Cotswold MCC did the maths after the four hours: the winning car had covered the same distance as driving from the track to Stoke-on-Trent. Over 100 miles, without ever leaving a field in Gloucestershire. All six teams put together managed Cirencester to Geneva.
Ours did about ninety percent of the winner’s run. That’s 1/10th scale touring cars on little 21.5 motors, and I still can’t quite get my head round it.
It was my first endurance race. Four hours, one car, four drivers, and everything that happens in between is yours to fix. We stopped at Clarkson’s Farm Shop on the way down, which was absolutely rammed, and then went racing.
We started last. Within minutes it was clear the car wasn’t going to match the front runners on pace, nothing to do with the driving, it just wouldn’t go any faster. So the day became about the only things we could control: clean stints, quick stops, no mistakes. We climbed to 5th, ran as high as 4th, and finished 5th of six. 582 laps.
The club described us as “solid, consistent running” and the timing sheet backs it up in a way I didn’t expect. Our best lap was 1.4 seconds off the team ahead of us, but our four-hour average was only 0.58 seconds off them. That gap normally gets wider over a long race as mistakes pile up. Ours got narrower. The car was slow. The team wasn’t.
Lisa set a personal best and was the quickest of us all day. Martin was a metronome, barely four tenths between his best lap and his ten-lap average, twice, back to back. Mike drove the opening and closing stints and never put a wheel wrong. A transmitter battery died mid-race and we swapped it in a single stop.
Me? My back was in bits, my left foot went numb, a fly went in my eye, and I learned that if you don’t blink for twenty-five minutes your eyes genuinely dry out. Couple of offs. Got dialled in by the end.
4th in the championship, and one very clear job for the winter: find 2.5 seconds a lap.
Huge thanks to Cotswold MCC for running a cracking event, and to SpeedRC and ABM Models for backing us.
Photos and footage to follow, and this one’s going on the YouTube channel.
