So, this is a bit of me blowing my own trumpet. The reason for this is, I have been in motor sport for over 40 years and it bugs me a little bit that I was always held back, especially in the early days, by money… or I should say, lack of money!

I was actually quite good but never quite made the really big time because I didn’t have the budget to compete regularly at the top. Occasionally I was able to demonstrate what I was capable of, but, result sheets don’t always tell the full story. One occasion when this was the case was 15 years ago this weekend (26^th March 2005) in a Britcar Endurance race…

Early in 2005 I was approached by a racing team from Belgium. The people were Dutch but lived in Belgium. They had been competing in the Belgian endurance racing series, Belcar, for several seasons with a couple of BMW’s but despite their cars being competitive, they were told by the series organiser that the cars were too old – the best car was an ex-works, 1995 ex-European Touring Car. So, they decided to try and break into the fairly new at that time British endurance racing series, Britcar. The team offered me a free drive if they could find another paying driver to co-drive with me.

So, in March 2005 we took part in round one of the Britcar Endurance Series at Silverstone with myself and a driver called Tony Rodriguez partnering me. Tony had been doing track days for several years and had raced for a couple of seasons in various cars, mostly GT’s.

At this point in time I was working as an Instructor at Silverstone but I hadn’t raced for 10 years; the last race I had done was a Formula Ford race at my local Oulton Park circuit in 1995. Even that race was one of only two I did that year, and prior to that I had done a one-off Formula Ford race at Brands Hatch at the end of 1991. Most of my earlier racing had been in the 70’s and 80’s.

Britcar attracts some top-level drivers, generally it consists of wealthy “gentlemen drivers” partnered with seasoned professional drivers. The Britcar race we did on 26^th March 2005 had, amongst others, these top-line pro drivers in it:

Driver (Car) Qualifying Position

Kelvin Burt (Porsche GT3 Cup) Pole
Gavan Kershaw (Lotus Elise) 2nd
Ian Flux (Ferrari 360 Challenge) 5th
Calum Lockie (Ferrari 360 Challenge) 6th
David Leslie (BMW M3 E36) 7th
Nigel Greensall (Porsche GT3 Cup/BMW Mini R53) 10th and 23rd (yes Nigel was doing the race in two separate cars!)
Phil Bennett (Peugeot 406 Coupe BTCC) 19th

The cars entered are a mix of Sports/GT cars and Saloon/Touring cars. The Lotus Elise that qualified 2nd was far from standard, it was being developed to run at Le Mans as a GT car.

I mentioned earlier that result sheets don’t always tell the full story. The official qualifying results for the race show that we qualified 18^th of the 23 cars in the race, and that's true, we did. And it was me who did our fastest lap. However, we should have been much further up!

Let’s just back track to the day before, the test day on Friday 25^th March. The team were tight on budget, so we only did the afternoon session. My team mate Tony Rodriguez, despite having more recent track time and race experience than me, insisted on hogging the car for most of the session, saying he needed more time in the car. I stood on the pit wall with team manager Rob Verhoeven and timed Tony. He was circulating around the International circuit in the 1:36’s, 6 seconds slower than the driver we were using as our benchmark, David Leslie. We didn’t expect to be as fast as David because although he was also in a BMW E36 M3, his was a more sophisticated car with a sequential gearbox and underbody aero for downforce, which we had neither of. But 6 seconds was still a lot around the International circuit.

With about 15 minutes of the session left, finally I got to drive the car and did about 4 laps before coming in to make an adjustment. As I pulled up outside our garage Rob Verhoeven came running up to my door with a big smile… “You did a 1:31!” Wow, I’d just jumped into the car and gone 5 seconds faster than my teammate who had been pounding around for about 30 laps! I went out briefly again, but the session was chequered flagged before I could improve on my time. It didn’t go unnoticed! David Leslie, who I knew, said “You were going well out there!”

The following morning in qualifying my team mate insisted on hogging the car again. He went out and did 4 laps, pitted, then said he needed more. During the pitstop the team manager noticed Rodriguez had flat spotted the front left tyre (the one you need most at Silverstone) and there was no time to change it. He went back out and did a further 5 laps, 9 in all, and did a best time of 1:36.040, similar to what he’d done the day before. The image below, taken from the official timing results (which can be viewed here in PDF format - pages 14, 15 and 17) shows who was driving and what the lap times were; the black boxes mark the laps of myself and Don Grice that I'm using to demonstrate my point...

Then I finally got in the car to qualify, still with the flat spotted front tyre… after my out lap my 2nd lap was already faster than Tony Rodriguez’s best at 1:35.865; my 3rd lap was a 1:34.995, over a second faster than Tony… then we come to my 4th lap… the lap analysis below shows the total accumulated time each lap from the start of the whole session… at the start of my 4th lap I crossed the line 1.753 seconds after Don Grice in another BMW; halfway round the lap, at “Farm” corner I caught Don, so I had I reeled him in by 1.753 seconds in just half a lap.

The significance of this is, on lap 13 Don did a 1:35.625, which means even if I hadn’t gone any faster for the rest of the lap I’d have still done a 1:33.872 (because I closed a 1.753 gap to Don from the start of the lap)… more likely, if what happened at Farm (see below) hadn’t happened I’d have possibly taken another 1.5 - 2 seconds off the lap in the second half of it, which would have put me in the 1:31’s the same as the day before. If I had done a 1:31 I’d have put the car in 11th on the grid instead of 18th… but lap 14 might have been faster still and potentially put us in the top 10! All with a flat spotted front tyre!

What happened at Farm

What happened at Farm corner (my fault) chucked the spanner in the works. When I caught Don Grice I didn’t want to lose any time by slowing too much, so I attempted to overtake him around the outside of the hairpin bend. Unfortunately, Don hadn’t realised I was there and took the normal exit line, forcing me into and through the gravel trap on the outside of the corner. This ripped off the front bumper which folded under and pushed onto the front wheels (which can be seen in the 5^th image in the gallery above as I was entering the pits), affecting the steering. I needed to ensure I qualified (minimum of 3 laps) so did the rest of that lap and another lap with the bumper rubbing on the front tyres and the ground. Because of this I had to back right off and so my best lap time was only the 1:34.995 from the previous lap.

The race itself was a disaster. By the time I came to get in it, it was developing mechanical problems. The fuel pumps packed up and we had to retire the car only a couple of laps after I took over. We were still classified in 18th place though.

The point of this account of qualifying that day being that I’d again showed that I was capable of competing on a level with some of the best pro drivers in the UK despite just jumping in a car with very little practice and having not raced for some time.