Where do you go if you want to really get the most out of the Lotus Emira? The track it was developed on is a good start, and the Lotus Driving Academy allows you to do just that.
It takes a certain kind of person to be a track driving instructor. They need to remain calm and professional whilst seated next to someone they’ve never met before, someone whose ability to drive is certified only by their possession of a basic driving licence. And if you spend five minutes on any British motorway and watch the behaviour of the drivers around you, you’ll find that’s not a particularly high bar to clear.
Obviously, something like the Lotus Driving Academy isn’t going to attract the sort of person for whom driving is an unpleasant necessity. Generally, the clientele here are here because they want the opportunity to safely, legally get the most out of a sports car in a way you simply can’t on the road. Nevertheless, a valid licence is the only requirement for heading out onto Lotus’s 2.2-mile long test track behind the wheel of one of the Academy’s fleet of Lotus Emiras, which makes it a hugely accessible way of getting a taste of proper performance track driving.
It’s reassuring to have someone like Stewart Croucher sat next to you for this, especially when the car and track combo is largely unfamiliar. Stewart, Lotus’s motorsport and drive programme manager, is also a Grade A-certified instructor with the Association of Racing Driver Schools – ARDS, to you and me. As a result, riding shotgun with everyone from track novices to fully qualified race drivers is all in a day’s work for him.
Stewart takes the wheel at first, however, as we roll out of the short pit lane for a couple of sighting laps. The Lotus test track, surrounding one half of the company’s growing factory in Hethel, Norfolk, is built around the runways and perimeter roads of a disused airfield. Not intended for competition use, it instead has been crafted to finely hone the dynamic facets of a car, and expose any gaping holes in the handling during development. Its aviation origins mean it’s entirely flat, but that doesn’t stop it from being a challenging and satisfying track to get right.
Swapping places with Stewart, it’s time to get to grips with the track ourselves. It’s a layout of two distinct halves. The first is characterised by a series of relentless esses, broken up by the first of two right-hand hairpins, which is tight and has a deceptively late apex. This whole sequence of bends keeps the driver busy with braking, acceleration and steering inputs. Some are taken flat, others require you to think about the effect of braking, gear selection, and throttle input have on the way you approach the bend, but all have their own distinct character.
The second half is where you can really extend the Emira – a particularly hair-raising sweeper leads into the first of two flat out straight-line blasts, a bus stop chicane utilised by the Academy helping scrub off speed for the second hairpin, which has precious little runoff. The next straight brings you back up towards triple-figure speeds before braking hard back into the twisties.
Most of the straights and corners evocatively namecheck some of the drivers that have helped bring Lotus its huge amount of racing success – Clark, Hill, Andretti, Senna, Mansell, Rindt, Fittipaldi. And of course, the fiercely brilliant businessman responsible for it all – Colin Chapman.
It’s a circuit that packs in a lot of variety and character, despite its relatively compact and level footprint. It’s approachable for those new to track driving, but satisfying and challenging to nail for the experienced.
That applies to the Emira, too. This is the first time we’ve had the chance to properly let one loose on track, although it’s not our Magma Red pre-production long-termer that you’ve seen on our socials or parked up at The Hill. That car sits a little lower than factory, and has the six-speed automatic gearbox. The Driving Academy fleet is totally standard, and the cars we drove were manual.
Naturally, there are a couple of differences. With the cars riding at stock height, you feel more of the primary roll that makes the Emira such an enticing road car, if something of an outlier in a world of ultra-stiff, track-bred machinery. This isn’t to say it doesn’t work on a circuit, though. When you really push hard, a little inherent understeer makes itself known, but it’s perfectly predictable. Riding the kerbs on Lotus’s track, the superb damping of the Emira is just as apparent as it is on a bucking B-road.
Having the extra control and involvement of the manual is a huge pleasure, too. At this point, the number of brand-new sports cars available with three pedals is probably in the single figures. As a result, having the manual Emira’s beautiful bare aluminium gearknob to hand is a real tactile pleasure. Paired with that tuneful supercharged V6, and the expanses of an empty test track on which to properly wring it out, a few laps here bring us back to the raw sensory elements, the perfect confluence of human and machine, that make us love driving in the first place.
We visited the Driving Academy as a dry run of the day our 313 members will be getting at the beginning of September, so after experiencing the Emira on track, we headed across the car park to tour the factory where it’s built. This is a gleaming new facility, buzzing with activity, and likely a world away from the image of a Lotus factory of old that the mind conjures up.
Our day, and 313’s, concludes with a visit to an equally special place just around the corner – Classic Team Lotus. The scene you lay eyes on when you climb the stairs to their storage room is the sort that makes you stop dead and audibly gasp – a deeply impressive collection of historic Lotus race machinery, once piloted by the same illustrious figures that lend their names to parts of the track.
If our day was anything to go by, then our 313 members are in for a very good time indeed. The 313 day is currently sold out, but this is a taste of just some of the wonderful experiences you’ll get access to as a member – if you haven’t already, then join now.
