I hadn’t really planned to be in the car so early, but as the roar of the start goes up I'm in the cockpit. Once you’re in the seat, you don’t want to fill up on food or drink, because you don’t want to be out of the car draining the lizard at the moment you’re suddenly needed, but on the other hand you might end up sitting here now for most of the day, and at some point you have to fuel the organic component. For those who have never tried it, you can eat pizza with a helmet on. But don’t.

Tom boy gives the old barge some grief. You can get in that gravel trap if you drive the wrong circuit.

Scary men in orange monitor every movement. Of the teams, not your personal stuff.

He assures us that none of the dents in the car were of his doing. But it's OK, he has fibreglass coming. 

Webster wobbles wildly. He's not a bad old beard.

 

He says he's retiring the XJS. Right.

Deano goes round the outside of a Radical. Clearly.

He's at it again, look at him going down the outside of that blisteringly-tast Ginetta.

Deano's stint was consistent, clean, and uneventful, which is everything you could ask of an endurance race.

About halfway into the race, and Roger's back in the garage ready for his second stint.

They call this the "Prat Perch." It's a little unfair, some of these people are quite competent.

Katy rolls into what could be any corner here, frankly. Comer's stint was our second fastest.

Comer has always been a demon on the brakes. His hour stint belied his critics, we were impressed.

Ass on the floor and nose in the air, Helen demonstrates what traction under power is all about.

Hiding in the background, a certain blue XJS. And my mate in the little red Beemer.

 

He and I really aren't in the same race. But a dozen of his mates owe their lives to use of the mirrors. 

And mere minutes before night tumbled like a drunk, the race is over. It's been emotional.

Spot all three Jaguars in shot and win big-money prizes. Probably.

The noise of a 72-car standing start is pretty good, I can’t see it, but it’s very audibly a start that takes place in stages, not everybody knows it’s become a standing, rather than a rolling, start, not everyone can see the lights, and various cars are setting off as the pilots get the message that it’s game time. Probably safer that way. The cloud of spray that appears above the pitwall says the track is still wet.

The sun appeared. The track began to dry, but my pitwall reporters tell me that Tom is making mincemeat of Frost from the Six Potters, and Palmer from Jagnuts, he’s ahead of both on track. That’s great, because we have more credit laps on handicap than either of them, they need to be beating us and we’re ahead. Mind you, it sounds like Frost isn’t on all six cylinders, so why isn’t his team bringing him in? Not our problem, conditions favour our boy wonder in his XJ40, we know he can pedal in this lot, and the rain neutralises the faster XJS he’s up against, and that’s the great lottery of the Birkett.

And Tom stays there, even as the track dries out and he starts hunting for puddles to cool the rubber, everyone is getting faster but he’s able to hold his place against them, and indeed at the end of his hour we’re doing well, we’re 10^th on handicap, with a best time of a 2.44.

 

The pitwall crew, a Bear and a David, operate a pretty tight ship, every laptime recorded and noted, pitboard counting the minutes down for the driver, the stops signalled and next driver warned in good time, but if I think I’ve got it rough sitting in the car, these poor buggers are going to stand there for six solid hours. David is clad in a full foul-weather suit. If the next ice age commences today he’ll be the one to live through it

As Tom pits, out rolls Webster, the track is dry enough for 888s. The next car, Comer, rolls into place, also on dry rubber. That means I can get out. No sooner has my foot hit the floor than the skies darken. Damn it. Back in the car, gear up, ready to go. No rain comes. OK. Back out. Foot hits the floor, a sprinkle of rain. Damn it. Back in the car and the rain stops. Somebody make me a coffee?

Roger has an awkward job to do, it’s a dry track but not fully dry, his car is quicker than Tom’s but not necessarily in this lot, and he hates slippery conditions. He’s only doing a half hour stint because he has a small fuel tank, so he will cause us an extra stop, so we need him to get a shuffle on, but it’s not really the ideal scenario to do so. Roger can’t seem to hit Tom’s pace. It’s not a huge surprise though, these conditions are not Roger’s forte and he’ll tell you that all day long. But it’s solid enough, his half hour ticks down quickly, the big Jag tank that lets us run an hour has us up on stops on some of the smaller cars, and when he pits we’re amazingly enough still ahead of both Jag teams on the road, and 5^th on handicap. We take it all back Roger, stay out there.

