Clio Cup Car Joins Dubai Autodrome Experience
Race-ready pocket rocket to thrill amateur racers from October 1
By Imthishan Giado
Interesting in experiencing the thrill of racing? The Race School at Dubai Autodrome has always been the place to go and now there’s one more feather in its cap with the addition of a new Clio Cup car to its list of driving experiences. The full-on stripped-out Clio Cup car will be the first taste for many amateur drivers of the asphalt experience and is nigh-on identical to the cars currently being raced in the UAE Clio Cup, which privateers can compete in for a fee.
One seriously bare cockpit
Drivers can sign up at cost of AED1,095 for two hours of instruction which include a 20-minute on-track session. This is no ordinary Clio; it’s not built on the regular factory line but at the RenaultSport factory. As such there’s no interior, merely a bare shell with a pair of race seats fitted. The car weighs a shade over 930kg and has a 205bhp engined mated to a proper sequential box which you pull and push to upshift and downshift – no H-pattern here. Since it’s built to race spec, the suspension is rock hard and there’s no traction control, stability control or ABS to save you in the event of an error. And then they asked me to drive one. Ulp.
The car I drove had slick tyres, though the regular Experience cars will have semi-slicks. What this means that for the first lap or two there’s no grip at all until the tyres get warmed up. Being a race seat you sit very low with the only adjustments being fore and aft – no gangsta lean here! Start it up and the completely unsilenced Renault 2.0-litre sounds like a angry hornet reverberating around the bare metal cockpit. Ahead of you is the barest of instrumentation: a digital S2000-style speedometer, a gear indicator and that’s about it.
Pull on the hefty sequential stick into first, give it plenty of throttle – the clutch engages close to the floor – and away we go out on the Autodrome Club circuit for a quick blast to see how the car behaves. As mentioned earlier, the first lap is a slow one to warm up the tyres and it gives me a chance to sample the car’s relatively benign handling. Compared to a road going Clio, the Cup car’s response are sharp enough to draw blood with quick steering and bullet-fast gear gearchanges. Without ABS you have to be really careful with the brakes – stand on them mid corner and the shift in weight distribution will make the car rotate very easily.
But despite the warnings of our instructors, the Cup car is good fun and most importantly, safe car to drive hard on the track. Just 205bhp of power, wafer thin torque levels and a high 7000rpm rev limit (indicated F1-style via lights on your instrument panel) means there isn’t enough to get you in trouble but it is a quick car on the circuit as long as you keep the momentum up and treat it with respect. There’s so much grip from the front end that understeer is practically absent and the brakes are firm and feelsome. Some quirks of the dogleg sequential box – when changing down, you have to clutch in each time you shift gears. Oh, and don’t forget to put it in first when you stop, otherwise you’ll never get it going again…
For AED1095, the Clio Cup experience is good value and great fun. It’s officially available from October 1.
