And now for something completely different

This weekend was the Britcar 24 hour race at Silverstone. When I started racing with a friend last year we were working towards a 24 hour race and this is the largest one we run in the UK so it was our goal for year 2; the clash with RLP was unforeseen but has worked out fine as I am away on residentials with the Dreamwall gang for the next couple of weekends.

With 3 other guys driving, a team of gifted mechanics and a quality support team we managed to come 2nd in class (by 24 measly seconds from first place) and 17th out of 50 whilst racing in the most modestly powered of the classes. We did all this in a Lotus Elise, not renowned as the world's most reliable of cars. There was a Lotus support race at the meeting and all the drivers kept coming up to us with looks of awe (or incredulity) that we would attempt something so doomed to failure. This kind of doubt in the inate ability of our team, Chimp Tune Racing, and professional crew and drivers just goaded us on. The car was more or less standard other than big brakes, beefier suspension and uprated cooling and lights, so a big tick in the box for British engineering. As ever, we should have won and spent over half the race leading our class. A couple of electrical glitches cost us an hour and a half and then it came down to 24 seconds.

Highlights were driving through the night with more illumination than the Blackpool tower coming from the car (there is none on the track itself). To avoid being blinded and frightened by faster cars howling past at 50mph faster than we could manage we taped over the mirror, held our racing line and trusted in their judgement to get past. The best lines I heard over the radio from our manager on the pit wall were "James, you just did your best time and I can confirm you are now leading class"... this was about 11.30pm on Saturday night. When I got back in at 6am we were back a place but I had the same immortal lines a few minutes later when our competition had to pit. Now exhausted. The picture is Richard, the Chimp of Chimptune Racing himself, driving the car over the line after 24 hours. The chequered flag is at the top of the shot.

One further thought to bring us back to earth. There was a very large crash at the start and Andy Neate is critical in hospital. We all hope he gets better as soon as possible.