FEATURE
Lesley Knowles
Club : Southern Car Club Event : AutoSOLO
“ I don ’ t have any family background in motorsport , but my dad ’ s always been into cars , and he has a Volvo P1800 classic car that he takes to shows . I ’ ve always enjoyed driving and I ’ ve done lots of different driving experiences , but I never thought I ’ d be able to do more because of the need for a car and all the equipment . I just thought it was really , really expensive .
“ About a year and a half ago , I did a Rally experience at Brands Hatch and the instructor suggested I do some AutoSOLOs . I had no idea what they were , but when he explained you could do them in your everyday road car it got me interested . He told me to go onto the StreetCar site and put in my details and Southern Car Club called me about 48 hours later !
“ I ’ ve got a Ford Focus RS , which they said was a suitable car , so they suggested I go to an event and shadow someone as passenger first , to see how I liked it . I joined up and went to an event in Oxford and the atmosphere was great . Everyone was helping each other out and if they missed a cone or went the wrong way , they would just laugh about it
“ I signed up for an event soon after and watched a few videos to understand a bit more about it , then I went to a Club night where they showed us maps of the courses they had laid out in previous years . I was still really nervous before I did it , but you soon find out that you ’ re braver than you think . It ’ s a mind over matter kind of thing .
“ When you turn up , as a beginner , it ’ s just a sea of cones , but we walked the course about 10 times and because a lot of us were newbies , they put numbers on every cone , so we knew where we had to turn . We were also told that you need to look further ahead than you think , not just at the next cone that ’ s coming up .
“ You would think it ’ s slower paced than an experience day , but you ’ re still going at speed and there ’ s lots of adrenaline . Once you get that first run out the way , all of a sudden , this haze disappears and you think ‘ well , what were you worrying
Lesley enjoys her AutoSOLO and has already been back for more
about ?’ As soon as that happened , I was buzzing , and I don ’ t think I stopped smiling for the rest of the day !
“ Lots of people worry about being watched and making mistakes , but people aren ’ t really looking at that . Even the people who go really fast and get round in half the time that I was getting round in , they still take out cones , they spin , and no one ’ s really looking at them so why would they look at you ?
“ All our first runs were quite slow , but once your confidence builds the speed starts to come . You find out how well your car handles and what it can do ; how tight you can take a corner ; what speed you can go . It gives you the chance to get the car on a limit in a safe place , because you can ’ t do that on normal roads . It was absolutely great fun .
“ Once we finished , I discovered there was another event two weeks later , run by a different Club , and a few of us went back for that one too . We met a whole other load of new people , and the buzz just carried on . I ’ ve done four more since then and I ’ m now very tempted to do a 12-Car Rally , and maybe a Targa Rally .
“ The beauty of StreetCar is there ’ s a lot of fun to be had – and you can push your own car to see what it can really do without damaging it . We had a few new members this year who all wanted to get into it and it ’ s nice to see these newer faces coming in . I ’ d totally recommend it . You might hit a few cones , but that ’ s not the end of the world !”
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Revolution - March 2025