A wandering David Howard swings by for a chat. He clocks what we’re up to with a “wet” and “dry” car ready to roll, proclaims it to be a genius plan, and notes that there’s nothing like that going off in his garage. We might be slow, but we’re organised.

 

As Roger’s boarded to come in, Comer goes for the start button and the car is as dead as a Roman senator. He will keep leaving the sodding ignition and the kill switch on, I’ve turned it off for him once today already, as has Bear, but it’s flat as a fart now. We need Dean in the car right now, but the garage is clogged, I’m in one car at the front, Comer’s in another, we need a car from behind out in front of them. Cue much strenuous pushing and wheel twirling, and Dean’s car appears alongside me moments before the green XJS slides past my nose, from outside it was a perfectly seamless pitstop. Which it was, just the wrong car!

 

Dean’s pace is nicely consistent, which is really the secret to the Birkett. It doesn’t matter if you’re fast or slow so long as you keep plugging the laps in at the same pace, over and over. With Comer on charge, he’s now the reserve dry car, Jeffery is in position behind him, and behind that Roger is having a row with a BMW driver who wants our pit access as a parking space. Senior Jeffery has been in a state of excitement all morning, but now his car is here again it climbs up a notch, I swear he gets as much of a buzz out of the atmosphere of the event as we do from driving it. But he’s right, there is an energy to this thing that is not like any other we ever see, it’s busy everywhere all the time, none of that race and rest stuff you get from sprint racing. Nerves and excitement crackle for the full six hours.

 

A wandering TV crew stalk past the garage repeatedly doing retakes of some fat bloke who presents something or other I’ve never seen. The temptation to blow the horn is powerful. I dare to step outside the car. It’s been 2 hours, I’m having a coffee. A gust of wind,  dark clouds, a threat of rain, and I’m back in again. I swear someone is having a laugh with me. Familiar faces appear. Bernie, of NTR fame. John Lock punches me in the helmet before I can call him a cheating Southern fairy. Stewert “Lezzer” Lyddall, who I don’t think I’ve seen in seven months, accompanied by a lady who at first glance was clearly too pretty to be associated with him in any form of bouncy naked capacity, indeed I was going to say as much to the pair of them, but unfortunately introductions revealed her to be associated with Jaguar World before I could get my foot fully in mouth. It’s a lot of faces not seen in many moons.

 

The rain threat disappears. That’s it, I’m getting out. There is pizza to eat, and my legs are going to sleep. Finally, a chance to see the Birkett, a trip to the pitwall, to the duo with stopwatch and lapchart, patiently monitoring progress. Last time I looked over the Birkett wall 3 years ago a Beemer ate a Midget. Roger is back in the garage, he’s another stint to go later on, but he’s our first man back, Tom has already loaded up and gone to a prior engagement. Such is the event that you can have drivers finish and go home before you even go out, indeed when the race started 2 drivers were out doing a fuel run, the traditional sprint race structure does not apply here.

 

Beemers and Radicals and MGs, oh my! Every size and shape you could wish is flashing past out there, the track is well over 3 miles, but 72 cars at a time is one every second or so, it’s never quiet, and a flurry of pitboards as some teams monitor and communicate with the driver every lap. We’re not quite that obsessed, our board is limited to time remaining, and if necessary, a gentle reminder to get on with it. Deano’s XJ6 is actually one of the oldest cars here, he flashes past with a presidential escort of Caterham outriders, helmet visibly swivelling about trying to spot them before somebody stamps on the brakes for Copse.

