Looking for ideas on the above for my son. To give you an idea of what he’s into, he loves his driving, has done a few advanced car control courses, been to the Nurburgring twice this year (once in one of the track hire cars and once in his own car – he told me about both of them after the event 😕 ) He drives a Focus ST3 Mountune.

Anyone got any ideas for a driving experience type thing up to £150 in London area? Or is my budget totally inadequate? He would be happy to use his own car if appropriate, but I was also thinking about the chance to drive something special for a few hours.

I’ve seen a few things on the internet, but no idea if they are good VFM or not

If you want a few hours of something exotic you’ll need to up that budget! What about a single seater? They tend to come up as being the most fun, I did an R8/DB9 driving thing, and whilst it was great, you’re neither racing, nor pushing the limits of the car, it’s quite staid.

Mercedes Benz World at brooklands? That budget should get you at the wheel of a C63 or similar for an hour on the handling track, skid pan etc. You actually drive for about 50 minutes of the hour and can get a dashcam video of the whole thing.

£150? Spend it on petrol in his own car to go drive round Scotland – there’s no road laws there…

Rachel

Thanks, Rachel – we live in Scotland, but he’s based in that there London

+1 for Brooklands Mercedes World AMG experience, alternatively I think there’s a Jaguar on at TRL Crowthorne, near Bracknell.

How about something that he won’t tend to do in his own car?

Westfield drifting

Some good ideas there, thanks.

I found this: http://www.silverstone.co.uk/experiences/single-seater-driving-experiences/overview which could tick some of the boxes, anyone got any experience of this one? Looking at the Experience Deal as opposed to the Thrill one.

Thruxton isn’t too far away, and some good pubs nearby for lunch afterwards!

The single seater experience is top quality. A bunch of my family done it this year with some other random guys. 12 drivers in total and I came 3rd.

I will be doing it again some time in 2015 because I enjoyed it so much. It’s a real buzz…think go – carts but 5x better. It blows the Mercedes AMG experience out the water (I’ve done this too).

BUY IT HE WILL LOVE IT.

I’d also recommend the single seater experience. Great laugh, you can go really fast (unlike the usual Ferrari/Aston experience where they slow you down), it’s like a very fast go-kart and certainly on mine I spent a fair amount of time on the track. We were caning it past all the supercars on the track like they were stood still.

Not as good as the Palmer sport day which was utterly awesome but that’s a lot more expensive.

Like njee, I did an R8 thing a few years ago. It was a lot of money for not a lot of thrill tbh. I hit 140mph on the straight, but that speed on a runway, in a car like that, was far more composed and controlled than 70mph on a motorway in the Peugeot 106 I had at the time! They make you slow right down for the corners too, which was no fun 😉

This one is good.

http://www.msvdrivinggifts.com/m3-master.aspx

I did this with my mate – we both had RS4s at the time. Amazing day, spent most of it learning how to steer again. Not cheap though.

http://www.donpalmer.co.uk/car-control.html

I also learnt how high the limits were on the car and that I’d be slightly foolish to go anywhere near them on the road.

Thanks, Guys. I think he’s done the Don Palmer one ( or one that sounded very similar in content).

I went for the Silverstone option. Fingers crossed!