2015 Cholmondeley Pageant of Power preview and track guide

The Astra starts on a button to a gravelly 2000rpm or so idle. It has a foot-operated clutch, a firm, short-travel brake pedal and a long throttle. Engine response is fast but the clutch manageable, if heavy, and getting off the line is simple enough.

From that point on, you can forget the left pedal and pull shifts through on the stiff, long gearlever. Back takes you up with a pop as the ignition cuts for a moment. Down – while you’re firmly on the unassisted brakes – would unsettle the car if you were really on it (I’m not). Racers get most of their braking done first, then punch down the gearbox just as they arrive at the corner, so they can slow as smoothly, and therefore quickly, as possible.

The DTM Astra shares a trait I’ve found in a few racing cars: steering that’s lighter than you’d imagine. It’s exceptionally direct and accurate, mind, with a little feel that I guess would increase massively with higher speeds and downforce. There’s nowhere on the Cholmondeley course that allows that, but even being careful you’ll find yourself going at quite a lick on the straights.

The course is fun. After two fast straights – the second punctuated by a chicane – there are tricky cambers, elevation changes and even a yump. It’d make a good sprint course away from the pageant.

The beauty of it is that, after the finish, cars and bikes roll back to the paddock without having to retrace their steps, so competitors get three runs per day on Saturday and Sunday, after practice on Friday. With displays on water and in the air, too, the pageant is a decent spectacle. I recommend it.

Castle king Robbie Kerr's track guide

Robbie Kerr set the course record at last year’s Cholmondeley Pageant of Power in a Radical SR8 and is back this year for another go. But it’s not easy. “You have to be pinpoint accurate the whole way around,” he says, “because it’s so tight.”

From the start, he’s flat out across the bridge (“You’re trying to get square on to it, but you can’t because it’s so narrow”) before continuing at full chat down a long, curved avenue. “The camber pulls you left and right a bit, so you’re busy,” says Kerr. He’ll exceed 140mph here.

Under braking, he keeps the car as far left as possible, sacrificing a bit of speed into the corner to get a clean exit.

Between the first-gear lefts of T1 and T2, Kerr finds time for a squeeze of throttle before “getting a clean, late apex to get a good exit”, although “a lot of other competitors bring dirt onto the track” at the exit of T2.

Then you’d get a heck of a speed up were it not for a chicane halfway along the next straight. “Last year they made it tighter,” says Kerr, “but you never quite know how tight it is because other competitors could have given the bales a whack. The risk is braking too early and not getting enough weight onto the nose to help the car turn.”

From there, the course gets more technical still. Chapel is an awkward, off-camber left over a crest. “You go so tight to the left that you scrub the grass on the way up the slope,” says Kerr. “As you come up the rise, you can get good turn-in, but it’s too early. You have to wait, be a bit patient.”

Kerr turns in later, using what looks like a massively imposing tree as an apex. Run wide after it and you’re in trouble, because “it’s very slippery by the barrier”.

On our track walk, we can see why: it’s where a year’s worth of sap and mulch congregates and there’s little opportunity for the surface to be scrubbed clean over the weekend.

“Then you’re trying to straighten the next kink,” says Kerr, adding that the front of the Radical scrapes the road on its way through. “The right-hand tyres are warm now,” he says, “but the front left isn’t.” This makes braking an issue.

Then it’s over a table top (“where the rear steps out”), into and out of a first-gear left and flat out, airborne, over the bridge to finish.

Event details 

The event this year is running under the theme of 'power on land, water and in the air'.