 

Fastest thing to see is something that looks like a mini Le-Mans car, it tested yesterday, small and green and improbably quick, but timesheets say something called a Spire is quickest. No clue, to me they are all classed as Caterhams, Radicals, or proper cars. Transition time arrives, Dean in, Comer to go out, and all goes smoothly. That brings Matt into reserve, and that means time for me to get ready, if Philip has a problem and Matt goes out then should he have a problem we need the next car ready. I’ve got rubber to swap, but we want to leave that as late as we dare, in case of rain, and I’m still hovering around in case the threatening sky splits open.

 

Another safety car deployment calms the field, and once the race resumes, Comer drops the team laptimes to our best to date, we’re nudging the 2.40 barrier, which is good going. Nice work. Dean is back in the garage, and if he smiles any more broadly his head’s going to fall in half, he could do this race every weekend. It does get you a bit like that. The next set of handicap sheets come out at the 3-hour mark, and cause some head scratching, because we’re suddenly dumped right down the order. A trip to race control reveals that the handicap has been subject to the traditional half-time adjustment, and our unexpected early-race performance has lost us a number of our credit laps. Damn.

 

The brains behind our interpretation of the timesheets and handicap is always Roger, who has divined the formula for looking at the sheets and working out the relative performances. It’s clearly in the genes, because his son also takes about ten seconds to look at the sheet and figures out how to do it as well. Of course, within that ten seconds he has grown by three inches, because that boy is increasing in height at the same speed as kelp, it’s really quite frightening.

 

The hour ticks down, Matt is ready to roll, and another seamless transition swaps cars. We seem to be better at this than some, the Caterham team to our left are wildly disorganised and ignore their pitwall crew, they are without a car for upwards for 20 seconds. The Six Potters transition is slow, through my screen I count a 12 second gap between their incoming and outgoing cars. But with the adjusted handicap we need either disaster to befall the other team, or a really strong end to the race. Admittedly our final three cats all pack over 300bhp, and we are in theory set for a decent finish, but we might not have enough in the tank for this. We didn’t expect to, but once you’re here that competitive instinct quashes realism.

 

Matt rolls out, I’m up next. Post Roger in his car as reserve whilst I buzz off the wets and fit the 888s, then post myself in the car and let him out. You can’t have a moment without a car ready to go. Settling back into the cockpit that I’ve spent about three hours in already today, and the race disappears again, back to this small, isolated little world, muted by crash helmet, restricted to what you can see out of the screen of a stationary car. It feels as if it's not long before a concerned-looking David, still clad from head to foot like a North Sea trawlerman, wanders over. We’re halfway into Matt’s stint, and his laptime has dropped slightly, potentially his electrical issue is back, lack of voltage might be throwing him a misfire, time to get ready. This is what the pitwall is all about.

 

Two laps later, at the 40 minute mark, and Matt’s in unexpectedly, game time. As the XJ40 slides past the garage, a human tunnel of bodies and waving hands guides us into the pitlane, where all these people suddenly appeared from is baffling, must be six or seven bodies that just appeared, all under the watching brief of an orange-clad man with a headset and a clipboard. The world expands again, a busy pitlane, cars and bodies everywhere, a flurry of motion and colour. Trundling down in second gear, no speedo so trying to guess the speed limit, hit the white line and lean on the throttle, time to do that driving thing.

 

The thing that’s most odd about this is that you emerge from the pits into a race that is already hours old. This is not a lights-out turn one dash with every other driver equally as rusty or nervous or wondering about cold tyres, you’re still coming up the gearbox and the car in the mirror is on lap 16 and at full chat, you have to engage your brain immediately, be at full speed the second you leave the safety of the pitlane exit.

 

The race is recorded in your brain as a series of moments, rather than a full hour of footage, you only remember the highlights and impressions. There were accidents, some minor, one major. The track has changed completely from this morning, now bone dry. The Jag is fast in a straight line, the only thing out here that I couldn’t stick with in a straight line were the bigger BMWs. There seemed to be a lot of BMW. The smaller compacts were easy meat for the XJS, we seemed to meet about two of these every lap, but the serious M3s, running a variety of tyres through to full slicks, and sprouting full-spec aero appendages and bulging bodywork, those were very fast indeed.

