Speed Week 2022
Top Gear's 2022 Speed Week took place in the Czech Republic, and here's your guide to its star track
Welcome to Most at the western end of the Czech Republic. We’re only about 30 miles from the German border here, and their love of racing runs deep and has roots. Street racing was the start. The first layout, in 1947, lapped the brewery. Probably wisely, things moved on. By the Seventies a temporary circuit ran from the new railway station and included a nearby motorway.
But Most had plenty of wasteland. The Autodrom was built between 1978 and 1983 on the site of an open cast coal mine. The team charged with designing it took inspiration from Hockenheim and the Nürburgring. 100,000 people turned up to the first race.
Since then it’s had its ups and downs, periodically attracting major race series, and then falling off the calendar. It’s now on the comeback trail, heavily upgraded and hosting everything from World Superbikes to truck racing.
Here’s a lap guide – but first a Czech track needs a Czech track car. Step forward the Praga R1. You may have heard of Praga – probably in conjunction with its modern racing activities rather than its history, which dates back to 1907 and includes not just cars and bikes, but trolleybuses, tanks and aircraft.
The R1 is the very definition of a pocket rocket. It’s tiny, a single-seat, closed cockpit, slick-shod racer under a metre tall and weighing just 643kg. Powered by a 2.0-litre turbo from a Formula Renault, it develops 365bhp, pulls near 3G through corners and feels very much like My First Le Mans car. Until you start driving it, when you realise any toy car analogies are very wide of the mark. The experience is full on fierce.
Once the tyres are warm, it’s dynamite around Most. More grip than power, which is always good for confidence, and stellar under brakes into the first corner, Truck Chaos chicane, a tight second gear right. Not a huge amount of pedal feel, but that’s race car norm when things are so rowdy and frantic inside. Get it right and it feels fantastic, loaded up all the way to the apex. Even in this you need to be patient before nailing the throttle out of the left that follows. Easy to be greedy here and get scrappy.
Then it’s a flat out charge through Ballsy West, a long, long left. Easy in this, puckering in the really quick road cars. The sequence at the bottom looks complex, but there’s an easy line through. Brake hard over the kerbs on the right hand side – harder (you were going very fast), carry third gear through the left, don’t worry too much about hugging the outside, aim for midtrack and clip the first right apex through Zigger-Zagger, aim wide of the second, collect the kerbs on the left while opening the steering and braking hard for Skid corner.
Skid Corner is amusing for sliding, but otherwise ordinary, you just need a good exit to get the line right and apex late-ish through The Plunge. It’s a downhill sweep that’ll push you mid-track right where you don’t want it – the braking point for positively-cambered The Rise. The Ferrari and McLaren are hitting 130mph down here. It’s full-on. In the Praga it’s a brake dab and dart in. You feel weight transfer and the road cars groan through here, tyres heavily taxed. But the R1 has little weight to work against, so flits through. Just a chunk of steering weight to deal with. Shows you how hard the car is working.
Keep it pinned – you’ve got more grip than you think, but you’re right to be concerned. All you can see ahead is an innocuous left kink, sky and the top of the giant hoarding over the track. Hug left, and use the gantry as your guide for entry into Brave Boy 1, 2 and 3. This is where the Praga really shines, carrying probably 10mph more than anything else through these fast sweepers. Given it’s an 85mph entry in most stuff, you get an idea of the speeds you’re dealing with. Only the Morgan and DBX dropped much below 70mph at any stage through this wonderful section.
It’s well sighted once you’re past the bridge, you see the track open up to your left. Don’t get carried away. Hug the apex of BB2 all the way round before peeling off right through BB3 for the exit on to Ballsy East.
Nail it. Easy flat through the first kink, but it undulates which forces the quick stuff out wide. Steady now. The Praga makes this easy. Again you’re up over 130-135mph before braking for Far End, a pair of uphill corners, the first very blind entry, the second a rising crest that makes it hard to work out when you can get back on the throttle for the main straight.
There you go, 4,212 metres of Most completed in around 1min 37secs at an average speed of about 97mph. We didn’t measure lap times (it simply takes too long) beyond ascertaining the Praga was around five seconds faster than anything else. It’s a stunning track to drive, with great backdrops all around and almost no time to rest and relax for either car or driver. We couldn’t ask for more.
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Keyword: How to drive the Autodrom Most circuit