At last the day arrived, van packed up and ready to go, we’re off to the annual 24 hour race at Silverstone. The Britcar24hr has been going for some 6 years now and get bigger and better by the year. This year’s entrants list was a very good mix of high end endurance racers and “bloke on the street” racers, There were the usual suspects, Sean and Michael Mc Inereney in a F430 this year instead of the Mosler MT900 also in his F430 was last years winner Witt Gamski, along side these guys would race the Aquila CR1 of Nigel Mustill and the Topcat Racing/ Runnymede Homes Mosler.
There were also plenty of Astons, BMW’s,Ginetta’s, Porsche’s everything right down to MG ZR’s.
Signed-on Friday morning and I was allocated to Club outer post, now this is one of the better post, large gravel trap and the cars are trying to line up for the sprint to abbey so there was plenty of exciting racing and quite a bit to do marshalling wise. The Friday programme was a good mix really, starting with Smart cars, then Caterhams, Monoposto, Porsche Cup racing and of course Britcar practice and Day qualifying. Plenty to do I said! We had Cateerhams off, the Smart cars are particularly scary to watch going round club corner but they managed to stay upright, well all but one who rolled going out of abbey.
Day qualifying for the Britcar was pretty much a formality, then a 2 hours break before the Britcar night quail session.
During this 2 hour break I had the chance to meet “mien host” the blogmeister James Foster. Top bloke we had a good chat about motorsport, blogging,etc etc. Time for night quailifing, this is not a timed session as in the laps aren’t time, this is about the drivers getting used to driving at night. This is where the thrills n spills comes in to marshalling and you also need to be very aware of your surroundings, more of this later.
Saturday, and the sun is shining, it’s gonna be a hot one. The cars are out on track at 9am. We have to go through the races on the programme before the main event at 4:30 but there a good buzz around the track, not many incidents during the support races. 3pm all the build up starts, we’ve got the army helicopters doing their thing the Red Devils parachute team landing on the grid and handing over the start flag, pit walks, grid walks. This is proper club racing where you can get right up close n personal with the cars and drivers. 4:30 and we’re off, the race starts pretty much as we were all expecting with the Aquila storming into the distance, but this is endurance racing and the Aquila proved a tad fragile last year. Would it be any more robust this year, could it win? All was well, the odd misdemeanor here and there cars in gravel and the like but the race settled down to a good pace and rhythm.
Then at about 9:30pm we had a safety car deployment, nothing unusual there in the Britcar we always get a good dose of safety cars. This was different, seems a car had gone off into the gravel on the outside of Becketts and while the marshals are trying to get a line on it to tow it out another car has ploughed in and in the process took out one of the marshals,this is unfortunately on of the risks and why printed on every motorsport event ticket are the words “Motorsport is Dangerous” make no mistake these things can and will happen, fortunately the marshal concerned was in very god hands and a big “thank you” should go out to all the medical support teams, the Marshal in question was taken to Northants Hospital with a suspected broken leg.
I’m always aware of spectators saying how safer Motorsport is nowadays and that it’s brilliant that we’ve not had a death in the sport since the loss of my personal hero Ayrton Senna, but this is not quite true, we have had deaths in motorsport, marshals, competitors in lower classes and club racing. Motorsport IS dangerous always be very aware of that.
Sunday dawn broke and the cars were still ploughing round albeit a slightly reduced grid, Aqulia had fallen by the wayside during the night and was now some 48 laps down on the leaders, up front were the 2 F430’s and Both Moslers, this was pretty much the case until the Strata21 Moslers demise then Witt Gamski retired the 430 with a cracked manifold, this left the 430 of Sean McInerney and the Runnymede Mosler battling it out until the Runnymede car had a stuck throttle linkage and went straight into the tyre wall at Brooklands leaving the Mc Inerney team to take the win, and most deserved it was they have supported and run in this race with mixed results for a good while and they did deserve this win.
Racing over it was time to pack up and head home, but what a fantastic weekends racing, and I got to meet the LEGEND that is James Foster, AKA jimmyb-84. A real good guy, and 110% motorsport nut.
Bootneck.