 

Barely up to speed and there is little red BMW 2002 in the mirror, and he’s fast, faster than I am under braking and in faster corners. The Becketts/Maggots complex I have him, because I’m still using a lot of kerb, sausage and a hint of grass on the way in there and hanging on to the attempted accident, Helen absorbs that with the unloaded wheel without complaint. And I have a higher top end on the straights, but he is catching me, and slides by on the brakes. This is helpful, because I can hook onto him and get my rhythm going.

 

I’m just marvelling how amazingly late on the brakes he can go into the complex when I realise that he can’t, and he sails off the road. There’s a Caterham astern who is placed for what looks like a pass onto the pit straight, you can predict them a little bit. But that little Beemer had partially turned in before he fell off, and he’s not gone straight on, I can see his trajectory, and the shape of this corner is such that if he were to keep going he will come back onto the track. Without the benefit of the tarmac run off, most of his journey is wet grass, and I don’t think he’s going to stop, so a judicious lean on the middle pedal is in order.

 

The Caterham nearly rams me in the boot, pops out left to overtake, and the BMW, in a spray of muddy water, pops back onto the tarmac at right angles slap bang in front of us. I’m ready for it, the Caterham isn’t and he spears off the track to the left, onto wet grass. Lord knows what happened to him. Ironically the Beemer rejoins without incident ahead of me, with a grateful wave to acknowledge that I failed to write his car off, and we resume battle. We’re very evenly matched, eventually passed him back, but he’s on the way in anyway.

 

Caterhams everywhere, but the odd Locost thrown in for good measure, and sometimes you encounter a Caterham with a crap driver, so some you catch, some fly past, don’t try and keep track, just make sure they can tell from the car’s body language that you’re claiming a corner before they sell themselves into the gap.  They really are tiny, you have to be very aware of where they were, where they now are, and if one disappears but hasn’t come by, find him before you kill him, they have a habit of nestling in right in the blind spot. The blind spot isn’t big, and in a race with a proper car it’s no worry, but they find it and hide in it, and next thing you know there’s a panicking pilot alongside as you aim for the apex and everybody has to figure out an alternate plan quickly. These are the more stupid Caterham drivers, the smart ones don’t get into this fix.

 

Broken down cars are everywhere, some missing bodywork, some smoking, it’s a hard race and 4 hours in there are casualties. We’ve hit a pace that seems to be quick enough and is keeping the tyres alive, we’ve not turned them to jelly after the first twenty minutes so we must be about where we need to be. It’s hard not to go mad and burn them out in a quest to chase faster machinery, but there is a discipline to be observed. Not too hard on the brakes, not too squealy in the corners, don’t clobber any kerbs too hard, no oversteer exits. I can still feel that rubber-mounted rear subframe swinging about though. Now I know that's there it's going to annoy me.

 

One thing that is bothering me, however, is that I have yet to spot my pitboard, at all yet. Didn’t see it in quali, can’t see it now. I know our pit crew have a blue tarp set up, but there are three of them on the pitwall, and there are many pitboards each lap, trying to spot which one is ours as you go by at 120mph is not all that simple, and I’m getting increasingly irate about it, cross with myself for not being able to find it, cross with them for not waving it at me so that I can see it, cross with us all for having such an understated board, but I’ve no real clue how long I’ve been out, and I missed my braking into Copse twice as I surveyed the line of boards. Also missed my shift to 5^th gear on one occasion and wanged the revs right round the dial, which was hardly the plan.

 

It would transpire after the stint that the reason I couldn’t see it was that Bear was swapping an alternator, and nobody ever did show me the board anyway. Lots of in-cockpit stressing about naught, as it happened.

 

A long yellow shape ahead, slowly crawling along just off the track looks a lot like Gail’s car, Ray must have had a problem. A backwards black thing that looks Radicalish has front end damage, and as I close on it the XJ40 turns back towards the track with bits hanging off, there appears to have been a smiting shortly before I arrived. That’s a shame, means I don’t get to pass them on track, and I wanted that. Still, there’s another Jag out here somewhere.

