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| OLD: Essex boy-racers older than first thought |
by Mathias Olaf Uncertain
17th Feb 2010 |
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Lotus have already promised to revive their legendary Camelodunum livery at the circuit
Citizens of Colchester are trying to raise £200,000 to buy a former Ministry of Defence site so the UK's only known Roman racetrack can be saved.
Chariot racing was the most popular sport of Roman times and the track is thought to have been in use for several centuries, until the leading team of the time, Ferrarsum, finally carried out its tedious threat to quit racing, and the sport's popularity actually did collapse, contrary to the expectations of most leading commentators at the time.
The Colchester circus is an elongated oval featuring two tight 180-degree turns, known imaginatively as Turnus Primus and Turnus Secondus, indicating that charioteers only ever had to turn left, and that racing was, in fact, somewhat on the dull side. In a bid to spice up the spectacle, instead of pointless TV-friendly set-pieces beloved of oval racers of the modern age, organisers allowed chariots to be fitted with an entertaining array of weaponry almost, but not quite, as sophisticated as F1's now-outlawed suspension spring launcher.
Once they have obtained the funds necessary to secure the site, the Colchester Archaeological Restoration Trust (CART) intend to raise sufficient extra funds to hire ubiquitous circuit-botherer German Talker to bring it up to modern standards, an idea that is guaranteed to fuck the circuit over far more effectively than building a few houses on it ever would.
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