Top Gear-style track day goes full throttle to raise £14,000 for charities
Norfolk’s Flux Babes stormed RAF Marham last week – though luckily for Her Majesty’s Armed Forces it was all in the name of charity.
The Babes – who work for Adrian Flux Insurance Services, East Winch, near Kings Lynn – were taking part in the airbase’s Top Gear-style track weekend, raising funds for charity.
They helped the base raise a whopping £14,000 which brings this years total to over £31,000 – and organisers Corporal George Denman and Flight Lieutenant Pete Norman reckon they’ll easily beat £14,000 at the next track day, due in April 2009.
“The Babes were incredibly popular and there’s been all sorts of chat in the car club online forums about them since the weekend – if they can be here in April this will almost certainly help us break our record of £25,000 in one weekend!” says Cpl Denman.
Flux got involved in the Track Day as a sponsor, helping to cover the running costs of the event. “We try to get companies like Flux to cover all our costs, so that every penny we raise can go into Marham’s charity ‘pot’,” explains Cpl Denman. “Being a specialist car insurance broker, Flux were an obvious choice for the event. They made a very generous donation and the Flux Babes coming along was a very popular addition!”
The money raised is distributed to various charities. Past recipients include the RAF Benevolent Fund, the Make A Wish Foundation, the East of England Air Ambulance and a host of other local charities.
Drivers pay £70 a day, or £120 for the weekend, to drive their cars to the limit on the airfield’s ‘track’. Marham has been running the event for three years and it has been gaining in popularity. Says Cpl Denman: “The reason it’s so popular is because of the relaxed atmosphere. Plus, because we are an operational station the track is very high quality. Supercars can get up to 200mph easily on the straight, while the tricky twisty sections are a real challenge for any driver.”
Another reason for the popularity is that RAF Marham is a wide open airfield – and the ‘track’ design ensures that if a car was to spin there would be very few obstacles to hit. On a past event one of the Evos came off the track at 183mph but there was no damage apart from a bit of grass in the wheels.