave me my first excuse to use the hand brake !
The idea is very simple, drive through a marked course as instructed in the quickest time possible and you win.In reality, simply remembering the course is a challenge since it is only marked out by poles and chalk lines, some of which must driven over and some reversed around.
Watching a bunch of guys run around poles in various directions trying to memorize the course is almost entertaining enough but when they get going in the cars their precision and control is second to none.
Unfortunately it was really wet and windy day for this event which took a lot of the speed out of the tests.This vid will give you some idea of how it all works, there are usually 4 or 5 different courses run twice or three times.
