The sneak peak at the new Baku Street circuit on the Base Performance GT Simulator last week gave me to opportunity to see Darren Turner’s company’s new HQ for the first time.
There has been quite a change since I visited Base last, and not just with the location.
The new building in rural Oxfordshire, within 5 minutes of the M40 is ideally placed in the UK Motorsport ‘valley’ and after a brief sojourn in a comfortable waiting area there’s a much larger simulator facility on tap that now features two independently operable simulator rooms, one for single seaters, and the other for the tin-tops.
And it’s the latter that has seen huge growth in recent months:
“With the growth in GT racing the GT sim has been in big demand,” said Darren, “The beauty of this simulator (based on the original GTE class Aston Martin Vantage test mule chassis) is that there are two seats, so a gentleman driver can be ‘live’ coached by his pro or by a driver trainer.”
Clients are free to bring in their own engineers too.
As before the Base simulator is a static unit, with a 180 degree wrap around screen and full data collection.
Clients are free to bring in their own engineers too or there is engineering support on tap too with resident engineer and ex United Autosports wizard (well which would be rude!) Ella Barrington working with ex-charge Danny Watts during the Baku test.
“This sim has been in use almost every day in recent months, we’ve had most of the British GT grid through here and a fair number of Blancpain and even WEC guys too, it can bring them up to speed on circuit knowledge and racing lines very fat, and its cheaper and less weather dependent than circuit hire too!”
Indeed so, and after seeing Danny Watts find his way around Baku it’s pretty apparent that progress can be made very rapidly indeed, without the risk of damaging a car whilst finding the limits!
You can find out more about rates and availability at http://www.baseperformance.net
