It sounds like they’re grumbling, but we presume they must be happy: track days organiser trackdays.co.uk is reporting a surge in bookings from owners of high-performance cars… and it’s blaming the rise on a crackdown on lawbreakers on public roads.
Trackdays says the increase comes as “beleaguered Brits also battle increasing car journey times, rising fines and points. Exasperated car owners, including those with top performing supercars, facing a barrage of driving clamp downs and harsher driving penalties are increasingly turning to circuit driving in their own cars for fast thrills.”
New legislation is coming in this April to dish out tougher fines for speeders, and Trackdays reckons the bookings from first-timers it’s seeing – up by as much as 46 per cent – are a direct result. The guidelines for harsher punishments for the most serious of speeding offences included fines starting from 150% of a weekly income if caught doing 101mph on a motorway, rather than the previous level of 100%.
More recently, industry experts revealed that cases where motorists are given a fine and penalty points for a single offence has risen by a fifth over five years, indicating the punishments are getting harsher, even for minor offences. In fact, from 2011 to 2015, the number of speeding offences in England and Wales rose sharply from 851,000 to 958,00.
Dan Jones, operations manager at trackdays.co.uk told Avon Tuning: “We’re seeing more-and-more UK motorists taking their own cars circuit driving at tracks such as Silverstone and Brands Hatch for an adrenalin buzz in a safe environment away from the watchful eyes of the law.”