 

Storming onto Hangar straight there is something that looks like a very skeletal Caterham astern, he pulls alongside as we head down the road, but Jag power means he’s not passing, we’re stuck with each other for a bit. I offer him a friendly wave, we’ve got a good ten seconds before either of us need to do anything more, and there are yellow flags at the next corner, so we may as well make friends. He doesn’t seem interested. I shed a tear of rejection. He takes the place under braking, see what the marshalls make of that.

 

A Saxo ahead is going for it, dangling rear wheel and all. When I left the pits they were leading on handicap, so I have to pass it, which took longer than I thought, it’s half a lap to get a hundred yards on it, understeer but fast with it, fair play to the pilot. Cars heading three abreast into corners, overtaken, overtaker, and madman. People are overcooking it all over the place, it’s a day to have your neck on a gimbal, more than once Helen is taking avoiding action that confuses cars astern, and you wonder what’s in their minds. If the big tank in front starts to do something unusual and goes off line, don’t dive into the hole it left, there was a reason the Jag didn’t want that piece of tarmac, and you are going to find a problem when you get there. Not my worry by then.

 

Late in the stint, heavy traffic, and tyres fading a little, I need a calm lap to get them back but cars everywhere and you have to cut through or lose more time than you would with fried rubber, and I’m sure that a distant shape ahead is a Jaguar. A seriously fast M3, towing what appears to be a Radical, in the mirrors, and he’s really hustling it along. Past they fly and I marvel at how he can throw that car on slicks, it’s really getting chucked about like lap 2 of a sprint race and the Radical is only just hanging on, it can’t pass. I can’t throw the car like that without murdering my tyres in moments, it must very light and well set up to be able to do that.

 

As we exit onto the Wellington straight, it turns out that it’s not. He’s a couple of hundred yards ahead of me as runs wide on the exit, onto wet grass, and the accident is huge, I saw the shock of impact go through the bodywork, he hits the Armco just where it angles back out to protect the bridge. In it goes, a white cloud of water and then up goes the debris, mud and grass and carbon fibre, a wing, pieces of wheel as it spins for another bite, the bits are still landing as the pursuing cars get there, Helen weaves me through the pieces at full chat before the yellows can be thrown. Well, I said he looked quick. Well he was. Briefly.

 

It’s still covered by yellows a lap later and we’re barrelling through the impromptu chicane of debris, but then the safety car boards flicker out around the track. There’s that calm lap I wanted then. And three cars ahead in the queue, David Howard’s XJ12. I want to chase that. I want to chase that so much I can taste it. But are we going to go for a free pitstop under the safety car? Still no fucking pitboard, I really can’t see it. I reckon I’ve been out about 40 minutes, maybe they’re going to leave me out and run a longer stint to get some time back. I get to pursue Howard, come on let’s have that restart, I’ve got cool tyres, I’ve got my eye in, and I want a go at this.

 

But on the third lap, there’s David insistently shaking the pit board at me, and I’ve finally seen it. I guiltily wonder how long he’s been waving that, because he looked a bit stern, probably been shaking that for the past half hour and not had any acknowledgment from me at all. Oh dear. Urging the queue to get on with it, three and half miles takes forever at road speeds, and the safety car is coming in as I pit to release what looks like Roger back out for his second stint.

 

Back to the garage for debrief. Turns out I’d done the full hour. Well, that went quick. All that pedalling must have helped, I’m not at all tired, except my left shoulder, which aches from fighting the wheel, clearly pulling is easier than pushing, because the other arm’s fine. Bear is oddly animated, his eyes glitter with amusement. 2.34.2, he tells me. Six seconds clear of our next fastest car thus far. I know she’s a quick car, but that is a fair bit. A check of the timing screens says we’re over two seconds up on Howard’s best lap thus far and thus the entire Six Potter team, and we like that a lot. It’s irrelevant, but we still like it.

 

 

A trip to the wall, to find out how much trouble I’m in for missing the pitboard, to find that was the first time I’d been shown it. Thank Christ for that. With his poker face on Officer David consults his lap chart and demands to know what I was doing when this happened. It’s like facing the headmaster, you wonder what the hell you did, until he points to the 2.34s recorded on his chart, picking them out of the list. Sweet, it wasn’t a one-off mad lap. Apologetic shrug, that’s just her pace on a clear lap at a reasonable percentage of maximum, I reckon there’s a fair amount more time in her if we’d asked for it, but not this race, it’s not the point. As if someone has pulled a cork out, realisation that I’m done for the day releases all that energy, my Birkett is over.

 

 

We’re now 13^th on handicap, and back ahead of the Six Potters on the road. They pit Howard for Ray again in Lenthall’s yellow XJS, and hit troubles once more as he breaks a hub almost immediately, the Xj12 has to go again. So they have an extra stop, but we need at least two more than we’d like. Ideally 5 stops does 6 hours, but with Roger doing two stints that makes six stops, and Matt’s shortened stint will mean 7, we can’t get to the end with Roger alone. The only way to do that would have been to leave me out an extra quarter hour or so, though we’re not sure about maximum range these days, and stretch Roger to the limit of his fuel too. Even then it may not be on.

 

 

Roger finds his pace this second time out, now that it has dried, and a solid performance has us creeping up the order once again. He pits for Matt, who ought now to take us to the end. Electrical gremlins hit him again, however, with only ten minutes to the flag. We would only discover long, long after the race that the fault was in the alternator cable, corroded and disintegrating, preventing the car taking a charge. For now though, Matt’s in, and the reserve driver, Comer, heads out for a mad dash to the flag. Straight in at the 2.40 mark again, good lad.

 

 

As the flag drops, our 8 pitstop day was not entirely what we had planned, but amazingly enough we finish 13^th on handicap, ahead of the Six Potters on both the road and on handicap. Jagnuts did well, way up in 4^th place. We could wonder where we might have come without 3 extra stops, but that really isn’t the game. We came for a laugh. We managed that. Six hours, six cars, six drivers, no damage, no cock-ups, no collisions, no infractions, no need for Dermott to report to the clerk of the course. For a team of no-hopers we defied all expectations, and we’re all well chuffed with that.

 

 

The long cleanup and packing job as night fell like a net, but many willing hands help load up, and the truck is a quarter tonne lighter going home than coming, by 9pm the pizza man has been summoned to fetch disappointing complimentary garlic bread to Kutuka North’s secret home base, just off junction 34 of the M1, a little up from The Fairways, on the left, with the overgrown front hedge we never cut.

 

 

A solid day at the races, a lot of positives to take away. Helen was quick today, despite still weighing in at nearly full roadgoing class spec. Six seconds over her team-mates is a fair bit, and I can’t claim credit for it, the car did that. But our second fastest car today was Comer, and better yet, Katy now works. She has blazed round for about three hours without a single hiccup, and she was quick, Philip was clearly overjoyed with her speed today, and that’s a blessing. Matt’s car had an issue, but it’s a clearly-defined issue that we can find, rewiring this car has been on the cards for many months if only we were ever to be given permission to proceed, and we now have that.

 

 

Our new team-mates also had a good day out. Deano’s XJ6 has been troublesome all year, but this weekend, dodgy fuel pipe aside, served him well. Roger waved farewell to his XJS with a fine drive, and Butterfield also seemed to be parting company with his XJ40 with a superb performance, that opening stint had us so far ahead of the curve that it defied all expectation. We’ll call that a good end to a crap year. Someone ought to text Tom, let him know how he did!

 

Roger takes us into the October dusk. It's really definitely the last time he's driving this car. Honest.

Deano heads for what looks like that sharp, nasty little corner heading for the Wellington straight.

As his hour ends, Tom is ahead, on track, of both the teams we should be behind. Good lad. 

Tom makes up a Jaguar place by the first corner. He's really quite good at this game.