I was going to put this in the what are you doing this weekend topic, but I wanted to ramble about it more, in the manner of the alien sports topic.
The second set of piccies above are from a sport officially known as "Autograss", more commonly as "Grassin'".
There isn't much grass involved in a routinely used track, but it is all on genuine farmland, with a lot of the posts/fences removed to let the sheeps back in during winter. Each year at the National Championships, a genuinely "grass" track is created new, so nobody has a local advantage.
There are 10 classes in Autograss, the first seven are "saloon" classes, the top three "specials". Class 1 is for little standard Minis, Citroen AXs and Cheekychentos. They are not very fast. Class 10 is for tube framed things with either supercharged V8 engines, or like the car Y188 in the photo set, a pair of superbike engines bolted together.
Why is Autograss fun?
They do standing starts, not rolling ones. The race track is a 1/4 mile oval, but every race starts with a drag race to the first corner. In the slower saloon classes, they start the cars off 10 abreast. So you have 10 Vauxhall Novas all aiming for the same piece of track.
For most of the faster classes, the fun comes from the engineering needed to win. Getting to the first corner first is most important, so cars often have up to 80% rear weight bias. This makes them rubbish at going round corners, which they then have to do for another five laps. So the fastest way, is sideways. Which is fun! and exciting!
Soo... If the weather stays good (too much rain and they won't run because it would wreck the track) I'll be going to the North of England Championships on Monday. In the past, this event has seen over 600 cars competing during the event. That's a lot of racing.