I was wondering what to do with the kids this Saturday and seeing as the weather was fine, an afternoon out in the country air seemed like a good idea. I checked out the usual What's On Guides but nothing really took my fancy, so i had a quick look on http://www.motorsportireland.com to see if there was anything happening locally. We were in luck, there was a Sporting Trial on in Ashford, Co Wicklow, only half an hour from home.
Sporting Trials are a relatively little known form of motor-sport but they're great fun to watch, usually free, not too noisy and generally held out in a field or woodland so they're great for kids to run around and play as well.
A Sporting Trial is a non speed competition which involves driving a specially built trials car over rugged, hilly and often muddy terrain, as far as is physically possible, without hitting laid out markers defining the route of the course. It's a very competitive, fun, family-type sport, with over 80 regular competitors here in Ireland. Sporting Trials are an economical sport to be involved in and double driving is permitted, thereby helping to share running/repair costs etc.
The cars are pretty impressive pieces of engineering. They are designed to be as agile and lightweight as possible in order to scale the difficult off-road courses. Most of the cars have air cooled engines which means they don't need cooling systems and radiators, to save weight and for simplicity. They have 'fiddle' brakes, a system of levers which independently control the brakes on the rear axle, this combined with huge steering lock allows the cars to be turned on a sixpence. A lot of the cars have 2 gearboxes with incredibly low gearing which enables them to scale incredible inclines.
This trial was a technical solo event where no passengers were allowed. Here's a quick video i shot from the weekend:
There are also types of trial where passengers are allowed. In the video below you'll see them moving their weight around the car and bouncing up and down like lunatics, this is all in order to get the most traction to the rear wheels of the car to get as far up the course as possible:
