A great Italian day at Circuit Park Zandvoort.
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Every year at Circuit Park Zandvoort there
is the Italia a Zandvoort event. Some weeks ago I arranged a couple free tickets, including the possibility of
driving my own car on the race track during the Abarth session. It was obviously no hard decision, as it would
be great to drive on a real (ex-Formula 1) circuit. Besides that there are many other things to experience,
of course everything with a special Italian touch!
On this Sunday morning my father and I left home early. Around nine o'clock we arrived at the circuit. After
some checks of our tickets I could park my Abarth Grande Punto alongside the others in the pitlane. In the
meantime a nice breakfast was waiting for us. I registered myself for the Abarth session (signing papers for
driving on my own risk). The session would take place from 10:10 until 10:40. After some waiting the light at
the end of the pitlane turned green. Go!
First we entered the track driving behind each other. After a couple laps the speed went further up. In the
first couple of laps it was important to learn the circuit lay-out and to heat up the tires and the brakes. It
is quite a kick to get to the Tarzan corner with a speed of 170 km/h. Then full on the brakes and through the
corner. The corner is quite steep actually! Then you shift up some gears towards the Gerlach corner. Now you
enter the Hugenholtz corner, where it is difficult to wait to push the gas pedal again. From this corner you
drive uphill to the Hunserug combination. From there you enter the fully blind Rob Slotemaker corner with a
speed of more than 120 km/h. It is a tricky corner, because if you are a little too far of the ideal racing
line, there is quite a chance of crashing into the barriers. The next corner is the quick Scheivlak. It is hard
to feel how hard you can go through this corner. Then follow two tight corners, the Masters corner and the
Wilgenhaege corner. Because of the wide exit of both corners you can drive several lines here, so you had to
search for the quickest one. After these two corners follows the slow Kinzo corner, where the exit speed is
very important for the second straight of the circuit. The speeds goes up to over 120 km/h again, after which
you have to brake hard for the Audi S corner combination. You have to give up the first part of the corner to
get a good exit of the second part of the corner. From the slowest part of the circuit you drive towards the
Kumho corner, a quick but tight corner. Then follows the quick follow-through, the Arie Luyendijk corner. This
corner has a tricky part in it where you have to lift a little while. On full speed you cannot make it through
this corner safely. Now you are back on the main straight with the start-finish line.
During the thirty minuts of racing on the Zandvoort circuit I had a Garmin eTrex GPS with me to log my
positions. I analysed this data on my computer. The quickest laptime was 2:36. In
this Overview you can see
exactly how hard I drove at the different places on the circuit. The plot is a combination of 9 quick laps. The
speed was at all places over 50 km/h. The top speed was 168 km/h according to the GPS (the telemetry of my car
registrated 164 km/h, whereas my speedometer showed just over 170 km/h). The average speed of the quickest lap
was 100 km/h. In the end I drove 11 laps (1 outlap, 9 quick laps and 1 inlap). These laps count a total of
approximately 47 kilometers. In half an hour I consumed kinda a half tank of fuel. This is an average fuel
consumption of 1:2!
After parking my Abarth somewhere near the circuit I went to the rest of my family. There were many more
things to see on the circuit. There were free driving sessions for classic and modern Italian cars, there were
demonstrations with the Dakar trucks of De Rooy, the Maserati MC12, old Abarths, an old Ferrari Formule 1 car
from the fifties. There was also a session with Ferraris from members of the Ferrari club. The weather today
was just perfect, quite warm and sunny! At the infield area you could find several stands where they sell
nice Italian goodies. Some garages in the pitlane exhibitioned the beautiful Abarths, Fiats, Alfa Romeos and
Lancias. At the main podium there were some performances of the X-Factor finalists. Further it is obviously
nice to walk at the parking places along the beautiful Italian cars of all the visitors. In
the Photo album you can see a selection of
all photos from this great day. Five of these photos were taken by the professional photographer Serge Duursma
of RacePhoto.nl.
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