Punch ‘Snetterton 300’ into YouTube (or see below) and have a look at the simulation of the new circuit. It’s hardly a state-of-the-art presentation but it doesn’t need to be: what is clear is that the Norfolk circuit has been transformed, and apparently for the better.

Modifying an existing circuit is as much about knowing what to leave as what to change, and the reason so many of us are so happy to schlep so far to an invariably cold and windy track is that Riches, the Bombhole and Coram are corners that rival the best in the world. The Esses are pretty decent too. All remain untouched save the exit of Coram, which looks more challenging than ever.

What Jonathan Palmer and his MotorSport Vision team have done instead is turn dull old Sears into a hairpin that releases drivers onto an all-new infield section, with a series of both fast and slow corners. You can’t judge these things without driving them so I’m not going to try, but you are eventually launched onto a slightly abbreviated version of the old back straight and thence onto the original track for all the old favourites.

But as you barrel through Coram you realise its radius has been extended even further and a very careful line will have to be trodden to end up both in the right place and in a position to slow for an entirely new Russell. Perhaps the best bit of news for anyone who’s raced at Snett in recent years is that the horrid and slow right-left chicane has now been replaced by a reasonably conventional left-hand corner, complicated only by being placed at the exit of one of the hairiest curves the country has to offer.

The proof of the pudding will, as ever, be in the driving but I can’t wait to get to grips with it. Better still, if the rumours are correct next year it will host Britain’s first-ever 24-hour race for historic cars. Details of this are in the next mag but, in the meantime and after too long, the star of Snetterton seems firmly in the ascendant.

Andrew Frankel

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7DgSw_EARM[/youtube]